CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: A Seat at Every Table

NARRATOR: Picture five friends choosing where to eat on a Friday night. Four of them would happily go anywhere; the fifth does not eat meat. More often than not, that one diner quietly decides where the whole table ends up. This familiar scene lies behind a proposal, floated by the council of one mid-sized city, that every restaurant should be required to offer at least one vegetarian main course.

NARRATOR: Its most articulate champion is Naomi Ferreira, a nutrition researcher who has studied dining habits for over a decade. Ferreira argues that a single meatless dish costs a kitchen very little, since beans, grains and vegetables are among the cheapest ingredients any cook can buy. The benefit, by contrast, is considerable. Families with a vegetarian teenager, colleagues planning a team lunch, guests who follow religious dietary rules: all of them, she says, are currently steered away from places that would otherwise be glad to serve them. A requirement, in her view, would simply turn ordinary hospitality into a standard. Her reasoning is persuasive as far as it goes, although it rests on the assumption that every kitchen can produce such a dish well, and that is far from guaranteed.

NARRATOR: Marcel Dubois, who runs a small smokehouse and speaks for a regional association of independent restaurant owners, sees the matter differently. A place built around slow-cooked brisket, he points out, has an identity, much as a bakery or a fish market does. Forcing it to add a lentil stew nobody in the kitchen cares about would produce what he calls a compliance dish: bland, rarely ordered, and eventually thrown away. Worse, a diner served such a meal may walk out convinced that vegetarian food itself is dreary. Dubois insists the market is already responding, and that owners who ignore a growing group of customers will pay for it without any regulation. That confidence may be somewhat generous. A small town might have only three or four restaurants, and a diner there cannot simply wander to the next block.

NARRATOR: Neither side is entirely mistaken. Ferreira is right that exclusion is real and the remedy inexpensive; Dubois is right that no law can make anyone cook with enthusiasm. A more promising route might be encouragement rather than obligation: modest grants to help kitchens develop new dishes, or a simple symbol on menus so that diners can find suitable places quickly. Rules have their place. But when the goal is hospitality, a rule that breeds reluctant compliance may win the argument and still spoil the meal.