IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card 586 with Model Answer

Describe an experience you had with a type of foreign food

: You should say

when you first ate it
where you ate this food
how you felt about it
and say if you liked or disliked it

: Model Answer

Usually, I do not take foods out of the home. But sometimes I have to take the foods when I am travelling abroad. And the experiences are sweet and sour. Thank you for the question. Recently I went to Mexico for attending an international conference and I will describe the experience with foods in Mexico now

I am a student of HELP University in Kuala Lumpur. I have been born and brought up here. So, everything is familiar to me. Since my parents take a great care to me, I never had to take my foods out of the home. But this time, it was different. I had to join at the conference as a representative of my university and also had to taste various types of foreign foods. The experience was interesting. I went Mexico in the last quarter of 2016. And it was the first journey out of my country as well

I had to stay at a hotel in Mexico and I took my foods from the restaurant of that hotel. Sometimes, I went out with the other participants and tasted the delicious foods. But there were some basic differences among the foods of Mexico and Malaysia. In fact, I am habituated with foods prepared with less spice and oil. But the foods that I tasted in Mexico were a bit opposite of my taste. But I took them and tried to adjust with the environment. The restaurant, where I took the foods, also sold some other traditional Mexican foods. But I liked the ones similar to my traditions. I am familiar with rice and took mostly the foods prepared with rice. On the other side, I am a vegetarian and so, it was a bit difficult for me to avoid the non-veg foods there. Because most of the food items had some sort of meats with them

Taking foods out of home is always troublesome for me. And when it was in a foreign land, the troubles increased more for me. In fact, I was used to with the local foods of Malaysia. So, I had some issues with the Mexican foods. Besides, I am more conscious of the cooking and cleaning process of the foods. My mother cooks the foods after cleaning them in the right manner. But the restaurants’ cooks are most of the cases unable to clean the food ingredients properly before cooking them. They are not that much neat and clean. I gained the experiences from some of the local restaurants here in Malaysia. So, I developed the idea and it was changed after I had a look at the kitchen of the restaurant where I took my foods during my stay. So, I enjoyed the meals most of the time

This is a bit confusing issue for me to answer. Some of the foods were delicious while I could not eat some other foods for their bizarre tastes. So, I rather follow a neutral stance on this issue. Foods prepared with vegetables were extremely delicious to me. But I tried to take some non-veg foods as well only to check their tastes. But I could not consume them properly and had to give up finally as the tastes appeared strange to me. However, I enjoyed the foods like Mexican Rice, Mexican Red Rice, Mexican Chocolate Cake, Simple Mexican Rice etc. than any other foods. So, the experience was mixed for me