📙 Part 2: Describe a new shop that recently opened in your city/town

This episode's vocabulary

To be out of the loop (idiom) - to not be one of a group of people who have particular knowledge, make important decisions, or deal with important situations.

Eatery (noun) - a restaurant.

Suburb (noun) - an area on the edge of a large town or city where people who work in the town or city often live.

Branch (noun) - one of the offices or groups that form part of a large business organization.

Out of the way - a place that is out of the way is far away from areas that are central.

To happen on/upon something/someone (phrasal verb) --to find or meet something or someone by chance.

Questions and Answers

M: Rory, give us your story.

R: Oh, well, I am a bit out of the loop when it comes to the ins and outs of shop openings in Broughty Ferry, to be honest. But one place that comes to mind would probably be the new eatery that's just opened on the main street of my hometown. Well, the main street of the suburb of my hometown. It's called The Ferry Selkie and it's actually a branch of a restaurant which started out in Edinburgh, which is the capital city of Scotland. They've been doing rather well there apparently, so it seems like they've decided to expand. As you can probably guess it's a type of restaurant. And with a traditional name like that, my guess would be that it sells traditional Scottish cuisine like Cullen skink, which is a kind of fish soup, or haggis, which is probably our most well-known national dish. I say it's a traditional name because, well, a selkie is a sort of creature from old Scottish folk tales. And the ferry is a short way to refer to the whole of Brodie Berry. As for the kind of customers, I'd imagine they'd mostly be locals, to be honest, since Broughty Ferry is sort of out of the way. Tourists might happen upon it, but we don't get many compared to a place like Edinburgh, for example. It's for that reason that I think it will be reasonably successful, assuming it builds up a decent client base, since people in my hometown are pretty loyal to good businesses and tend to chase out any chains which come in. Even though this place is a branch, it's just the one branch. I mean, we only have two places so far, and one of them is extremely far away. And they're both in Scotland. So I doubt that will be a major issue. But I've been wrong about these things before. I think it might be an interesting place to try out when I get back to Broughty Ferry after Turkey, now that I think about it. Although if I don't get the chance to go there, and it fails miserably before I get back, then I won't be too upset because there's lots of other traditional places that... Sorry, traditional eateries in the local area.

M: And do your friends like this shop?

R: I haven't heard them talk about it, frankly.

M: Hey, thank you, Rory, for your story!