Expressing that something was not bad nor good, it was ok


> Q.1 - **晩御飯はどうだった？**
>
> R.1 - **少し美味しくないよ。**
>
> R.2 - **少し美味しいけど、美味しすぎないよ。**

So what I wanna mean is **" The dinner was kinda good but not that great (it
was not bad)"**.

I feel like R.1 is actually saying **" It was kinda bad, not awful though"**.

And R.2 is saying **" It was kinda good, not that good though"**, what do you
think?

Thanks.




I don't think "少し美味しくないよ。" is something we usually say. Generally speaking, we
are ill-disposed toward the construction "少し[adjective]ない". I don't know why,
but it sounds a bit too roundabout and hard to process. (And look at all other
circuitous dictions we are so fond of using!) So you'll probably come off more
natural saying "少し汚い" instead of "少し綺麗じゃない"; "少し暑い" instead of "少し涼しくない";
"少しまずい" instead of "少し美味しくない", etc.

One of the phrases we most often have recourse to in order to soften a
negative comment is "あ(ん)まり...ない": "あ(ん)まり美味しくなかったよ。"

"少し美味しいけど" and "美味しすぎないよ" -- Again, neither sounds too natural in the context
at hand. There are two words I can think of off the top of my head that
express "okay" kind of good: they are "まあまあ" and "そこそこ". Paired with a
positive adjective, they will constitute a lukewarm praise.
("そこそこ/まあまあ美味しかったよ。") Be careful if your listener is the one who made whatever
you are passing down the judgement on -- they might not be much flattered,
depending on their expectation.

A good alternative to "美味しすぎないよ"? Well, if you want to say something is _blah-
blah_ but not all that _blah-blah_ , you can use "そこまで...ない".

For a conclusion, to rephrase R2:

> まあまあ美味しかったけど、そこまで美味しくもなかったよ。




You can use the 〜も〜も〜ない pattern to convey this. In this case, it would be

> おいしく **も** おいしくなく **も** ない → Neither delicious or not delicious

You could also use まずく **も** (from まずい) in place of おいしくなく **も**.

Another example:

>   * 映画どう？面白かった？ → How was the movie? Good?
>   * まー、好きでも嫌いでもねぇよ → Meh, I didn't like it, but I didn't hate it either.
>

