1. The Un-enthusiast
You are not depressed, you don’t think. You still delight in the little pleasures, like free samples, casual Fridays, and sometimes dinner. You order with resignation from a lazy memory. “I’ll have the, um, General Go’s Chicken. The thing with the broccoli,” you sigh into the phone. If asked, “Do you mean the General Tso’s Chicken?” you respond, “Whatever.” You have just finished a long day of copying text from one Word document into another Word document and trawling the internet for videos of pitbulls falling down stairs. You have no patience for being corrected and no interest in the nuances of Chinese pronunciation. You barely care what you’re ordering – isn’t it all, in some sense, deep fried chicken smothered with sweet and sour sauce on a bed of broccoli? – much less how it is pronounced. Next time, you will again try to order the “General Go’s Chicken.”
Soulmates: Teenager; Grad Student
2. The Priss
You think of yourself as easy-going with a good sense of humor but you don’t understand the appeal of beer or Seth Rogan movies. You, too, have just completed a grueling workday at your computer, except you finished your copying and pasting within twenty-five minutes of getting to the office, and spent the other seven hours jotting down Pinterest ideas on how to refurbish your medicine cabinet. Even though you are skeptical of most Asian ingredients, you agreed to Chinese food because your date suggested it, and you did not want to seem too high maintenance. You order the General Tso’s Chicken with all white meat, steamed, no M.S.G., no soy sauce, and no corn starch. You repeat your order two or even three times because the stakes are high. You believe you have identified the only edible items on the menu and that if you allow any miscommunication to occur, you might open your take-out box to find a severed human head seasoned with oriental carcinogens. You want your order read back and you wait on the line for a total. “Thank you,” you say as you hang up. “And no M.S.G.”
Soulmates: China-Backhand; Sushi Babe
3. The China-Hand
You love Travel in an unqualified way. The most adventurous of the bunch, you savor every minute of the ordering process, injecting snippets of personal, China-related information after each item. “Nee-how. I’ll have the Peking Duck.” Your brother has just been transferred to UBS’s Hong Kong office, and your family recently bought tickets to visit over Christmas. “And the morning glory stir-fried with garlic.” You are starting a Mandarin class in the fall. “And then can you recommend a tofu dish?” You saw a fascinating special about tofu fermentation on the History Channel last week. “Oh, just give me anything. Whatever you think I’ll like. I won’t even ask what it is.” You secretly hope for a carcinogen-laced head. You bring a thermos for hot tea when you pick up your order, and ask for extra chopsticks.
Soulmates: Grad Student; Sushi Babe
4. The China-Backhand
Your worst fear is having the wool pulled over your eyes. Like the China-hand, you have some familiarity with Chinese culture. You work with an Asian-American colleague and have frequented a handful of Chinatowns throughout the country. You may have even been to Vancouver. Interactions with the Chinese, however, have left you vaguely suspicious. You order the baby bok choy, off-menu. “I know you usually make it with shiitake mushrooms,” you say discerningly, “I’d like it without the mushrooms.” You are a vigilant reader of your local newspaper’s international section. You follow all the stories about contaminated milk in Beijing, lead toys in Chongqing, avian flu in Shanghai. During these periods of crisis in the East, you will avoid the restaurant entirely on the off-chance that the kitchen imports its dairy and poultry products from the affected areas 10,000 miles away. You will return when the U.S. State Department website announces that it is again safe for American tourists to visit China.
Soulmates: Priss; Sushi Babe
5. The Teenager
You feel like you could accomplish great things if people would just give you a chance. You are currently reading Dostoevsky. You arrive in person with several friends who all shuffle up to the front for menus. The group immediately retreats outside. Ordering this meal is the most responsibility you have ever had. After half an hour of deliberation, you approach the take-out counter once more, the smell of menthols still lingering on your hoodie. You will have five mixed-appetizer platters. When you make a special request, your voice is humble, shakey. “And would it maybe be okay to have more chicken fingers instead of the, um, fried shrimp? Sorry.” When it is time to pay, money comes tumbling out your pocket in arbitrary quantities: first a 5, then a 20, a 10, then two more 5s, another 10, and finally, dimes.
Soulmates: Un-enthusiast; Grad student
6. The Grad Student
You match the teenager in profile, except you do not arrive with friends, and are ordering five mixed-appetizer platters for, one presumes, the week.
Soulmates: Teenager; Un-enthusiast
7. The Sushi Babe
You believe that happiness is the result of adequately loving yourself. Strangers are often doing things for you like holding open elevator doors, letting you cut in line, or offering you a light. Except you don’t smoke. You are apt to describe food items as “cute,” which is why you prefer your seafood to be sculpted into rice-based petit-fours. But you cannot possibly fathom, with your fun yoga pants and your beach-ready bod, the history of rancor that exists between China and Japan. It is not exactly your fault that the forces of capitalism have driven so many Chinese restaurants to serve terrible sushi, the culinary staple of their ancient foe. Of course, you do not deserve to be met with such wilful ignorance when you ask whether the tekka-maki is an inside-out roll, nor with such disbelief when you order gyoza instead of the pan-fried dumplings. But by choosing the bento box option, you are only fueling your server’s insecurity that her cuisine is the Danny DeVito to sushi’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now you know.
Soulmates: Priss; China-Backhand
8. The One
You’re a dreamer with a stable income. You call from an inside space sheltered from weather and traffic noises, where reception is flawless. You say “Hello” before starting to order the chicken with broccoli, but then pause mid-sentence, and ask, “Actually, do you have any favorites?” Upon recommendation, you choose the spicy bamboo shoots with a side of dan dan noodles. You run about five minutes early, but insist that there is no rush. You pay with exact change and then stand off to the side, allowing other customers to ingress and egress. When the food is ready, you open the bag and fish out the fortune cookie, which you eat on the spot. You ask for help pronouncing the Chinese characters on the back of the fortune. The pronunciation is way off. You laugh, blush, try again. Before turning away for the door, you take another menu from the counter. For next time.
Soulmates: Chinese restaurant employees
Tags: food, making wry observations, Ming-Qi Chu
But I am not any of those things! I said to myself indignantly. And then I realized that I basically never order Chinese take-out, and that when I did, I was very definitely both a teenager and a Teenager. So carry on, then!
Now I want Chinese food.
How about the person who secretly longs to just order three servings of crab rangoon and eat them all by him or herself but won’t because that just seems somehow scandalous even though like, whatever man, I am an adult.
Once I texted my roommate: “crab rangoon tonight?”
RM: “actually I was thinking pizza”
Me: “rangoon AND pizza?”
RM: “DONE.”
no shame whatsoever.
You are living my fantasies.
I would like crab rangoon only no crab, just the cream cheese. Does anyplace make that?
My husband and I have progressed from ordering appetizers and real food (camouflage) to just being honest with ourselves: 2 orders of steamed dumplings for me (1 for tonight, 1 for tomorrow) and 1 order of crab rangoon + lo mein for him.
Marry me?
The White Woman With Issues: you can no longer consume Chinese food because you had to have your gall bladder removed. Once a quarter you dream of lo mein and crab rangoons even though the rangoons are not even authentically Chinese. You tried to eat dim sum in Boston on vacation and stopped eating halfway through, with people stuffing their faces on all sides while you tried to keep from vomiting. You are sad.
That … is a thing that could happen? I just had my gallbladder removed this month (in one of a series of emergency surgeries, so it’s not like there was much choice, anyhow) and have not yet returned to a normal diet. But the possibility that I would be unable to eat dim sum had not occurred to me.
On second thought, I retract the question. I’ll find out on my own, and until I do, I’ll pretend everything is JUST FINE. Because denial is… healthy. Yes.
I can eat most things after having mine out. Tomatoes, strangely, are now entirely off-limits, but fat is okay in reasonable quantities. So there is hope!
It runs in my family (I’m currently the only adult over 30 who still has one, so it’s only a matter of time), and no one has had any problems. It is a possibility, but many people have no problem at all. Don’t fret!
You guys are too nice, reassuring me like that. I know that some percentage of patients never recover the ability to eat [insert favorite food here], I just hadn’t thought of it in terms of whole cuisines. (Um, except I’ve been looking longingly at soul food menus and reviews all weekend, so maybe unconsciously I have been thinking in terms of at least one whole cuisine.)
Amazing Sandwich, my mom had hers out and went back to her regular diet almost immediately, so we can both be reassured that there are people for whom it’s a 48-hour blip and nothing more. (Mine was a sudden crisis, with long hospitalization and a week off food and an emergency follow-up procedure, so it’s not surprising my recovery is expected to take lots longer.)
Mine was also a crisis like that. It was summer 2001. I became a vegetarian shortly thereafter for unrelated reasons but I have not had to give up any foods because of the gallbladderlessness.
What Type of Commenter Are You?
The Me-Too: What you initially think is a gesture of solidarity and shared experience is actually unconsciously designed to persuade others to reassure you and carries no hint of your intended affinity and sympathy. You are a monster.
(Sorry, what I meant in my original comment was: That stinks for you, JGlo! I just went through the procedure, too, and though the restricted diet recommended for my specific recovery isn’t too bad, I’ll be very frustrated if I can’t branch out soon and return to eating my favorite things. I’m sorry it worked out that way for you.)
Lolz, no worries here. Everyone has a different experience with ye olde cholecystectomy, mine just meant I had to give up Chinese food and also fried chicken. I really hope you can eat what you love soon, your liver does eventually take over. Besides, you will be grateful for not having the pain anymore (I had a lot of pain).
I am these:
1. Person who orders too much food (for later! for tomorrow’s lunch!) and then feels awkward when the server puts four sets of utensils in the bag and tells you to have a fun night.
2. Person who orders just appetizers. Miso soup, fried wontons, side order of rice, two kinds of potstickers, huge order of egg rolls…
Me too. Always with the four sets of utensils and cookies.
I’m a four sets of utensils person but I don’t feel awkward, I feel like I’m getting away with something.
And then you have extra utensils! There’s no downside.
I am in a constant silent competition with myself to see how many sets of utensils I can achieve in a single order. Current high is 3 (or 4; I am a terrible competitor with no head for details). I accept the extra utensils with a mixture of glee and grace, and wear them like a badge of honor.
Aha! Now I know the secret of how to get extra fortune cookies!
This is why I can never sit down for Chinese food with my husband’s family. My mother-in-law is a Priss and my father-in-law is acts like an Un-Enthusiast but thinks he’s The One (orders from memory, never names an actual dish available, gets frustrated that people don’t recognize his brilliance). It’s painfully embarrassing to be seated with them.
Please trust that anytime this happens, I will be dying of embarrassment from hundreds of miles away. ACTUAL WORST.
I worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant way back in my college days. The cook, Henri, called every dish on the menu “meat with a bunch of stuff.” Beef in Garlic Sauce? Beef with stuff. Moo shu pork? Pork with stuff.
I really wanted to learn how to make Chinese food at home, but after that, whenever I thought about cook Henri and “stuff”, I just started laughing.
That said, I order the same stuff every time: Singapore noodle or hot pot beef brisket with curry sauce. Henri tried to get me to eat chicken feet, but I couldn’t. I’m not adventurous former Chinese waitress person.
I don’t get chicken feet as a food item. Not because I think it’s inherently weird or gross or whatever, but because when I did try it, it was so underwhelming. It’s like frying a tiny sliver of white chicken meat! MORE MEAT PLEASE
Chicken feet are just not worth the effort required to eat them. I love using them to make stock though, because seeing them all piled up in the pot makes me feel like a witch.
I want to buy a cauldron, set it on a fire in the middle of the woods, and boil me up some chicken feet. I shall wear witch attire, in case anyone happens upon me, and wonders what I am doing: I shall take a chicken foot and shake it at them, menacingly, and perhaps, I shall cackle.
“[X*] with stuff” is how I’m going to refer to all Chinese foods in my head from now until the end of time.
*works if you’re ordering tofu or noodles too!
Dinner party at my house. Guests are a Chinese woman (born in China) and her adult American children. Guests bring a cooked, whole chicken to supplement our food. We know to expect something like that, as the woman treats us as adopted children. We, in turn, love her as our adopted mother.
The daughter and the mother get into a shouting match over who gets to eat the chicken feet. After offering them to us, of course. All the shouting is in Cantonese and we have to ask the son what it’s about. He reports they always fight over the feet. He lets out a resigned sigh and suggests we take a walk with him to let the Ritual Foot Bickering reach a conclusion without any further audience.
I love these people. But I will never understand fighting over the feet.
This is probably a stupid question, but don’t chickens have two feet?
I know! It adds to how mystifying this ritual is. If the son doesn’t understand, after observing it all his life, who am I to try to make sense of it?
We asked the son and he assures us there is no Chinese cultural tradition blocking the *sharing* of the feet.
Just so you know, I’ve been traveling & on a ‘must catch up with life; no Toast’ hiatus for a couple of weeks, and have gotten over it, and have spend all of tonight reading all kinds of articles here & comments & feeling like all is right with the world.
And this comment right here just made me laugh harder than anything else.
One of my biggest food pet peeves is people who ask for no MSG. MSG allergy doesn’t exist! It’s just a salty flavouring agent! It’s in a ton of other foods other than Chinese food! MSG fear is probably steeped in racism!
There was an excellent article I read one time last year comparing MSG allergies (“allergies”) to the gluten-free craze, but I can’t find it and it was EXCELLENT.
Also, MSG is delicious, my mother-in-law has a huge jar of it in her kitchen and she’s an amazing cook, so there.
Was it this? http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/…
God, I can’t wait until gluten-free stops being a thing for the 98.5% of people who don’t have celiac.
Yes! Thank you!!!!
Yeah but for the 1.5% of people who are celiac, the fashion-gluten-free crowd make buying stuff about 10000% easier, so I forgive them their foibles, they may do as they please.
Yeah, I have celiac and that’s basically how I feel. When gf first became a fad, I was annoyed by all these gluten free dilettantes, and then I realized they were making my life easier, so I (mostly) stopped resenting them.
I have a lot of feelings about this topic and the latest study, and I will take pretty much any opportunity to talk about them, but probably you don’t want to get into a debate about the actual results when you were just making an offhand remark?
Can’t resist.
The evidence that people are allergic to sugar polymers in wheat (not gluten!) is strengthened by this study. It’s like lactose intolerance; not everyone can digest certain sugars. Lactose intolerance is really common, right? You KNOW people who are lactose intolerant.
There’s no reason to be snotty, entire media machine, because people thought they were reacting badly to ONE chemical in wheat, and it turns out to be a different chemical. The headlines say “Gluten Intolerance Doesn’t Exist” when they should say “It is a Different Chemical in Wheat, Probably You Should Also Stop Eating Artichokes and Beans Now.”
I knew about the wheat thing, and I think my entire problem is more just people who jump on food bandwagons without any real consideration other than “sometimes eating lots of bread makes me nauseous, I have a gluten intolerance!”, but I suppose that is Entire Media Machine’s fault for touting gluten-free as the magical solution to a host of more complicated dietary issues. It also grosses me out from a “big business leveraging trends for $$$” standpoint, as in “Hey, let’s profit off of this thing people don’t eat by releasing a gluten-free granola bar line that is triple the price of regular granola bars!” (also mad that the gluten-free craze is pretty classist tbh)
The gluten-free craze also sparks a special sort of irritation in me solely for biased reasons – I used to work in a really toxic, misogynistic workplace where nearly all of the women pressured each other into going gluten-free and doing juice cleanses for weight-loss purposes instead of out of a necessary need to improve diet.
Oh, that sucks! I’m sorry. That kind of weird social pressure is so, I don’t know… sticky. Like tar. It gets into your brain and seems more reasonable because three people have said it, and you know it’s poisonous, but you can’t scrape ALL of it off.
I guess I’ve been lucky in my gluten-free friends – they were miserable and ill, and then they found a diet that worked for them, and now on game night they bring their own food or we order Indian and also they are superpeople capable of wonders. It makes me protective of them.
I am definitely down for going gluten-free if it’s a diet that works for you and stops you from feeling miserable and ill! My boyfriend’s mom had heartburn and acid reflux for pretty much her entire life until she decided to try gluten-free, which led to her being generally more aware of her food choices. She’s not entirely gluten-free anymore, but in her case it was the catalyst for eating more stuff like whole grains, lean meats, veggies, proteins, etc
I think that last bit is why so many people think that they have a gluten intolerance. They say “oh, I’ll cut out gluten” and so start reading more labels, eating fewer processed foods, eating more fruits and veggies and lean meats, and they feel a lot better. And so they think that gluten was their problem all along, but really they feel better because they are paying more attention to what they eat and to how they feel as a result.
“Probably You Should Also Stop Eating Artichokes and Beans Now”
you can keep the wheat but YOU WILL TAKE MY ARTICHOKES AND MY BEANS FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS
The day I stop eating artichokes and beans is the day you can kill me to death. ALL THE WAY TO DEATH.
So one of the questions I had about this whole study and to-do: From what I’ve managed to gather from things close to the original study (since I haven’t read a copy of it directly), it sounds like the study was specifically referring to gluten causing gastric problems, and concluding that unless it’s celiac, the gastric issues aren’t gluten per se.
Meanwhile, my partner had some serious joint issues (surgery on one knee, recommended for the other, couldn’t walk without pain), and discovered that a gluten-free diet caused those to essentially go away. Artichokes and beans don’t have the effect of causing pain recurrence, but unexpected gluten seems to. From what I can tell, because this study is entirely about gastric problems, it’s not actually saying anything about gluten issues that resemble hers. Is that in fact true, or have I missed something?
If you can clarify this, thanks!
Oh it definitely is food racism — there is as much MSG in Parmesan cheese, nutritional yeast, or tomato paste as any takeout Chinese place, yet I have never heard of a case of someone arguing against the ordering of pizza due to their “MSG allergy.” There have been some thoughtful explorations of the history of Chinese cuisine in America and the No MSG branding, by iirc Jeffrey Steingarten, David Chang, and others.
Yes. My mother has always been adamant about how this is a white people paranoid fantasy. My grandparents used to own a Chinese restaurant, and she used to assure those people there would be no MSG and then proceed to spitefully put extra MSG in their food, to no adverse effect ever. Possibly evil but also kind of hilarious.
I would like to high five your mom.
It may not exist as an allergy, but it can be an irritant. It makes my mouth swell up – I avoid things like Doritos for this reason.
I had a Korean friend who told me all of this and it really did change the way I think about things, and now I have no regrets about eating all those seaweed chips with MSG on them.
I am none of these, because there is no Chinese take out in my town, because everyone is all about Thai food all the time and Thai food is….not my favorite. It is very upsetting to my tastebuds.
Are you in Seattle? Because you just described Seattle perfectly. I moved here from the bay area (Chinese food heaven) and when I saw that all the Chinese places were basically just karaoke bars, I wept real tears.
Wait, there are some decent places in Seattle (okay okay okay not AS GOOD as the bay area, I also hail from NorCal).
I mean, you basically have to go to the I.D. or the East Side, but they’re around.
I totally agree with you, but I’m in north Seattle, so going to the I.D. is more like a bi-annual pilgrimage. Thankfully, a lovely cantonese family recently opened a humbao/duck deli in my ‘hood, and it is amaaaazingly good. It’s called J B gardens if you want to check it out!
yes time to end the horrible hegemony of thai food
I’ll trade! There are four Chinese takeouts in my town and only one “Thai” place, which I put in quotation marks because it’s literally called “Thai Sushi” and it’s the Platonic ideal of a pan-Asian restaurant that covers about ten cultures and does nothing well. And I live for Thai food and don’t have one nearby.
Unfortunately all the Chinese takeouts are terrible Canadianized ones, so there is that.
oh man, I moved & went from living in the Vietnamese/Thai neighborhood of a major city to…somewhere decidedly smaller. the only place we can even find that delivers passable pad Thai doesn’t even have tofu listed on the menu; you just have to request it. I pine for the days of readily available pad kee mao. (there is ample Chinese food, but that just doesn’t do it for me the way Thai does.)
I have found only one decent Chinese place in the entire Triangle area of North Carolina so far – two, if you count the buffet at the Asian market which is legit and delicious – but many many Chinese places that people rave about YET THEY SUCK. I get these enthusiastic recommendations and then we go there and the menu is 20 pages long and includes sushi and hamburgers.
Is it Eastern Lights??? I sometimes contemplate moving back to Durham for Eastern Lights alone.
what about those of us who ask for extra msg, all the msg in the world, you know what can i just get like a brick of msg and a side order of bean sprouts
You could buy a shaker of MSG at the grocery store and just sprinkle it on everything.
Now I’m feeling bad about occasionally ordering a maki appetizer at my local Chinese restaurant, even though I don’t wear yoga pants (outside of yoga class) or call food “cute.” But I love Chinese food, honest! And never associate it with Danny DeVito.
The half-asian who orders tofu dishes (usually their white friends are all over the general gao though) and is over-nice when they pick up the food, trying to gauge whether they’re being read as Chinese or not, and who softly says “xie xie” after they pay (only if they can hear the staff speaking Mandarin), but probably not loud enough for anyone to hear.
I get so excited when I find a Chinese place that has Shanghai noodles, even though I have yet to find any that live up to my Platonic ideal of them, which were from Mei King and did not even bother with the pretense of vegetables. Most other places throw a distressing amount of green peppers into the dish.
My dad is always going to sushi places and trying to speak Japanese to Korean waitresses. “, you’re embarrassing meeee!” (said in my best teenage whine voice)
this is my husband. Always speaks Japanese to waitresses at Japanese restaurants, regardless of the waitress’s actual ethnicity. So racist. I need to learn how to apologize to them appropriately.
oh lord
But but… what he’s doing is actually not racist. He is assuming that people working in a sushi restaurant are interested in Japanese culture and have learned the language, whatever their background, just like him, no?
No…he’s assuming that they’re Japanese b/c they are Asian and work in a Japanese restaurant. Not cool.
What about #9, customer for whom a mere blog post about Chinese take-out causes a huge veggie lo mein craving? Asking, uh, for a friend.
(also. can you tell who is who if they order through seamless or a similar online system?)
Is there a cone of shame to wear for the person who prefers the $4 white meat Sesame Chicken special at the food truck next to her building to the $20 version with fried dark meat closer to home?
No cone of shame, and it’s way easier on your wallet.
But…but…at least to my taste buds, dark meat is so much tastier!
LOL I live in Vancouver and was completely flummoxed and somewhat aghast at the idea here of ordering sushi at a Chinese restaurant. But there is very often sushi on offer at Korean restaurants (and many Japanese restaurants are actually run by Korean people) and there is a lot of angst and colonial feelings that go along with that reality.
It’s the same here in Toronto.
Yeah, the delicious sushi place in my neighborhood is run by Koreans. In fact on their website it says “For authentic Japanese sushi served in the Korean style,”.
Same in Seattle. Once I ordered Kim Chee stew at a sushi place and the chef was super stoked. He came out to my table to talk to me, and told me to come back again for the seafood stew. Who wants sushi in the middle of a Canadian/PNW winter?
I’m Korean and live in Vancouver (BC) too but my take is that we (and probably the Chinese too frankly) are a little too practical to really have much angst/colonial feelings about serving sushi/Japanese cuisine in a western (aka historically white-dominant) city. It’s an market decision, since the white people/assimilated Asian folks here are real hype for accessible Japanese cuisine (esp sushi, what with the fresh fish access making it affordable and tasty).
Korean cuisine historically never had a foothold in white people’s imagination unlike Chinese or Japanese cuisines (and a lot of other areas too *cough*) either for sheer availability/adjustments to white palates or aesthetically, so folks opening up restaurants play it smart and do Japanese food with our own spin on it. Funnily I find a lot of the Korean places here tend to end up catering Japanese food to other Koreans, so it ends up being “ours” anyhow in a way.
Let’s be real though, the Chinese restaurants here are pretty confident in their own foods; the sushi is really only there for the really insistent white folks who really want “authentic Asian food” where “Asian” = Japanese. I got stories.
Interesting! My understanding was based on a Korean friend’s take on the whole Korean/Japanese thing in restaurants, but she is a bit prone to hyperbole and drama, so I guess I have to re-think!
Do you have any favourite places in Vancouver for Korean/Japanese?
The one who cannot eat Chinese food with her in-laws because they insist on sharing their entrees. If I had wanted General Tso’s chicken, that’s what I would have ordered. No you may not have some of mine. Now let me sit and eat my delicious msg/salt-laden food in peace.
This is giving me The Feelings. When I was a child, we always ate Chinese dinners family-style, choosing dishes for the table and sharing. Now that Dad is dead, my mother orders her own damn dinner and eats it, SO THERE, which makes me realize that she was bowing to his family’s over-confidence that that’s The Way It’s Done, bolstered by their family’s years living in China (and also Korea: though it’s a whole different country and shouldn’t bear on the argument, I’m sure it did).
But it’s now instilled in me as The Way It’s Done, and ordering Chinese dinners always means asking if we’re sharing or… like, not.
To sum up: man, I would love some broccoli with garlic sauce. I guess we’re not sharing?
It really is a product of how you grew up ordering/eating it! I grew up in a family where everyone ordered their own, except appetizers (which were a given sharing thing), but then leftovers were a free-for-all. My in-laws are very much in favor of the way you grew up, with Chinese food being family style. It took me by surprise when my plate was passed around! Now that I’ve gotten used to it, I go into take-out nights with them expecting to share food, and I think I like it.
So, sure, we can share, just as long as you warn me first! 🙂
I would eat every meal family style if I could. I really would. It’s mostly just out of curiosity for taste and if you can have five different dishes instead of one WHY NOT.
(no I do not act on this urge unless everyone involved is happy about family style; I am a monster who has taught herself to be polite)
We are definitely a tasting family: dinner out means offering a little taste of your meal to everyone else. But we’re not one of those tables where forks flit around nabbing tastes on their own; it’s a very codified procedure of asking each person if they’d like “a taste” and then either letting them nab it or (my preference) preparing them a perfectly balanced selection of the main course, either on their fork or depositing it on the edge of their plate.
At one big family dinner last year, I had a meal I’m still thinking about: a confit duck leg served with arugula and dried-fruit salad, and a side of parsley and parmesan salad. I urged everyone to try the combination because it was so extremely delicious, and predictably sparked everyone passing forks and tastes back and forth. (Man, those sweetbreads my mom ordered were good. My duck was better.)
Watching the fun, my youngest nephew, who had the plainest possible dish of penne with parmesan, turned to me soberly and asked “Emily, would you like to try a taste of my dinner? It’s very good!” Why, yes, I would, sweetpea. Yes, I would. Thank you.
In my head, I understand people who find this weird or even repulsive. But in my heart, I can’t help but be sad that some people don’t want to try everything.
Your nephew sounds like a sweetheart.
I did not grow up in a sharing family but my sister-in-law loves to share and I really enjoyed it when she came to visit and encouraged everyone to pass around bites of their meals. It was great.
I dunno if it’s hormones or what, but your comment made me cry… as in, actual tears from my eyes. Not what I expected from this post.
🙂
But yes, I would never impose this on someone who demurred, and I would never assume we were sharing without asking. In my head, I understand people for whom this tasting-everything approach is cluttered or even repulsive*, but in my heart, I will never understand why you wouldn’t want to taste everything! I would never order a plate of sweetbreads, but now I know what they taste like.
*ALL THOSE FORKS! ALL THOSE MOUTHS!
I would every meal family style if I could EXCEPT MEALS WITH COLLEAGUES. It’s like hot tubs – I don’t get into hot tubs with people I work with, and I don’t eat off the same plates as people I work with.
But yes, EVERY OTHER MEAL. I don’t even know if I would be with my beloved if he didn’t like to share food. I want to eat it all, don’t you? That’s one good reason to have a travelling companion on trips to food-places. So you can, in good conscience, order twice as much.
Oh gosh. I love family-style meals/sharing. My “are we friends or close friends yet?” test is going out to eat – if we’re close friends I won’t feel weird asking if we can share, or if I can have a taste of your dish, or “are you going to finish that” (after a suitable amount of time of course)…Unrepentant garbage disposal here – yes I will absolutely finish your dish for you, even if I’m not going to finish mine. Gotta have that absolute satisfaction of giving my palate a different thing at the end of the meal!
On the other hand, I am also the person who takes over meal organization when ordering family style, to make sure the dishes are varied (different meats, veggies, appropriate starch side, sweet vs savory) and everyone’s dietary restrictions are accommodated.
The funny thing is, my very very Chinese family tends to be baffled at the whole non-family styled thing in America. We’ve gotten better about it, but the first instinct has always been “let’s order three different dishes and share.”
That said, I went to a hot pot place once where it wasn’t shared family-style. I remain baffled to this day.
I’ve always eaten with groups who order family-style in Chinese restaurants (often, though not always, actual family members). The downside is that it can take inordinately long to decide on something that everyone wants/is able to eat. The upside is more variety on your plate.
The last time I went to a Chinese restaurant was a couple of nights before my wedding, when my mother and I were having a hen party of two. Why, I do not know, but she was PARALYZED by the choices on view. I was ready to eat the tablecloth from sheer hunger and frustration, while my mother went back and forth…back and forth…between two vegetable options, weighing the pros and cons, waving the waitstaff away when they came to check if we were ready to order YET…and on and on. I would have loved to have gone Bridezilla and simply ordered the whole meal myself, but I was sponging off my mother that night, so didn’t really have the upper hand there.
All the Chinese food where I live is Indonesian, which is fine but not really what I want when I’ve had a stressful week and want to order Chinese food like I had when I was a kid.
My family used to frequent a Chinese restaurant and my siblings and I would order beef lo mein and pretend it was “gagh,” which is a fictional Star Trek dish of Klingon origin made of worms and served live. After a while we just asked for gagh and they knew what we meant.
In retrospect, both my parents and the staff there were extraordinarily accepting of three nerdy little kids who wanted to eat live worms.
grad student here: except that those five appetizer platters would be consumed all in one sitting + cheap wine out of the bottle (box?) and flavored with tears post-advisor meeting. or long day of grading. or, you know, life.
Grad student = teenager – friends is a pretty universal thing, beyond the world of Chinese food ordering.
“The Buffet Buff” should definitely be a category.
Upon recommendation, you choose the spicy bamboo shoots with a side of dan dan noodles.
Mmmmmmm. It would never have occurred to me to ask for a recommendation, mostly because whenever I call in an order, I assume the unseen person on the phone is juggling several tasks at once, so I have my order all planned out to deliver with swift politeness, but WOW that sounds good.
This article is such genius. Thank you.
the advent of grub hub has allowed me a new identity – the nearly perfect absence of human interaction-ist. it is remarkably satisfying.
I love this. It’s oddly sweet. And it makes me want Chinese food.
Ugh, now all I want is some General Tso’s with pork fried rice and an order of crab rangoon that is ALL for me. Oh, and a side of white rice so I can make rice pudding later. Carbs FTW.
I have known every single one of these people, and hated all of them (except “The One”, who is a treasured unicorn and I hope they always get caught right before accidentally leaving their debit card behind).
They are distinctly more horrible when they do 1 thru 7 in a Chinese supermarket in front of the heated food section, where they’re not even beholden to actually buy anything. I’m often stuck behind them in line during lunch hour, and it is the worst and I wish they’d just hop across town to the Urban Fare and just buy the overpriced coleslaw their hearts truly desire.
I’m most like The One. But then I’m Asian (but I don’t speak Mandarin) so that’s an unfair bias in my favour. With Chinese takeout I tend to be adventurous though.
If you don’t speak Chinese but are still capable of communicating anything other the menu numbers of the items you’d like to order, you are not at a real Chinese take-out place.
Here it is! SO GOOD.
haha I love how this asshole just went SILENT as soon as you said this.
I feel like I should be taking shots here!
I definitely start all my takeout orders with “We’d like…” just so I can order a whole bunch of food and nobody has to know I am going to eat it all myself over the next several days.
Sometimes I even insert a pause between the orders, as if I can remember my own just fine but must consult a piece of paper for that of my mythical company. (In reality, I have written everything down of course, because phones.)
So, yep, grad student. But closeted, apparently.
I definitely start all my takeout orders with "We'd like…" just so I can order a whole bunch of food and nobody has to know I am going to eat it all myself over the next several days.
Sometimes I even insert a pause between the orders, as if I can remember my own just fine but must consult a piece of paper for that of my mythical company. (In reality, I have written everything down of course, because phones.)
So, yep, grad student. But closeted, apparently.
I know, right? To be fair, I imagine they have better things to do than engage in a debate clearly not going anywhere, and everybody's got the right to disengage whenever they want, but yeah…
Of course I was cheerfully rude at first, but I didn't spit in their eye and I still stand by what I said–that the specific situation described upthread is a racist microaggression. In response they've conflated that type of situation with feeling out languages in multi-ethnic/multi-lingual communities, and chose to build their argument on being weirdly presumptuous about several aspects of my personal self.
I'm a Thai person living in a borough of London where 120 languages are spoken in schools; most of the time, when I walk down the street, I hear people chatting in languages other than English, and it's great. I also go to Thai and Chinese enclaves within London and have been lucky enough to visit Thailand every few years since I was a toddler, so I know what it's like to feel people out, language and culture-wise, in several communities in completely different countries. I also know what it's like to be Othered and exoticised through language. There are different dynamics going on. It is not the same situation.
But it's okay. People can be completely wrong about me; this alters nothing about myself and I'm not going to pretzel-logic myself into agreeing with them.