My Parents moved to a new city and started becoming friends with their neighbors. They have gone out to Dinner with several of them. The strange thing is that my mom says they didn’t do family style at Chinese restaurants. Everybody ordered a platter and ate it themselves while My parents shared theirs between themselves. I had never even considered that people did Chinese food that way for dinner. Lunch is different of course, most lunch meals being designed for a single person. But for Dinner? Unless you are the only vegitarian at the table this seems like a horrible waste of oportunity to me, missing out on the Varity of food.
Personally I love family style restaurants whether they are Chinese, Italian(mmm Buca de Bepo), Mexican, whatever. A pile of this and a pile of that, but at much better quality than you get from a buffet line.
How many people do ‘individual order’ Chinese for dinner? Why?
This is me. Occasionally I still have to watch out for people who will try to eat my food, or take my leftovers. I don’t mind sharing enough for someone to taste, but don’t try to make my food into a side dish.
It depends on whether you can coordinate the offerings. For example, I have no objection to spicy food, but hate bell peppers. One of my friends has a deadly allergy to shellfish. Another is a vegetarian. So unless we all get vegetarian dishes with no peppers, there’s not really much to share.
OTOH, I used to work with a group who would go out for a special Chinese lunch sometimes, and with 8+ people, we’d order a couple of chicken dishes, couple o’ beef, couple o’ vegetable. Some spicy, some not. It was great. And at least one of our group would always be somebody who spoke the same native language as the owner of the place and we’d get the really good stuff.
Family-style (never heard it called that before) is the NORM when eating Chinese food in Asia. Each person ordering his/her own dish is UNHEARD of. It’s simply not done at all. Maybe for lunch, when there are special set deals or something (not sure about China/Hong Kong though, since I never had the pleasure of eating Chinese food there for lunch)
However, I know that in large parts of Europe, the “non” Family-style way of eating Chinese seems to be the norm. The only time I’ve eaten in that way in Sweden where I’m from is when there were Chinese people visiting. Otherwise, to each his own…
I prefer “family style” naturally! To me, the only true way of eating Chinese food.
Family style makes practical sense, but not everyone is hip to that. Maybe they don’t like sharing dishes with new friends? They should try Dim-sum, that might solve a few things, and would be a great way to introduce the notion of sharing/sampling food.
Oh dear, I am the wet blanket when it comes to family style anything (Chinese, Italian, or whatever). In my opinion, the whole point of going to a restaurant is so I can order exactly what I want to eat, and don’t have to eat anything that I don’t care to eat. I don’t mind at all sharing a taste of my meal with others, but I don’t expect to carve up my dinner (or lunch) into 8 portions.
I am also the person who likes to order extremely spicy, or rather exotic, or sometimes just plain expensive items, and I don’t like feeling that I’ve put others out by ordering food that they don’t like, or making people pay more than they were expecting to just because I was in the mood for something that happens to be pricey.
Agreed - I ordered exactly what I want, dammit! If you do the family style thing, you suddenly have to plan for every person’s dietary habits. Maybe my friends and I are more picky than most, but invariably in a group, people will be different degrees of vegetarian, on different fad diets, and have strong likes and dislikes. It’s a nice idea in principle, but I’d much rather be able to get exactly what I want without having to vet it with everyone else at the table.
Not really. People just won’t eat the stuff they don’t like. My co-workers didn’t like me eating the whole salt-and-pepper shrimp. Hey, the heads are just as edible as the tails. If it turned them off, more S&P shrimp for me! Ditto the whole fried fish. If they’re uncomfortable with taking a chunk out of an animal that still has its head on, then there’s more for others. I, for one, didn’t like the shrimp one guy ordered frequently. I called it “hot snot shrimp” because of the sauce. And it always tasted “muddy”. There was still plenty of other stuff to share, and I didn’ thave to heat his snotty shrimp.
We don’t do “family style” restaurant food, for the most part. Like delphica and Excalibur, I consider getting exactly what we each want part of the whole point of going out. If I order something, it’s because that’s what I want to eat, and by God I expect to get to eat it. I’ve got no problem letting other people taste my dinner, but I’ve got a pretty firm two-bite limit. Anyone who wants more than two bites of whatever I’m eating needs to order their own, thank you very much. Of course, we almost never actually order specific dishes when eating in at a Chinese restaurant. We eat the buffet and get to sample dozens of dishes instead of four or five.
When we go to the Chinese restaurants we always do ‘family style’.
There are the staples that we always get (fried rice, veggies, wonton soup) and then everyone gets to choose one dish. We don’t really run into the problems people speak of here, we eat what we want and leave the rest. The most popular dishes do get split up more (ie sweet and sour chicken balls) but everyone gets enough to eat. It’s how I’ve managed to try things like duck.
We’ve even done it when we went to try Indian.
I can see where it could cause problems, but we usually manage just fine. I think it helps that it’s usually the Grandparents who are treating so it’s usually more eat and be quiet, if you don’t want it you can have a sandwich when you get home. It would vary with friends but the only group of friends I used to order chinese with all had similar tastes and it was more ‘is there enough honey garlic pork to satisfy everyone’
It’s obviously not family style if you have a dish you consider to be “yours” and that you have to share with others. Ownership has no place here.
The table should order as a group, all the food should go in the middle, and you take it off for your plate. It’s your job to get your needs integrated into the selection of dishes. And depending on how hungry people are, the number of entrees may be more or less than the number of people.
Family style really only works when you have a group with a similar range of tastes, in my opinion. For the one person whose tastes don’t match the group, it causes problems. The vegetarian in a group of non-vegans, as wolfman suggested, is just one example of this (but wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the whole group was vegetarian).
For example, if my wife and son and I go out, it works fine. But one time my wife and I went with my sister and mother. They like fish dishes, and spicy dishes, and mushrooms. My wife and I don’t like fish. I’m allergic to mushrooms (and you would think my mother would remember that!), and my wife dislikes spicy food. They wanted to do it family style, and we agreed that time. In a case like that, simply ordering something you’re willing to eat isn’t enough. We left hungry, and there were leftovers of the dishes my sister and mother ordered. Needless to say, we weren’t willing to eat family style in that group again.
I’ve had similar problems going out with people from work, but that’s more likely to be lunch, where it seems more socially acceptable to order just your own plate, in which case, no issue.
There are a wide variety of Chinese dishes, and it is entirely possible to like Chinese food - that is to say, some or many Chinese dishes - but not like enough different dishes to be comfortable with family style with people with differing tastes.
I’m with delphica and others, I like to order what I want. But then again, I’m really not much of a picky eater, so family style works when I do go that route.
I had my rehearsal dinner at a Buca in Vegas, and it worked out wonderfully.
Luckily, the majority of the group were my family, or close friends, so I was able to guess at what kinds of things to order, but it made life so much easier. With about 35 people showing up intermittently, it would have taken forever and been a logistical nightmare to have everyone order separately.
And that’s the point. If I’m the only vegetarian in the group, do I demand that we only order vegetarian dishes? Or do we end up ordering a bunch of things, only one or two of which I can eat, leaving me to go home hungry? And what if I like some particular odd food that the rest of the group doesn’t? Do I buy it, and leave three quarters of it uneaten? Or do I shut up and eat what the other people like instead?
Family style might work if the group has similar tastes, but otherwise, it’ll never work out right. And I’ve also had the bad experience of eating with smug people who explained that “It’s how they eat over there” (as if it wasn’t common knowledge - and where exactly is it that families don’t eat family style?) and ending up hungry. It’s nice if people like to eat family style, but the smug little declarations that it’s the only correct way to eat in a Chinese restaurant are ridiculous and irritating.
Never really thought about. Personally, there aren’t many Chinese (Americanized or not) dishes I would like to eat a lot of. Variety just seems like what draws you to it in the first place.
Or maybe having a Chinese-born Vietnam-raised aunt just means my family knows the right way. My cousins would sometimes order a personal dish. Where there from you can go to a good Chinese restaurant and order a hamburger!
OTOH, Vietnamese dishes aren’t served family style usually. In my experience.
I’m another exceptionally picky eater, so I don’t like family style.
At an Asian restaurant, there’s usually one (maybe two, and I’m including the steamed rice) things on a menu that I’ll like and eat. So, family style means I pay for an equal share of a meal, but can only eat a small portion of the one food I like, and end up a bit dissatisfied generally.
I’ll do it, if everyone else is doing it, but generally, I’d just prefer to order and eat my own food.
