You may think this is a silly question, but… I love duck. In a Chinese restaurant, some recipes are boneless but others are smallish chunks of duck with the bone in.
What’s the “proper” way to eat this kind of dish, either with fork-and-knife or with chopsticks?
I find that the chunks are too small to cut and debone with fork-and-knife, and too difficult (for me) to pick up and eat around the bone with chopsticks.
Is it considered really gross to just pick it up in your hands and eat that way? That’s the method that works the best for me. But I don’t want to look like a slob in a restaurant (although the places I eat are pretty casual).
Good question. I’m looking forward to any etiquette advice, too - I love Chinese BBQ duck, but it’s always a pain to eat it without looking like a goomer.
I would use a large-sized soup spoon, or a spork if you have access to one, to lift the pieces into your mouth, then kind of strip the meat from the bones inside your mouth and discreetly spit out the bones into a napkin or something.
After looking at some chopstick etiquette sites, my guess is that you are supposed to be skillful enough to either use the chopsticks to cut off the meat or pick up the large piece and bite off the meat, either of which are considered polite.
This would somewhat spoil the experience for me, much as I love duck.
Most people who weren’t raised with chopsticks wouldn’t be that skilled, though. I think I would ask for a knife and fork, or at least a fork, to help you hold it still. Most Chinese restaurants keep forks for those who don’t want to use chopsticks.
Like most boned food in Chinese cuisine, what’s usually done is you pick up the chunk of meat with your chopsticks and then stick it in your mouth, where you separate the meat from the bone, swallow the meat, and spit the bone(s) out onto a dish, or if no extra dishes are provided, onto the side of your plate.
What gets really messy is when you have a small mouth and your parents order gigantic chicken feet (the euphemism on the menu is usually ‘phoenix claw’). Then you have to suck, or dismember the foot toe (claw?) by toe.
Alternately, you can tear the claw apart with your mouth, then leave some on the plate while you work on each part separately.
And “phoenix claw”, IIRC, only applies to the orangish version served over dim sum. It’s entirely possible to get regular ol’ chicken feet and duck feet as an entree for lunch or dinner.
As to bony Chinese food, like duck, chicken, or spare ribs … pick it up with your chopsticks, put in mouth (without releasing from chopsticks), pull off the meat, deposit boney parts on side dish. The trick is to be dexterous with the old chopsticks.
Having eaten in mainland chinese restaurants frim Beijing to Guilin to Hong Kong, and points in between,I can tell you that ,in the restaurants which do not mimic western ways, one picks up a meaty bone with the fingers------nibbles the meaty parts away -and then tosses the bone over the shoulder to fall where it might.
Neat?–No!----But that’s the way it’s done!-----or,at least,once was.
Not,of course, in any of the Sheratons or Hiltons one finds in the major cities-----but around the corner where the hoi meets the polloi that’s often the system.
To a western appetite the system of cooking duck to perfection and then hacking it into a bone -splinter- littered mass with a cleaver is the reason why Rice is so popular a menu item.
That’s how my friend Lau does it when he cooks chicken. He always just cleavers up the bird w/o regard to bones. It’s a lot faster to prepare that way, but slower to eat.
