Variety? When we order Chinese, we usually try to get a couple of different proteins and different styles. Husband and daughter don’t eat pork, but mu shu beef and kung pao chicken would be shared.
I suppose it varies a bit whether one is feeding two people vs. 3 or 4 or 6. I’ve never lived in a group bigger than me+1.
Back when I was young my late first wife and I often shared our whatever, eating maybe 2/3rds of our entrée and 1/3rd of the other’s. But we would not order soup and apps and 2 or 3 entrees just for two of us. Deliberately over-ordering to create leftovers was totally not our style. Neither was bringing uneaten food home from a restaurant. Whatever we didn’t eat stayed there. As she got sicker our tastes and dietary limitations diverged and sharing dwindled a lot. Sniffles.
My current wife is Simply Appalled at the exceedingly déclassé idea of sharing one’s food. It Simply Isn’t Done in Sophisticated Company. Now IMO she’s waay overdone here, but I can see how my evolving experience has driven me close enough to getting captured in her orbit, albeit with none of her misplaced vehemence. IOW, I’m happy to share; it just doesn’t occur to me to offer or ask.
Contrarily, as Boomer-Americans my wife and I can’t eat the ever-more-gigantic portions that restaurants have been trending toward. So we’ve been trying to settle on one entree that we can share. It’s fascinating that restaurants have so much trouble trying to figure this out. Some will properly divide the meal into two servings. Some will bring out a dish and two plates. A few put the plate in front of one person and then place a dinner roll plate in front of the other. Sharing is a difficult concept for Americans.
Why not? If my husband and I don’t share when we have gotten two completely different meals (rather than the equivalent of both getting burgers with different toppings ) the only reason not to share would be if he ordered something I wouldn’t eat. Which does happen sometimes.
I’ve not noticed a trend towards even-more-gigantic portions. They’ve always been f*ing huge at most family-oriented establishments. Like, seriously, twenty years ago a portion at your average diner was at least meant for two people.
Diners aren’t restaurants. They’re fast-food with plates.
I often get take-out and will have some now and some later. Some portions are enough for dinner for three nights.
The result was spurious.
You and me both.
I mean middle-of-the-road restaurants, as well. I was trying to think of a word that excluded Michelin-starred restaurants and wannabes. Like any mainstream restaurant has had crazy portion sizes for a long time now. I remember coming home for Christmas in the late 90s my first year after moving to Europe and being bugeyed at the portion sizes here. If anything, I’ve noticed the prices going up and the portions getting smaller.
Is it that they can’t figure it out, or is it that they don’t want to encourage or normalize it?
Sounds very possible. But we try to go at off hours or days so that we’re adding a table instead of bumping someone who would spend more.
Maybe our pictures have been posted on the secret restaurant chat link.
I’ve been to a few top-end steak places Canada and USA, and the concept in them was to order the steak (or other meat) you wanted, and you got only that; and then order a separate plate (or several) of a side and share it among anyone at the table who wanted some. Usually these sides were enough for 2 or more.
I don’t know if this is emulating a European restaurnat concept or whatever, but it worked fairly well. One of the options was French Fries, which were somewhat midway sized between the fat British “chips” and McD thin fries.
I think you’ve got this exactly right. Chips were just chips when I was growing up, and they were always the thicker cut style. Then MacDonalds arrived and started selling us these things called ‘French Fries’. I remember rumours that they weren’t even made out of potato, so strange and foreign they were to our eyes. So French Fries, to a Brit, will always mean the thin cut sort.
“Fast food” is a particular variety of restaurant. Everything that is not explicitly fast food is called “sit down” to distinguish them from the fast food restaurants that are geared more towards drive-through/drive-up orders.
Sit down restaurants, in turn, are further sub-divided into multiple categories – fast casual, diners, fine dining, etc.
Perhaps I’m too old but I remember when fast food restaurants didn’t specialize in drive-thru and delivery orders. At one point we would actually sit down and eat in a fast food restaurant.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say fast food restaurants specialize in drive-through/drive up orders. I’d say that the difference is that in a McDonald’s/Burger King/ KFC the only difference between an eat-in order and a take-out order is “bag or tray”. The food is in the same box or bag whether you sit down at a table or take it to go unlike other types of restaurants where you may order at the counter, find your own seat and bring your food to the table but it comes on a real plate with metal utensils.
To this 50+ American, this has been an interesting discussion. For me growing up fries were any style of deep fried potato, thin, thick it didn’t matter, they were fries. Chips were thin fried potatoes, but were crisp and came in a bag, until we had fish and chips. From then on chips could still mean the crispy type in a bog, but it could also mean fries, which enveloped all other remaining fried potatoes. Over the years it seem more distinction of fries has arose with shoestring, thin, regular, crinkle, Steak and waffle with chip just being a generic term but more like a steak fry. Now I guess it could be its own category.
Agreed! The idea of a picture should be to show the consumer an accurate portrayal of what the food item looks like, so the presence of a picture suggests that. If you can’t accurately show the item, don’t bother trying.
I think they always did. My mom took us to McDonald’s more than 50 years ago, and while they had some seating, she’d always get a sack of burgers to take home. It was pretty rare for us to eat there. They certainly catered to take-out even back then.