In American, when you sit down at the table of a ‘casual’ restaurant (as in, not fast food but way below white tablecloth) you’ll almost always find salt and pepper, packets of sugar and pink & blue fake sugar, ketchup and possibly steak sauce.
What are the ‘typical’ offerings in different countries?
Soy sauce is obviously standard in a lot of countries.
Mustard is ubiquitous in Germany, malt vinegar in the UK.
Various kinds of chili based pastes or hot sauces are common in Asia.
What is this?
Usually in Scotland you’ll get salt, pepper, ketchup, vinegar, brown sauce (not a million miles away from A1 steak sauce, but different), English mustard and French mustard. The sugar will be for going in your tea or coffee.
Sweet ‘n’ Low (saccharin) and Equal (aspartame), respectively. And it’s the packets that are pink & blue, not the sweetener itself.
Pink = Sweet & Low, Blue = Equal; or their off brand equivalents, can never remember which artificial sweetener is in which. Intended for ice tea, coffee, or hot tea use.
I find that mustard is also common on tables, and many places are now putting out some sort of hot/pepper sauce.
And now yellow=Splenda.
Tabasco is in every corner of the world.
It’s disorienting for a Canadian to travel in the States and keep wondering who’s wandered off with the vinegar cruet.
Of course, tabasco, soy sauce, mustard, and malt vinegar are all ubiquitous table condiments in the US too, depending on style of restaurant.
In Korea, you’ll typically find salt, toothpicks, chopsticks, spoons and a roll of toilet paper. I generally had to order black pepper and soy sauce from the kitchen.
Don’t look for it in Spanish eateries: it’s in the supermarkets, but most restaurants and bars don’t have it. Bars are more likely to have it due to its usage in cocktails, but the notion of putting it on food is pretty eye-crossing.
Standard is olive oil, wine vinegar and salt; there are these items called aceiteras which have a salt shaker, pepper shaker (most restaurants don’t put these directly on the tables but have them available), and the dispensers for oil and vinegar. Many restaurants have an aceitera in each table; bringing one out only if someone is having a salad is considered posh (salads are served uncondimented).
This is what you’ll find in most European countries i think. Peppper, salt and tooth picks are standard and if the place (or the dish) calls for it also olive oil and vinegar. The only places that have ketchup or stake souce, are the ones trying to be American (as in American Steakhouse).
In Cameroon you’d have mayonnaise, Maggie sauce, unholy hot scotch bonnet pepper sauce, salt and toothpicks.
In China it varies from city to city and region to region. Where I live in Sichuan it’s all about the spice. You’ll always find napkins to wipe your tearful eyes and blow your runny nose. Then there is the bowl of pepper sauce to make things spicier, and the cup of vinegar to cut down on the spiciness. You will also find a little dispenser for salt and MSG. Finally, most meals come with a small plate of pickled seasonal vegetables and greasy noodle-type meals come with a weak soup.
In my city, specifically, snack food comes with a dish of ground-up peanuts and generally they leave a huge wooden vat of rice on your table that you can eat freely from. Go a city over and everything is completely different. China has got to have some of the most regional food in the world. Luckily, my city has the best food! =)
The one I go to in England has salt pepper and vinegar, that’s it. I once went into a scottish chip shop and they had brown sauce and vinegar mixed together. Always get brown sauce in greasy spoons. Nice bit of HP.
Thailand - in my experience, which does include exclusively Thai eateries but my memory is poor: Maggi sauce (hydrolised soy protein - absolutely delicious stuff!), salt, chilli sauce, sometimes chilli flakes, often in a plastic dispenser with toothpicks and napkins.
In Costa Rica there’s always Linzano, a super-delicious, mildly tart, locally made sauce made from “vegetable essense” (not tomato based). We brought back 2 large bottles from our last trip, but we’re out now. 
sad because there’s no Linzano. There would also generally be some form of salsa, salt and pepper, and quite often, some limes.
Vietnam - Fermented fish paste/oil and a variety of hot pepper seeds in oil.
And note that Canadians tend to put white vinegar on french fries, not malt vinegar.
Really? From what I remember of Chinese restaurants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, they were pretty stingy with paper napkins/serviettes (i.e., we had to keep asking for more).
Pink = Sweet’n Low = saccharin
Blue = Equal = aspartame (NutraSweet)
Yellow = Splenda = sucralose
I’ve noticed that Tabasco (or other hot-sauce brands such as Frank’s) has become more common as a table condiment in U.S. restaurants over the past decade or so.
