You’ll get no competition from me. Cream cheese has absolutely no place in Asian cuisine. And I’ll make it a point to order tako (octopus) and and uni (sea urchin roe). **[/QUOTE
I confess, I’m somewhat of a poseur when it comes to sushi (but, then, I don’t try to gain cool points for eating it), and my hat is off to you on the tako. You sound like a purist, which I have to admire.
Hee hee! Truthfully, I felt the same about the rolls containing MAYO, but since I was forced to sushi-swap (and my friend had ordered some), I tried them… and liked them!
So now I try to think of some sushi as something akin to Taco Bell… it may not be authentic by any means, but it’s GOOOOOOOOOOOD.
Anybody who assumes my plate welcomes his fork is likely to get a fork stuck in the back of the hand.
What the hell would give someone the impression that I ordered that dinner for any reason other than planning to enjoy eating it - all of it?
I didn’t order what I did so that I could eat half of it and half of theirs and have them eat half of mine. If I wanted what my dining companion ordered, I would have ordered that instead. If he/she wanted the dinner I picked, then that’s what they should’ve asked for.
My dinner is my dinner, and unless you (the proverbial) ask for a taste, any sticking of any fork into it is very likely to result in a stabbing. Unless ‘you’ happen to be my dude-of-the-moment, there is no excuse for sticking your fork into my food. Even his access to my plate is restricted to certain items: I will share things like french fries and wings, but touching my lobster tail is grounds for immediate death. I will give up a crab leg if asked, but I expect a polite request.
Is that really too much to expect? If you want to try a bite of my dinner to see if you might like it, ASK FIRST for cryin out loud. And then you’re getting a taste. Not half the entree.
Sorry, someone mentioned that Chinese food was not for sharing. Well, maybe in the US that’s true. And you can keep that doo doo plate you ordered. In China, it’s family style, and that means big old plates in the middle and snooze you lose. Of course, you’re chopstick skills have to be up to speed or you’ll be going hungry. I lost a lot of weight my first time in Taiwan 'cause I was just too damn slow and the food was gone before I was full. Sounds like a Scylla meal actually.
As for cream cheese and the rest. As long as it’s good, I’m in even if a big ol’ whallop of natto or uni is more “authentic.”
And damnit, I like frech fries. Keep yur cotton picking hands off unless I’m feeling unusually generous and offer.
Angie & I found a supermarket (Harris Teeter) that actually has good sushi. Problem is, sushi doesn’t fill me so I get two containers with 16 individual rolls each. Angie always gets one container, something with avacado such as California rolls. I don’t like avacado so I get ones that I can recognize: tuna, salmon, and eel.
I went to Chinese food with my workmates once, and someone out of the 20 or so people actually suggested we not share the food! "Let’s just eat what we ordered, " he said. (How can you tell the WASPs at a Chinese restaurant? They’re the ones not sharing the food!)
Another time, a new guy violated our Chinese food rules: The person who ordered a dish gets the first serving of it. That wouldn’t have been so bad (I mean everyone gets some, right?), but he proceeded to scoop half of the first dish to the table, which someone else ordered, onto his plate. Another person said (joking, but not joking), “Hey, save some for the rest of us!” The Offender said, “There’s still lots of food.” Yeah, there was plenty of food, but some people didn’t get a taste of that dish. We never asked him out for Chinese with us again.
Sushi is another matter. I’m the only who likes sushi, except for a guy who’s no longer with the company who knew that you eat what you order and don’t swap, so I get to eat all the sushi on my plate. Even that sweet tofu thing and the egg, which I like less than fish. (I usually order “[meal] with sushi” and you don’t get a choice. I love eel, and my workmates think it’s gross (oh, they don’t know what they’re missing!), and tuna. Mmmm! Melts in your mouth! Tako is good too. Shrimp? It’s okay, but I like raw tuna better.
A note on chopsticks: I was out for Vietnamese food and was sitting next to one of my Vietnamese workmates. She said I used chopsticks very well (implied: for a white guy). I thought a moment and told her that I’d been using chopsticks since before she was born! (I learned when I was about five.)
Except for a couple of smallish lunches, here in Australia I’ve never experienced Chinese food eaten individually rather than as a group free-for-all. Granted, half my genes are Chinese, but even eating with my most WASPish of friends we’ve shared the dishes.
Snooze and lose is a good way of putting it; my friends and I have a weekly lunch at the Chinese restaurant near our university. Dining with five ravenous law students means eat quickly or go hungry! I think the female member of our lunching group, her mouth full, actually growled at me with last week when I snapped up the last scrap of garlic spinach.
What is it about “student” status that instantly means “starving”? I mean, by the time I went to grad school I was 26 years old, had been self-supporting for years and, although I was certainly not well-off, I was actually LESS “poor” as a grad student than I was in my waitressing days (and now that I’m paying off all of those loans on which I subsisted in grad school, I’m a broke mu’f*cka).
However, my group-sushi experiences in grad school were similar to your law school Chinese food outings, and I think the whole “student” thing played into it (in fact, I had several friends who thought nothing of scavenging leftovers from other tables before they were bussed… do they still do that NOW? I wonder).
It’s sort of like this “I am student, therefore I am starving, which means that until I graduate I have no ethical, moral, or hygienic obligations when it comes to the acquisition of food” thing.
That reminds me of a time when my family was out at a Vietnamese restaurant with a few friends of ours. The only “white boy” at the table (Eric) used his chopsticks so well that we were all amazed. Of course, he’d gotten used to it by that time, eating with us at least once every week in Chinese/Vietnamese places. But his chopstick skills elicited this comment from my friend Rich: “Wow, Eric… your chopstick skills are better than mine, man!”
When I go out for just about any kind of asian food with my friends we always share, but I never know what the situation will be with my coworkers.
So, as we’re sitting there discussing what we are going to get, I ask the question - “So, do you guys wanna each get our own things, or plan a little and share it around?”
It works quite well, except at a Thai place we went to once - 6 of us for lunch, everybody getting their own thing, but it was served family style, one dish at a time, each dish about 10 minutes apart. I am traditionally a sharer, and my plate happened to come out of the kitchen first. By the end of that meal I had quite a few converts.
I’m not really a sushi sharer, I’m more of a sushi giver. Let me explain…
Just this Monday Hubby and I went for sushi. I like variety in my sushi and hate that all rolls have six pieces and you can’t get less than two pieces of anything. (ie I love sea urchin, but can only take one piece because the consistancy grosses me out. That second piece will make me gag.) So I ordered:
Philly Roll (the dreaded cream cheese, I love them!)
Spicy Salmon Skin Roll
Salmon Roe (have I got a thing for salmon? YES!)
Toro
Now, if you’re keeping track, that’s 16 big pieces of sushi…way more than I’ll eat. What do I do with the rest? I give it to my husband!
slackergirl: Thai food can be funny. Sometimes it’s served on individual plates, and sometimes it’s served family style. You just have to share or not share depending on how it’s served.
Two workmates and I went to a Chinese restaurant last week. We get out of our usual place for $6/person. At this other place the lunch special was $7.95. Plus they charged extra for steamed rice. (And they were unbelievably slow.) When the food finally came, it was served individually with each plate containing wontons and “fried rice” (which was rather pathetic tasting). We had to ask for extra plates so that we could share. Weird! I can’t remember ever going to a Chinese plate that didn’t serve family style, except for fast food places. (Incidentally, there’s a fast food Chinese place down the block from the office. $3.15 + tax gets you one item, a choice of fried chicken wings, wonton or spring roll, a choice of steamed or fried rice and/or noodles, and a drink. I have to stop them from putting too much food in the take-out box. And it tastes good to boot!)
Japanese, on the other hand, comes on its own plate. Ya eats what’s ya gots.
