question about serving/ordering tactics at vietnamese/thai restaurantgs
 

umm. this is something i had always taken for granted until recently when i observed other people's eating habits or servers asking questions.

3 postulates)

1) generally when one gets chinese food one orders dishes and shares them all, rather than say going to ruby tuesday's and ordering a porterhouse steak or something. apparently that's what you know. i mean apparently the chinese they just have their own rice bowl and they put shared food dishes in them, normally. however most americans when they eat at home do the same thing with like tuna casserole, you put it in the center of the table and share it or what have you, but if you go to an american restaurant you order your own dish. so question one:

when one goes to a chinese restaurant, is it correct that one should just order as many dishes as the group wants and just share them all?

2) secondly, my whole life whenever i have gone to also a vietnamese or thai restaurant this custom has always been followed. you communally agree on the dishes to be ordered and you communally eat them. however, one time i'm sitting in this vietnamese restaurant diddling around and i start looking around and i notice that most people aren't doing this. most people have their bowl of food and the person they're eating with has another bowl of food. this totally caused a great amount of confusion and disorder in my life. 'is one not supposed to share? wtf?'

so that's the second question. if postulate one is true, is postulate two also true? does one also share vietnamese or thai dishes?

there's the possibility that it is specific to each restaurant. like i'm sure there rae some chinese restaurants where one generally orders their own dish, for whatever reason. when i was in vancouver we went to this thai restaurant (really really great place) and we more or less ordered our own dish and didn't really share. well we still shared but not to such a large extent. so maybe it depends on the restaurant?

***

is what i've been doing my whole life a silly custom or are the other people just ignorant americans?

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also most recently at a thai place i was with my parents and we ordered 3 dishes; a curry, a noodle dish, and a tofu dish. two of these dishes came with rice and the rice was just on individual plates, and there wasn't a third plate. so obviously the people expected us to all eat one dish. is this because that's what they prefer or is it because that's what their customers generally expect? i cannot imagine just eating a bowl of curry for dinner and not having any other flavours. it would severely disturb me.

yeah that's all. something that's been driving me crazy for awhile.

^ you're green.

:think: im not totally sure either.

i <3 the fluffy white steamy rice they serve at oriental restarants
yum yum yum that's my favorite part of the whole dinner...and noodles...noodles are great

me chinese
me play joke
me go pee pee in your coke!

-_- ^_^ kekekekeke

oh yeah. indian restaurants too.

im half chinese and whenever i go to a chinese restaurant with family i just order whatever I want without the input of anybody else then i just share it with anybody else who wants some.

please someone has to know. i've done so much research on this and i still haven't been able to find out.

I've been eating at Chinese/Veitnamese/Thai fod restaurants the same way you have for years, with numerous people and numerous families or bosses, so they can't all be wrong. The only reason the people could be eating all different things is because of it's lunch hours and the portions are smaller, so you can get your own dish. Good times.

no. this has always occurred at dinner time when people are out at dinner for fun. so are they ignorant? or how do you know when to order your own dish and when not to? are the nationalities just completely static and all thai restaurants you share your food or what? how do you know???? like that thai restaurant i was at where they assumed we were all having our own dish. is it because mos tpeople do or because that's what they prefer their customers to do??? it confuses me

do what you want...that's my advice

really. hm.

i seriously have got to find the answer to this puzzle. maybe there isn't any generalized etiquette maybe it really does very from restuarant to restaurant. *ughhh*

depends on the restaurant, or even a lot of restaurants have the option. look for indications of 'family style' which means communal sharing.

really? interesting

are you sur?

like family style american restaurants don't mean communal sharing

hmmm

first off, i'm vietnamese.

and thai is my favorite kind of food.

:D

mhm. you don't happen to be friends with any vietnamese/thai restaurant owners do you? what do they say about this issue? i don't think i've ever been to a restaurant that has said 'family style' anywhere but maybe i just haven't noticed it.

http://www.differentworld.com/thaila...pages/food.htm

aha! not like much of that stuff matters in small-town virginia

so would you say most restaurants like that are 'family-style?' i'm assuming the high end restaurants aren't though. like the ones wiht entrees closer to 20 dollars.

I almost pissed myself laughing for some reason
A+
<3

oh. something else. so thai people don't eat with chopsticks? do the vietnamese eat with them either? my dad always asks for them and a lot of times i think to myself ("hm i wonder if thai people even use chopsticks") but they always supply them..

ok. i just read something about vietnamese restaurants and they made a reference to chopsticks. mhm.

I made a post about this somewhere.

Anyway. Yeah, Chinese people do order dishes and share them and have their own bowl of rice.

But you can do whatever you want in a resteraunt. It's your food and your money.