In China there are many ways to order at a restaurant and every place has their own organization. Many restaurants will carry your order at the table (or even at the counter, especially for breakfast restaurants) and make you pay in advance, while others will give you the bill at the end like it happens usually in Western countries.
The ways of ordering at a restaurant don’t end here. In some places there is a Chinese-only menu, but photos are also present so that also non Chinese speakers can see the dishes.
There is anyway another option restaurants give to costumers and that is the most funny in absolute: models of the dishes are prepared and exposed (if not models of the dishes, for very simple dishes, you can find models of the main ingredient, for example for a tofu-based dish you may see just the entire tofu piece exposed). Near every model there are various markers of different colors. You pick a marker for each dish you want to eat and then you give all the markers you have chosen to the fuwuyan (waiter).
How useful is this info @user_not_found@thanks for sharing, not so long ago I read that in Japan (if I’m not mistaken) some restaurants have implemented realistic fake food for foreigners to know what they ‘re ordering. Practical way to overcome language barriers
Yeah @kroza , they have these models in some Japanese restaurants. Talking about China, there are not many language barriers, also restaurants not following this method of ordering still have usually photos of the dishes. You can find less photos in restaurants for breakfast, maybe because foreigners usually don’t think about eating noodles for breakfast and so these places are not targeted to tourists (the fact people usually look at me a little wondered like if I am the first foreigner to enter in these places confirm my hypothesis). Anyway in the biggest cities, also many breakfast restaurants seen to have photos.
I like the concept of a model food being displayed at a restaurant . It solve many problems. One, it makes the restaurant more attractive. Two, it makes it easier for customer to place order for a menu.Three, it removes communication barrier. I’ve seen it work at Terminal 21 restaurant in Pattaya. I think it is a concept that should be replicated around the world.
