You are reading this and maybe you already love to eat at the Chinese restaurant. Maybe you also know there is a world of food to discover outside common Chinese restaurants adapted to Western taste. If, in addition to being masters of chopsticks and eating dumplings, Cantonese rice and spring rolls, you also eat some particular dishes like the Chinese hotpot or many other recipes, you have already made a further step into eating like a Chinese. What else you should do if you really want to behave like a Chinese during your meal habits? This post will show you some Chinese habits you may consider.
DON’T CLASSIFY DISHES → in theory, there are not first courses and main dishes in Chinese food. Every dish is a neutral part of your meal. You should not order “dumplings” and eat them like if they were a first course or an appetizer.
BE SOCIAL → if the social meaning of Chinese hotpot was not clear to you yet, maybe we should start from a simple dinner at a Chinese restaurant with other Chinese people, not necessarily a hotpot dinner. When you are in a Chinese restaurant and want to truly eat like Chinese people, you should order many dishes everyone is going to eat. Those dishes are then placed at the center of the table and everyone eats everything. That’s the reason why you see those nice rounded tables with glass-rotating surface in Chinese restaurants: they are perfect for rotating many dishes among people. The rounded tables are perfect for big groups.
GET USED TO SPICY → Unless you are eating with Cantonese people, the majority of Chinese people actually love spicy dishes. For many Chinese people (and for me) spicy food are among the best parts of a Chinese meal.
BAOZI AND SOY MILK FOR BREAKFAST → So you want to eat and drink like Chinese people? Start from the breakfast and enjoy a soy milk while eating some baozi, like it is shown here. It is not the only way to have breakfast like a Chinese, but it is among the most popular.
ORDER WHITE RICE WITH YOUR DISHES → Never thought about ordering a simple white rice at the restaurant? This is because ordering it is not popular among Western habits. Anyway white rice is what do Chinese people eat together with other food. Ordering white rice in China is just like eating bread when having an Italian meal. Order a white rice together with the other dishes and you will be Chinese for a moment!
@HoangDang Yes I’m an Italian focused on Chinese culture and who eat everyday with Chinese people (in addition to eating with my family too the other meal). In my private life too (for example friendships) there are many Chinese people.
I add a little more explanation about two points of the post, as I have realized they may be a little confusing at a first glance. The first about spicy food: not all Chinese people like spicy, but in about 5 regions of China (including Sichuan and Hunan spicy food is very popular). Also many Chinese of other regions love to eat spicy food (at the end there are food popular also outside their originary region), but you will also find as well Chinese people who don’t stand spicy. Anyway eating very spicy Chinese dishes is still an experience you can take if you want to try eating like Chinese people who love spicy.
The second point, is about classification of dishes. Some users may ask why in Chinese restaurants dishes are classified into categories while looking at the menu. The reason is to help people have a point of reference. For example Chinese dumplings are commonly classified as “appetizers”. At the end, you are still going to eat them together with other dishes, shared with the other people as well: it is surely different, from example, than eating Italian dumplings (ravioli), in which you are eating your personal dish and you are eating it completely as a first course: you don’t eat other dishes until you have finished this.
As I am writing this addendum, I also add a final advice in order to enjoy a Chinese meal even more: try to have a hot soup together with your meal. Chinese really love to drink hot liquids when eating, some even believe cold beverages may harm your health (even if this does not keep them from also drinking something cold as well).
Thanks for the post @user_not_found ! It’s nice to see an “outsider’s” perspective about this… although I wouldn’t be surprised if you know more about Chinese culture than I do! Whilst you are passionate about Chinese culture, I just take things for granted! LOL!
A lot of the points mention here is also very true for other Asian cultures… we tend to order several dishes to share as each dish is usually specific in nature i.e. there’s a meat dish, a fish dish, a vegetable dish and so on. In comparison, if I were to take a Sunday roast as an example, the dish comes with meat and vegetables served together so it’s not geared towards sharing. What I love about the Asian way of eating, is that I can pick and choose what I want to eat and there’s always variety with my meals!
@AdrianLunsong yeah the most thing I love is variety. I also applied it to Italian food: I no longer eat an entire pizza for example when I am with others, like it is usual here, but generally share it with my friends. Then we order another dish and share it as well. And Italian restaurants always managed to welcome us by providing more dishes. It is definitely nice to share food, despite the kind of food is.
I imagined this also applies to other Asian cultures. After Chinese, my second group of friends I sometimes hang out with is made of Filipinos and they also eat the same way! At the end being 90% of my friends from China or Philippines, eating all together is something assured, even if this is something which also manubrio Italians may like, even if not used to (my family for example like sharing food sometimes).
Thanks @user_not_found an interesting piece. We call the spinny thing a “lazy Susan” in Australia - I have no idea if its a local term or used in other places too.
One other tip is to order in language, our photo group has a few Chinese members and when we go to a dumpling house or similar for a meal if they order in language we seem to get better and different food. It’s also a pleasant surprise because the rest of us have no idea what it is until we eat it
@PaulPavlinovich I think the term is used also in the rest of the world, cause I see also Chinese restaurants spinning things are called “lazy Susan”. Ordering in language is a good idea, yes, and one of the reasons is that not always the translations are accurate. For example in one of the restaurants in which I have made many photos for Connect, dishes like xiaolongbao, tangbao, wonton are all translate with the name “dumpling”, but obviously they are not dumplings, or to be more simple, they may considered as different kinds of dumplings even if in China it would be wrong to call them even “type of dumplings”. The same for noodles: the Biang Biang of the photo (same page) are surely not simple noodles and translation in “noodles” would not be accurate: Biang Biang is the only way to call this special kind of noodles!
Some of the translations I’ve seen in restaurant menus are astounding @user_not_found my favourite came from a Korean restaurant where the literal translation was “brown soup” in the menu it said “bowl of shit” alongside the Korean characters
