October 11, 2006 - With the possible exception of Italian, my favorite food in the world is Chinese. However, when friends suggest dining out at Chinese restaurants, my inclination is to decline, announcing, even before the msg has had a chance to kick in, that I have a headache. My reason for this is simply that I hate the mandatory practice of sharing entrees.
I suspect that this obnoxious tradition began many years ago, when most Americans hadn’t yet sampled Chinese cuisine. Back in those bygone days, it gave people a way of getting acquainted with a wide variety of exotic dishes. But that era has long since passed. By this time, almost everyone in a Chinese restaurant over the age of six is on a first-name basis with kung pao chicken, pork-fried rice, and tangerine beef, and it’s high time this particular tradition went the way of top hats and spats. There are times when a tradition is nothing but a habit with chin whiskers, and this is one of those times.
For me, the problem is that I always wind up with much less of what I want and lots more of what other people have ordered. For instance, say there are four of us. The way it usually works, I order my favorite, curry shrimp, and the other three order a chicken, a beef, and a vegetable, dish. When the food arrives, it immediately starts getting passed around the table. Even if, against odds of four to one, my delectable dish starts out in front of me, I have to pretend I want to leave plenty of room for the other three entrees, and, so, I can only help myself to a quarter of the one item I really want. And, based on forty years of experience, I can kiss the shrimp good-bye. For down deep, even the person who felt obliged to order those damn steamed veggies naturally can’t resist helping themselves to plenty of my dinner.
It’s a terribly loony system. If it weren’t, it would be employed in other restaurants. But, as you may have noticed, it’s not. You don’t see people cutting up somebody’s tuna fish sandwich four ways. You don’t see people helping themselves to another person’s lamb chops, and you sure don’t see some shmoe eating half of some other guy’s soup.
I used to think that it was just a cliché that an hour after eating in a Chinese restaurant, you were hungry again. But it’s true. Just the other night, some friends and I dined at the Shanghai Palace, and an hour later, sure enough, I was hungry… for curry shrimp!
