You aren't supposed to eat it like that!

[coquus]

Ok, ok, soy sauce on rice is bad, but how about butter on rice? I bet all the Asian(Chinese) restaurants around here have to stock butter.

[yunnermeier]

Fun topic! It always 'pisses' me off when people eat SE Asian rice with just a fork(and look at me like I'm a heathen). Fork AND spoon at the same time, all the way!

[Norm357]

Does it really matter how food is eaten? As long as the food and company is good, who cares.

<------ Barbarian.

[Milagai]

Ok, ok, soy sauce on rice is bad, but how about butter on rice?  I bet all the Asian(Chinese) restaurants around here have to stock butter.

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I don't know about butter, but ghee with rice is a good thing

in Indian food....

Kids like plain ghee-rice, grown ups start with rice+ghee then

add the spicy rasams, or dals or whatever.

Ghee or butter on hot rotis is also blissful.....

Milagai

[CKatCook]

Living in the south part of the U.S. most people I know eat butter on their rice, sugar and cinnamon if it's morning. I never saw stranger eating habits than when I lived in New Orleans. I worked with a group of grandmothers native to New Orleans. They ate ketchup on fried chicken, grits every morning with eggs, butter, bacon all stirred in together.

I once date a guy that went to a "finishing school" I was in my very early 20's and was knocked out when I saw him eat nachoes with a fork, definately to be eaten by hand in my book. He showed me the proper way to eat a banana, roll, when you sip water and when you sip wine or other beverage.

All too fussy for me, the only time I break out the real table manners is at a formal thing, or if I know it will really offend someone...

I grilled banana's tonight and my husband thought I had lost my mind.

[SheenaGreena]

Ok Sheena may as well pick your brain

Seafood pancake - how should one eat that

pan chan....dig right in when they put it down?

I don't know if this is polite or not, but I cut the jeon into squares with scissors and then eat them with chopsticks. You can also cut it by using your chopsticks (which is what I do, becuase I don't want to dirty two things). And concerning panchan, its meant to be eaten with rice as small side dishes. You shouldn't pick at it before your rice comes - becuase they usually serve it to you before your rice and main dish arrives. At home, especially if I am really hungry, I will eat little bites of banchan before dinner begins (this is when the rice is on the table). I'm sure a lot of asian countries are like that..it isn't a "real" meal until the rice arrives.

oh, and if you run out of lettuce can you drop meat slices on your rice and spoon it all up...I am guessing No

I don't know the answer to this question, but I don't do this, becaues I don't eat rice when I am grilling meat. If I did have rice though, I would definitely dip the meat in my sauce of choice and then eat it with the rice.

[SheenaGreena]

Ok, ok, soy sauce on rice is bad, but how about butter on rice? I bet all the Asian(Chinese) restaurants around here have to stock butter.

when I was little, I used to eat soysauce with butter on my rice. I tried to recreate that dish a few months ago and I almost vomited

[SheenaGreena]

I remembered another bad thing that I do. When I am eating kare raisu, I like to put the curry on top of the rice (with extra sauce) and then mix it up really well. It's also good with takuan and really old cabbage kimchi. I know that in japan they eat it with some kind of tsukemono, but I have never tried that.

[prasantrin]

Ok, ok, soy sauce on rice is bad, but how about butter on rice?  I bet all the Asian(Chinese) restaurants around here have to stock butter.

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Where's "around here"? Around where I am, I doubt there's a single Asian restaurant (Chinese or otherwise) that has butter for the rice, but I'm in Japan...But I don't even know of a single Chinese restaurant back home (Winnipeg, Canada) that would give you butter for your rice. Butter on jasmine rice would definitely be a sin.

And can we talk about licking your fingers? I had only ever seen Caucasians (not all Caucasians do it, I know, but the only people I'd ever seen lick their fingers had been Caucasian) do that. However, when I was in Yemen, I noticed that my "less sophisticated" driver also licked his fingers when we ate (and made smacking sounds), though my guide didn't. In countries where you eat traditionally eat with your hands, is licking fingers acceptable? Our Afghanistani friends had told us it wasn't acceptable in Afghanistan, but I'm wondering about other countries.

[lcdm]

My daughter loves mayo sandwiches, just mayo & bread nothing else. At first I told her no you need something else on the sandwich - at least a piece of cheese. But than I thought about it, it's not so different than a buttered roll, so I made it for her. Hey maybe she'll out grow it she's only 5

[miladyinsanity]

Ok, ok, soy sauce on rice is bad, but how about butter on rice?  I bet all the Asian(Chinese) restaurants around here have to stock butter.

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Where's "around here"? Around where I am, I doubt there's a single Asian restaurant (Chinese or otherwise) that has butter for the rice, but I'm in Japan...But I don't even know of a single Chinese restaurant back home (Winnipeg, Canada) that would give you butter for your rice. Butter on jasmine rice would definitely be a sin.

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I think most Chinese would tell you it's a sin.

I cannot imagine both together. Actually, I can and it makes me feel a little sick.

[petite tête de chou]

My daughter loves mayo sandwiches, just mayo & bread nothing else. At first I told her no you need something else on the sandwich - at least a piece of cheese. But than I thought about it, it's not so different than a buttered roll, so I made it for her. Hey maybe she'll out grow it she's only 5 

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Don't be so sure. I still enjoy an occasional mustard sandwich and I'm quite a bit older than five.

I eat steak with my fingers about 90% of the time (all home-cooked). Something is terribly appealing about greasy, meat-fingers and a smeared glass of scotch...not to mention the wee bit of danger associated with a sharp knife oh-so-close to my fingers. My husband can't stand to watch me cut, slurp, chew and otherwise cave-man myself over a plate of bloody meat *with my fingers!*

[coquus]

Ok, ok, soy sauce on rice is bad, but how about butter on rice?  I bet all the Asian(Chinese) restaurants around here have to stock butter.

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Where's "around here"? Around where I am, I doubt there's a single Asian restaurant (Chinese or otherwise) that has butter for the rice, but I'm in Japan...But I don't even know of a single Chinese restaurant back home (Winnipeg, Canada) that would give you butter for your rice. Butter on jasmine rice would definitely be a sin.

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I think most Chinese would tell you it's a sin.

I cannot imagine both together. Actually, I can and it makes me feel a little sick.

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I live outside of Buffalo, NY, USA, in a small city/town that has a 4 Chinese Restaurants, or rather 3 and a buffet. They are tolerable maybe once every four months or so, the buffet about once every two years so I hope they do want to vomit when they are forced to serve butter with rice, I mostly want to vomit when I eat what they call Chinese. It makes me sick to think of butter on rice, but I wouldn't stop someone else from putting it on there if it would help them eat the rice when the are out at the Korean BBQ joint for example. Basically, I don't care what anyone does as long as they enjoy themselves. There are two schools of thought that lead me to this decision. One, that whatever makes a person want to try new things can't be bad, and, the other, that the only way we can learn more about our likes and dislikes is by trying new things.

<-----Dionysian Barbarian

However, I still feel a little sick when my wife adds ketchup to her scrambled eggs in the morning. Sorry, ketchup is for french fries, other sauces, and hamburgers only.

[prasantrin]

My daughter loves mayo sandwiches, just mayo & bread nothing else. At first I told her no you need something else on the sandwich - at least a piece of cheese. But than I thought about it, it's not so different than a buttered roll, so I made it for her. Hey maybe she'll out grow it she's only 5 

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Ooooohhh!! Mayonnaise on bread is one of my guilty pleasures. It has to be on toast, though, or on very very soft white bread (think Wonderbread). I'm not sure where I picked it up from (I remember eating them in junior high, so it might have been from a junior high friend), but I do love them.

[chappie]

A few comments:

First, I cannot help but eat the panchan when it arrives at the table (though the places I've been usually bring the rice within a minute or so of the panchan). I also usually finish every last morsel of panchan, and have on occasion requested more of a certain variety.

I usually try to fill lettuce leaves sparely so to be able to eat the package in one or 1.5 bites, but often feel like many Korean restaurants don't bring enough lettuce to the table.

Secondly, I grew up eating Maryland blue crabs with my hands, occasionally smacking claws with a mallet (which I no longer use). But my wife was born and raised on Tilghman Island, in a family of watermen, and she taught me a much better way using a razor-sharp crab knife. (Small paring knife will work).

You remove the top shell, scrape off the lungs, cut off the face and -- holding the body in your palm, make a diagonal cut (takes practice to find the right angle) on each side, from the center outward. The body should open up like an advent calendar or set of salloon doors. The smaller top part can be squeezed, and the lower, intact part now has convenient open channels of meat that can be slipped out whole with a finger. This method quickly removes every morsel from a shell.

[judiu]

I once told a dear friend that a "friend" of hers was a pretentious b*&^%h because at a picnic we were attending, she peeled a shrimp with a knife and fork. Sure enough, a few weeks later the "friend " decided to sue my pal over a totally bulls**t circumstance. Just shows to go ya!  

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When I can, I prefer to use a knife and fork to peel my shrimp because I hate it when my fingers smell like shrimp!! The only problem is that I suck at peeling my shrimp with my knife and fork, so I usually just use my hands. My mother can do it really well, though, but that's because she was taught to do so.

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Yeah, but at an all you can stuff in shrimp boil picnic? Dayum!

[Julian Teoh]

We've probably moved on from the eating <insert food of choice here> with a knife and fork aspect of this thread, but in an interview some years back, Michel Rostang, a two-starred French chef, related a charming story of extremely bad service he encountered at a McDonald's in Paris:

When we received our burgers, my wife asked the man at the counter for a knife and fork. He looked at us as if we were crazy!

[SheenaGreena]

A few comments:

First, I cannot help but eat the panchan when it arrives at the table (though the places I've been usually bring the rice within a minute or so of the panchan). I also usually finish every last morsel of panchan, and have on occasion requested more of a certain variety.

I usually try to fill lettuce leaves sparely so to be able to eat the package in one or 1.5 bites, but often feel like many Korean restaurants don't bring enough lettuce to the table.

Secondly, I grew up eating Maryland blue crabs with my hands, occasionally smacking claws with a mallet (which I no longer use). But my wife was born and raised on Tilghman Island, in a family of watermen, and she taught me a much better way using a razor-sharp crab knife. (Small paring knife will work).

You remove the top shell, scrape off the lungs, cut off the face and -- holding the body in your palm, make a diagonal cut (takes practice to find the right angle) on each side, from the center outward. The body should open up like an advent calendar or set of salloon doors. The smaller top part can be squeezed, and the lower, intact part now has convenient open channels of meat that can be slipped out whole with a finger. This method quickly removes every morsel from a shell.

koreans don't serve enough lettuce at the table, you are right. They also don't serve enough meat, but that is a different thread altogether. That's why I only eat korean bbq at my parents house and never at a restaurant. You probably save like $20 and get WAY more food. It also helps that my parents have a garden outside of: green onion, lettuce, young garlic, and lots and lots of ggaenip (size of my face)

Your crab method sounds very very interesting. I will have to give this a go when I go home in a month. I don't know if you remember this, but I told you once that I like to smear the crab "mustard" on a slice of sourdough bread. Most people throw that stuff away but I really treasure and savour it

[jumanggy]

Here in the Philippines, I would describe eating methods in most restaurants as a free-for-all; as long as you're not scooping up rice with your hands, it's okay (although eating with one's hands is standard in many households, especially in the provinces). Nobody corrects anyone, although I have been criticized for shelling shrimp with a fork and spoon (I'm kind of allergic, and though I've developed tolerance for eating shrimp, it will show up annoyingly on my hands if I touch it).

I almost passed out when a family friend chopped up his pasta to an equivalent of Chef Boyardee. My mom hushed me (she KNEW I was going to say something!) because he paid for the meal and he could do whatever he wanted. Oh, woe is he who is correct, but "haughty!"

I think it never hurts to ask "how should I eat this?" with a smile. After all, no one is born with perfect (not to mention universally acceptable) manners.

[MissAmy]

I totally will put soy sauce on my rice if I think I can get away with it. At home, always. Fried rice always gets extra soy sauce. Oh well, sue me. I won't do it around most Chinese people, though, because I can't take the condemnation!

Crab eating is a free-for-all in my book. Whatever works to get the meat out is fine.

[coquus]

I think it never hurts to ask "how should I eat this?" with a smile. After all, no one is born with perfect (not to mention universally acceptable) manners.

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That is so true jumanggy.

At Asian restaurants here in the states, I almost always order the menu item by name instead of by number. They spell it out phonetically for you, and you're apt to be corrected if you pronounce it wrong anyhow, and there is always room to learn. All my non ethnic relatives and friends can be counted on to order entrees by the number, even if it's something already in English like Steamed Vegetables or Singapore Mei Fun.

[chappie]

Your crab method sounds very very interesting.  I will have to give this a go when I go home in a month.  I don't know if you remember this, but I told you once that I like to smear the crab "mustard" on a slice of sourdough bread.  Most people throw that stuff away but I really treasure and savour it

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Yeah, I love the mustard, too. Haven't had a big batch of crabs yet this spring, but am both anticipating it, as well as dreading the cruddy way they make me feel nowadays after I eat a bunch. Usually can shred through 10 or so at least.

[Endy']

It sounds like you are putting the "right" stuff in your lettuce wrap, you should just use a smaller piece.  My white father always uses one or two pieces of huge lettuce and manages to fit the whole thing in his mouth, but yeah I usually just tear the lettuce in half or remove the rib.

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so I did give this a try over the weekend. It took me a few leaves to get the hang of it (I dropped all kinds of stuff out the side of the first wrap), but it worked and was a lot more manageable than having to take bites out of a whole-leaf wrap. Plus somehow the ratio of lettuce to meat was better too. Thanks for starting this thread!

of course, then I managed to shock a Korean guy by sipping at (instead of downing) my soju, and also by holding my glass with 2 hands as he was pouring (hey, he was older, so I figured...). Can't win.

[judiu]

koreans don't serve enough lettuce at the table, you are right. They also don't serve enough meat, but that is a different thread altogether. That's why I only eat korean bbq at my parents house and never at a restaurant. You probably save like $20 and get WAY more food. It also helps that my parents have a garden outside of: green onion, lettuce, young garlic, and lots and lots of ggaenip (size of my face)

I'll give; what's ggaenip? And is the size of your face measured with or without the finger? (Ducks and runs very far away!)

Edited because my fat fingers f**k up regularly!

Edited May 23, 2007 by judiu (log)

[SheenaGreena]

It sounds like you are putting the "right" stuff in your lettuce wrap, you should just use a smaller piece.  My white father always uses one or two pieces of huge lettuce and manages to fit the whole thing in his mouth, but yeah I usually just tear the lettuce in half or remove the rib.

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so I did give this a try over the weekend. It took me a few leaves to get the hang of it (I dropped all kinds of stuff out the side of the first wrap), but it worked and was a lot more manageable than having to take bites out of a whole-leaf wrap. Plus somehow the ratio of lettuce to meat was better too. Thanks for starting this thread!

of course, then I managed to shock a Korean guy by sipping at (instead of downing) my soju, and also by holding my glass with 2 hands as he was pouring (hey, he was older, so I figured...). Can't win.

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if he's older, you're supposed to grab the glass with your right hand and grab your right wrist with your left hand. Then you turn to the side to down the shot. Since he is older, you should always pour for him as well...never let him pour himself a drink.

I don't follow these rules in front of my mother when I drink soju or baekseju, but if I'm in front of her friends or in korea you better believe I will follow these rules. The last thing I need is for my grandfather to smack me upside the head for being rude.