What Do You Drink with Dinner?

[liuzhou]

I wish to formally and contritely apologise for the hideous typos and punctuation in my last post. Too late to edit.

I have fined myself one bottle of Chablis!

[annabelle]

A most excellent fine, Liuzhou.

[alex james]

Methinks that fine of a bottle of Chablis needs to be payable somewhere. Me please.

Just to get back to the topic, this home cook drinks the last of the beer I was drinking when fixing dinner (can't cook without inputting beer.) Otherwise wine but not too often.

[dcarch]

"------My experience (SE Asia then and the USA now) has been that tea was a very common beverage during a meal at Chinese restaurants - i.e. when one ate out - at least with diners of Chinese extraction;----"

Anything to do with Asian Flush?

Asian restaurants which cater to mostly Asian often do not serve alcohol, may be beer only.

dcarch

[liuzhou]

Asian restaurants which cater to mostly Asian often do not serve alcohol, may be beer only.

The millions of restaurants in China do serve alcohol. I've never found one that didn't. Even the Muslim ones do.

Edited September 6, 2013 by liuzhou (log)

[dcarch]

Asian restaurants which cater to mostly Asian often do not serve alcohol, may be beer only.

The millions of restaurants in China do serve alcohol. I've never found one that didn't. Even the Muslim ones do.

Not around here in NYC. Not the ones cater to mainly Chinese. Even the ones which have a small "bar", you will get a blank stare if you ask for a wine list.

dcarch

[liuzhou]

Not around here in NYC.

As always, I qualified everything I said by pointing out that I'm in China and that my remarks merely reflect my experience in China. Others may have had different experiences.

You didn't mention that you meant Asian restaurants catering to Asians in a city in America. I apologise for misunderstanding you..

[BeeZee]

I drink water with dinner. DH drinks seltzer, he likes the bubbles. Wine and beer have their place with certain meals, limited consumption these days.

As a kid, I remember drinking Hi-C fruit flavored beverage, it was probably sugar water...but I can't remember if that was just a drink between meals or if we were allowed to drink it with dinner (it had vitamins, after all). Milk was never in consideration as a dinner beverage, as many Jews even if not keeping a "kosher" household just wouldn't cross that line of milk+meat. When we went out for pizza I was allowed to drink soda (my preferred option was orange).

[Allura]

I drank a lot of apple juice as a child. These days it's water with every meal, coffee (reg) with or after breakfast, and coffee (decaf) or milk with dessert.

My husband also drinks water with meals, and coffee or tea in the morning and occasionally a hard cider with dinner, or a sprite or some sort of sweet cocktail if we're out at a restaurant. He has no taste. He also grew up overseas (India, Morocco, Panama) and said it was difficult to find pastuerized milk, so he didn't grow up drinking it?

We serve our 21-month old water with meals and milk with snacks, because milk is so filling he tends to not eat his meals otherwise.

We simply don't buy soda, and I have to remember to buy it when I'm having company. And chocolate milk is a dessert/snack option, as was a shake when I was a kid...unless you were eating at an ice cream parlor, where you could order a shake instead of ice cream after the meal.

[huiray]

"------My experience (SE Asia then and the USA now) has been that tea was a very common beverage during a meal at Chinese restaurants - i.e. when one ate out - at least with diners of Chinese extraction;----"

Anything to do with Asian Flush?

Interesting question.

Personally speaking, though, in a general sense I tend to think not.

[SylviaLovegren]

Asian restaurants which cater to mostly Asian often do not serve alcohol, may be beer only.

The millions of restaurants in China do serve alcohol. I've never found one that didn't. Even the Muslim ones do.

Not around here in NYC. Not the ones cater to mainly Chinese. Even the ones which have a small "bar", you will get a blank stare if you ask for a wine list.

dcarch

Almost every restaurant in Toronto has a bar, including the smallest Chinese/"ethnic" restaurants, and even the small ones serve beer, wine and even sometimes hard liquor. The entry cost for alcohol must be small here.

That said, growing up in Seattle, Washington, the Chinese restaurants there (which didn't have liquor licenses) served a pot of tea with all meals. I was fascinated to see Chinese families at the dim sum spots have big bottles of soda on their tables instead of the tea that the westerners were drinking. At one dim sum spot, which was BYOB, the Chinese families would have 7-Up and whiskey on the table, while we westerners had the tea. It seemed incredibly exotic to me at my young age to see adults drinking whiskey at a meal (my parents were the milk, iced tea or coffee types).