Soup and oranges

A longer post than usual, but since it involves both parties of jelssie AND food, I decided it was okay.

When you have dinner in a Chinese restaurant, especially Cantonese ones, it's customary for you to be served complimentary soup before your main meal and some kind of complimentary dessert (e.g. sliced fruit, red bean dessert soup, biscuits) afterwards. Some places don't have it, so the trick is to work out which places do and which places don't. General rule of thumb: if they do yum cha during the day, they should do soup at night OR if they're trying to be a "proper" Chinese (Cantonese) restaurant, they should do soup as well.

Tonight, Jess and I decided to go to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. I wasn't sure how good the restaurant was: the decor was very understated and there were no tablecloths, but all the customers were Asian, which we took as a good sign.

We were seated and it felt like we were in a country Chinese restaurant, except reversed, in that Jess was the only Caucasian person in it (whereas if we really were in the country, I'd be the only Chinese face in a sea of Caucasian faces).

They played Chinese restaurant music - you know, covers of famous Chinese songs without any vocals. I even saw one of the staff bring a whole uncooked fish for a diner to inspect before it was cooked. I should have taken these to be signs of a "proper" restaurant, but at the time, I did not. The decor threw me off.

We ummed and ahhed over the menu and finally settled on two dishes. Jess, naturally, ordered in English, and I decided to order in English as well (I kinda have this small fear of ordering in Chinese, that I won't understand what they'll say).

Now, I did not expect this place to be a free-soup-at-dinner kind of place, so my brain was not alerted to expect it. In truth, I usually forget about the free soup until it arrives.

However my powers of observation led me to realise that everyone else around me was drinking soup! Pre-dinner soup! At first I thought, "Oh, maybe it's because this isn't a proper restaurant and they ordered it. Or maybe because everyone else ordered a lot of dishes and we've only ordered two".

But I saw two young men with soup and only two dishes! And a lone diner with his soup! Then I realised we had been jipped of our soup!

I explained the soup and dessert custom to Jess and asked her to look at tables behind me and spy whether they too had pre-dinner soup. We debated over whether I should ask for soup or not. Jess didn't really care, but I did! It was the principle of the matter!

It's possible they forgot to bring us our pre-dinner soup. It's also possible they thought we wouldn't know about the pre-dinner soup custom given Jess isn't Chinese and I spoke to them in an Aussie accent, so they held it back.

So when our food arrived, I asked the waiter with a smile and very sweetly, "Can we have some soup please?". I thought he looked a bit sheepish, but the soup arrived and Jess declared it yum. So very well worth asking.

Our two pieces of orange arrived after our meal as well.

Moral of the story: order in Chinese whenever you can, and see if everyone else around you is having pre-dinner soup. If they are, so should you :)