1. Worktable fastening
No matter how many dishes are eaten in Chinese food, every guest eats them with a pair of chopsticks. Western food, on the other hand, pays attention to eating a dish for a pair of tableware, and then removing the used one for a new one. If it is a formal banquet, such as a wedding banquet, how many dishes are there at each table? What kind of dishes are they? Everything is prepared in advance, so when you sit down, all the tableware needed for the whole table has been set, and there are many tables. Usually we go to restaurants, we don't need so many, and tables are usually prepared according to three or four courses.
Using knives and forks, left-handed forks and right-handed knives naturally follows this law. If there are more than two sets of knives and forks, use them from outside to inside. Generally, the set outside is relatively small, which is used to make salads or appetizers, while the set inside is relatively large, which is used as a main dish. Because the restaurant doesn't know what the guests will order in advance, the knife and fork for the main course is the most commonly used style. If the guest orders thick meat dishes such as steak and lamb chops, the waiter will take the original knife off the table and replace it with a bigger steak knife. If a guest orders spaghetti, especially long spaghetti, the waiter will bring another spoon, let the guest fork the spoon, roll the noodles into a ball and put them in his mouth. If there is a larger spoon outside the two knives on the right hand side, it is used to drink soup. There are also restaurants that don't put spoons in advance and wait for the guests to order soup before the waiter sends it up.
The napkin is in front of the seat where the plate is placed. After sitting down, open the napkin and spread it on your lap. If you have a plate, you can also press a corner of the napkin under the plate. According to traditional etiquette, napkins can naturally be wrapped around the chest, but few people do this now. In formal occasions, or in high-end restaurants, a large flat plate has been placed in front of the seat. This is a posed charging board. When serving, the dishes are served directly in this tray. If there is a tray, roll the napkin into a tube or fold it into a pattern and put it in the tray. A small spoon and a small fork are sometimes placed horizontally in front of the tray. This is dessert. From sitting to eating dessert, the tray is always placed in front of the seat. After everyone has finished eating, before dessert is served, all the utensils on the table, including trays, are taken away, leaving only forks and spoons lying horizontally in front.
The cup is also placed on the table in advance, on the right hand side, above the knife. The most common is two cups, one high and one short. Tall and thin people are used to drink white wine, and short and fat people are used to drink red wine. If there is a water cup, it will be placed between the knife and the glass. Although all the information shows that the cup should be placed on the right hand side, I have also seen the arrangement of cups and cups on both sides of the seat at the banquet-the cup is on the left hand side and the cup is on the right hand side. In a restaurant, after the guests are seated, the waiter will ask the guests what kind of drinks they need, and then rearrange the cups on the table according to the drinks they ordered. If you don't order wine, the waiter will take off the glass and leave only the glass, or take off the white glass and leave the red glass with water. There may also be a porcelain cup with a tray on the table in advance to drink coffee after dessert.
On the left hand side of the seat, outside the fork, there is usually a small plate with a short knife in it. The tip of the knife is circular or triangular. This plate is used to eat bread before meals. This knife is a butter knife. The flat design makes it easy to spread butter evenly on bread.
Order drinks
The waiter who leads the guests to the table will leave quietly after putting the menu in place, and the waiter in charge of this table will appear in due course. After introducing yourself and telling the guests your name, the waiter will ask, "Can I get you something to drink first?" May I serve you some drinks first? In high-end restaurants, the wine list is often thicker than the menu, and it is mainly wine. Some wines can be sold by the glass, and most of them can only be sold by the bottle. If you don't have much demand and research on wine like me, you can look at the homemade wine in the restaurant. Most regular restaurants have two or three kinds of homemade wine, red and white. The price is low among all the wines in this store, and the taste is generally not wrong. Homemade wine can be sold by the glass.
If the original wine is ordered, according to the rules, the waiter will show it to the guests at the tip and then ask for permission before opening the bottle. Another step is to taste a newly opened bottle of wine, just like buying a watermelon. Whether you understand it or not, you always have to pat it. The waiter will ask who has tasted the wine in the seat, pour a little of that person's glass, and then pour the wine for each guest after tasting it. Theoretically, guests can return the goods if they are not satisfied with the taste, but I have never seen anyone do so. The wine is served at the most suitable temperature in advance, and there is no ice in the cup by default. If necessary, ask the waiter to put some ice cubes in the cup and add them as needed.
Of course, you can also order beer. Just like in a bar, you can ask the waiter, "What's available?" Which draft beer? Dinner is mostly accompanied by wine, and there are not many kinds of beer. There are two or three kinds of draft beer at most. Traditionally, martinis and cocktails are drunk with a snack and a chat before meals, and they don't need to be accompanied by meals, but now people often order martinis from beginning to end.
If you don't want to drink, all soft drinks may not be on the wine list. Ask the waiter directly what soft drinks or non-alcoholic drinks he has. If you don't want anything, or you haven't thought about it for a while, you can tell the waiter "just water for the time being". Water is generally ordinary ice water. If you want to drink hot water, you need to tell the waiter specifically. Cold water and hot water are free, while soda water and bottled water are charged.
3. Menu structure
The most common dinner is three courses: soup or salad, main course and dessert. The time when the waiter arranges drinks is just used to study the menu. Many restaurants list desserts on a single menu, and then serve them after dinner, so the first two dishes are what they want to see most at this time.
Although there is no appetizer in the most popular configuration, this column is on the menu of the restaurant. This kind of food is usually small in weight, and its taste is mostly suitable for drinking, whether it is fried, roasted or salted. In addition to the normal appetizers, some restaurants also have some shareable plates, which are very large and suitable for people to eat and drink while ordering. There are also friends who eat a small amount of food and eat an appetizer directly.
Next to the appetizers on the menu are soup and salad. Most restaurants don't prepare too many different varieties of these two categories, so many menus combine these two categories and even put appetizers, soups and salads in one column. If two or three people order appetizers, then I don't recommend ordering soup or salad before the main course, which is probably impossible. It is also best not to order soup and salad at the same time, just choose one. Western-style soups are mostly thick. Soups named after cream, such as broccoli cream and mushroom cream, or French onion soup covered with cakes, or seafood chowder, add a lot of butter and cheese to the soup, and then add potatoes and vegetables. In contrast, salads are much more refreshing. How to choose between the two, one is to look at your own preferences, and the other important factor is to pat your stomach to see if you can eat.
"Main course" is just a general term, and there are several subdivisions. If it takes many hours and more than a dozen dishes, the order of meat dishes last time is from light to thick, first fish, then white meat, and finally red meat. Therefore, these categories are usually listed separately on the menu, and you can choose one of them as the main dish when ordering. Pasta (spaghetti) and pizza (pizza) may also be listed in a separate column in Italian-style restaurants. Pizza is rarely seen in non-Italian restaurants, but it is not new for spaghetti to be listed on the menu as part of the main course.
When ordering, we usually tell the waiter the appetizer and the main course together. If you order an appetizer, the waiter will sometimes confirm whether the appetizer is served first or with other dishes.
As for desserts, most of them are after the main course is finished, and the waiter comes to ask if they are needed. My experience is that if you want to eat dessert, you must be careful when ordering the main course, and don't order dishes that are too full, otherwise you may not be able to eat dessert. There will also be several drinks on the dessert menu, which are specially designed for dessert. If it is wine, it is usually wine with heavy sugar and sweet taste, such as ice wine, which belongs to sweet wine. Sparkling wines such as champagne are often used with desserts. Personally speaking, most desserts in North America are very sweet compared with those in Europe and Asia, and I can't accept sweet wine. On the contrary, a cup of coffee will be more comfortable. So when ordering dessert, the waiter will also ask if you need coffee or tea. Coffee after meals can be regular coffee or espresso. Cappuccino Italians don't drink it after meals, and restaurants in North America usually write it on dessert lists, but lattes are rare.
4. The order of eating
You can eat it soon after ordering. Of course, the service is not so fast, and we are eating bread at this time. The waiter takes the menu to the kitchen, and then he brings a basket of bread, usually hot bread with oven temperature. Along with the bread, there is a dish of butter that is softened by heating. At this time, the small plates and butter knives on the table came in handy. Although bread is free, every restaurant will have its own characteristics, and sometimes it will be so delicious that people can't stop. If you don't have enough bread, you can ask again, just to leave room for the next dinner.
Eat bread and appetizers will be served. Eat side dishes, eat bread and drink. The more upscale the restaurant, the longer the process. If you are going to eat instead of drinking and chatting, you might as well tell the waiter to serve quickly when ordering. If you order soup, many people like to leave some in the bowl when the soup is almost finished, break the bread into small pieces and dip it in the soup. This is the established way of eating, no matter how high-end restaurants, this "washing dishes" action will not be regarded as rude.
At Chinese banquets, the chef will grasp the serving time of each dish according to certain rules. Because it's a meal around, it's not a problem to have each dish a little earlier and a little later. The way to eat western-style dinner is to remove one dish after eating it, and keep the pace of each guest at the same table roughly the same. The waiter will communicate with the kitchen at any time, and when each guest finishes eating a dish, remove the plate together, and then take the next dish.
After the main course is served, the waiter will bring a log tube more than a foot long and ask the guests if they need freshly ground peppers. It turns out that this wooden bucket is a small grinding tool, which is filled with the original black pepper, and it needs to be ground as much as possible. If you order spaghetti, the waiter will bring you a bowl of grated cheese and sprinkle some on it if necessary.
5. Fixed collocation menu
We in China are used to eating several dishes per meal, but in western food, everyone only orders one main course, which often makes us feel unsatisfied. Especially those high-end restaurants that rarely visit once, the menu often makes people hesitate, and they want to taste this and that, but they can't finish eating. In order to meet this demand, some restaurants will introduce several pre-matched menus, each set contains more styles but the weight is slightly less than normal, and the price is cheaper than a single order.
This fixed menu is called fixed price menu. This is a French word which means fixed price. Common prix fixe menus can be divided into one-person menus and two-person menus. One-person menus consist of two or three dishes, while two-person menus consist of three or four dishes, one or two of which are shared by two people.
A typical one-person prix fixe menu is basically an appetizer+main course+dessert structure. For each dish, there are several different choices on the menu, and guests can choose the same one. Anyway, the price of this set is fixed. Because appetizers can include appetizers (appetizers), soups (soups) and salads (salads), it can also include wine snacks, such as cheese plates (cheese platters), and the choices provided on the menu are often the same for each of these categories. Today's soup is a common expression in soup dishes. When ordering, you can ask what the soup is today. The main courses are usually red meat, white meat, fish and vegetarian dishes. If this prix fixe menu is lunch, the price is usually lower than that of dinner, and the dishes will be reduced by one grade accordingly. For example, the red meat at lunch is pork chops, and the dinner is steak. For a set meal for two people, everyone's main course must be the same, and appetizers and desserts can be shared by two people.
Some large-scale wineries often have restaurants, which are usually of high grade. Dining in the winery has a special name, because it is far from the city center, half luxurious and half integrated into the unique natural environment, so it has a unique flavor. Of course, the prix fixe menu in the winery restaurant is inseparable from wine. Although the price does not include wine, the menu will definitely give suggestions on wine matching, and the suggestions are definitely produced by this winery.
More satisfying than the prix fixe menu is the tasting menu introduced by some high-end restaurants. From appetizer, soup, salad, main course to dessert, five-course tasting menus are very common, and I have even seen seven-course tasting menus. Interestingly, this tasting menu often has a routine for chefs to choose dishes that day, and guests are not allowed to choose. Only chefs match them according to the best ingredients of the day, which is a bit like the practice of some luxury dishes in China.