I am a foodie and I was lucky to met a friend who wants to eat outside with me.It's interesting to eat in different kinds of restaurants and experience different greetings,so I wondered how people greeting with each other in a restaurant. There are moments that we need to eat outside for entertain or relax,and we want to enjoy the leisure time with our friends,so we go to a restaurant to eat.we enter the restaurant, the waiter greet us with"how's your day"or "how can I help you"to start the conversation ,they usually smiling and give us an eye contact,nodding their head to show respect.We appreciate the waiter's body language and the neat cloth and clean hand ,we decide to eat here and the food taste good ,after we finished eating,we will give some tip for the service.
That's the situation we will face ,however, things will change through the size and location the restaurant is.The difficulty is that we talk about restaurant but we have variety of situations,we need to find the common phrases.However, we enjoy share different greeting ways in our own country.
In China ,we usually use two kinds of phrases"Have you ordered yet"and "How many people do you have",I guess maybe we have a large amount of population and the restaurant usually very busy,they need to make full use of the space to make big money.In Guangdong, besides this two greetings,they will ask"which kind of tea do you prefer",Cantonese love drinking tea while eating,and the first cup of tea is for you to wash the dishes and chopsticks you will use later,and the younger generation or host will do it for the elder or guests. The first tea usually called wash the tea to get rid of dirty and then you enjoy the second ones. Considering this situation ,we usually need to pay the tea fee in our bills,usually one dollar per person.In Japan,Rina said they usually ask"Do you smoke or not" because they have smoking room for people who smoke,It's very different from China,because in China, it's impolite to smoke among people, we usually have areas for smoking but not on the table.
During this research, we find that every little thing can have a big meaning if you are eager to find the deep significant of it.
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Aloha,
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read your post. Especially, it was very weird to me, Korean do not pay for tea, on the other hand, Chinese like to drink tea, they pay for tea. Also, I saw many Chinese to smoke in the street in Korea, so I thought Chinese's smoking manner was not good. Anyway, your observations were really interesting.
I'm astonished that Cantonese tea custom. I've never thought that we wash our dishes and chopsticks by tea on the table. I think food culture is wonderfully different depending on communities, so it is one of the most fun event to eat local food.
ReplyDeleteAnd as you wrote, in restaurants in Japan we often choose a smoking table or non-smoking table. Usually space of the restaurant is separated into the two parts. But I think this custom comes into fashion more recently. When I was small child, It wan not so common, I remember. These days, smoking is curbed more and more strictly. I'm sure that's why restaurants in Japan started to prepare smoking tables and non-smoking tables.
I love your last sentence, how all these little things you are talking about might seem similar at first sight, if we don't pay attention to it or think about them more deeply. It might seem as going to a restaurant is the same all around the world, but even in the same city (like Honolulu) it greatly depends on the type of restaurant. When I go to a fancy restaurant (for a birthday or anniversary) I find myself not knowing how to behave. Also, when I go to "authentic" Japanese restaurants in Hawaii, everything from how they greet you to how to order is very different, and I'm in the same city still!
ReplyDeleteI think the Cantonese tea custom is great! In the US you always get a glass of water for free, in Spain you don't get anything unless you order or ask for it, and in the Japanese places I've been here you can order hot tea (and water or instead of water) for free! I did not know until I saw other customers doing that... Anyway, I am a foodie too, so learning about everything surrounding the experience of eating different foods at different places is always exciting to me :)