As the saying goes, “Food is the heaven for the people”, which shows that Chinese food is one of the most widely known and important parts of Chinese culture. There are texts about Chinese food in almost every textbook of Chinese as a foreign language. However, foreigners still dare not go to the restaurant alone. One is that the Chinese characters of many Europeans and Americans are not very good; the other is that even if they know Chinese characters, they often fail to understand the names of dishes. Today, Let’s talk about how foreigners order food.
Get to know Chinese food
Generally, the name of Chinese cuisine is composed of two parts: ingredients and methods. For example, braised pork, sweet and sour fish, fried broccoli, scrambled eggs with tomatoes and so on. It can be said that most of the dish names are composed of this combination. Therefore, foreigners should remember part of the names of ingredients and cooking methods when ordering food. For example, chicken, duck, tomatoes, cucumbers, fried, steamed, boiled and so on. In this case, you can understand most of the dish names.
Points to note when ordering
① There is no fish in the “Yuxiang” series of dishes such as “Yuxiang Pork” and “Yuxiang Eggplant”! This is a dish made using a Sichuan method of making fish, and it has nothing to do with fish.
②Some dishes have only the name of the ingredient, such as Di Sanxian, Fungus Cucumber and so on. At this time, you can ask the waiter whether the dishes are cold or hot, and how to prepare them.
③The names of some dishes are so abstract that the Chinese cannot understand them. For example, “Buddha jumps over the wall”, “Ant climbs the tree”, etc. At this time, you also need to ask the waiter what kind of dish is this, what is the taste, and so on.
④ When ordering, the order of meat dish, vegetable dish, cold dish, soup, and staple food is generally.
⑤Finally, the waiter in the restaurant usually asks after the customer orders, “Do you have any taboos?” (” taboos” mean things and tastes that you don’t like or can’t eat)
