Must do at a restaurant -make up your mind quickly

Last night we went to a Korean restaurant with some friends. Since our original choice had a line longer than we could handle (not sure what has happened to us, but nowadays we often eat at those places that always have a line) we had to skip to another one, not as good, but still OK. Only though…. Our friends hadn’t really eaten Korean food before, so when it was time to order food they were a bit clueless. All four of us were studying the menu closely, trying to determine what to settle for. Once we looked up 3 waitresses had gathered and started suggesting dishes for us. Only though… they simply threw out dish names. I tried to say that we wanted some more time, but it was useless. Soon the big boss joined the “fun”, yelling out names and pointing at 5 dishes at the same time him too, making us rather stressed and more or less forcing us to make up our minds quickly.

I know that when Chinese groups decide to go for dinner there is only one person (normally the man) who’s responsible for ordering food. This kind of makes the “making up your mind” easier.

Doing it the western way, namely by letting every person chose something s/he likes, isn’t as smooth. And apparently not considered OK at some places either.

In the end our friends got so stressed by the “hitting them with dish suggestions war” that they simply pointed at something.

We ended up with a rather interesting mix, where the most interesting dish must have been a soup that, when it arrived at our table, only consisted of hot, tasteless water and a little bit of thin slices of meat. The came salt, pepper, onion and rice, all for us to add ourselves to the soup (while being cheered on by the boss and his waiters who all stood over us, making sure we did things right). I thought it was rather disgusting, but our friends named this their favourite dish. There you go, I guess making up your mind in a haste has some pros. At least you end up with food you'd never try otherwise.