Family Style Dining

Ah yes, family style dining. Typically seen in Chinese and Italian restaurants, this method of dining out causes me and many others extraordinary amounts of grief and agony. You see, the point of going out to a restaurant is twofold, the first being to enjoy an evening with friends or family, but the second, and I think most important aspect of the restaurant experience, is everyone ordering and consuming EXACTLY the food that they want to eat. No compromising, it's your decision and yours alone as to what you dine on, and with family style dining that aspect of the dining out experience is completely destroyed.



As you can see in that image above, the son on the left is being forced to eat vegetables against his will, the mother has a look comprised mostly of scorn and disdain because she did not want to order the fried chicken, and the daughter is looking longingly at the mashed potatoes because that is the only thing on the table that she likes to eat.

Let me offer up this typical scenario. Six people go out to an Italian restaurant to eat, and immediately everyone starts combing through the menu deciding what tickles their fancy at that given moment. Some people immediately reach a conclusion as to what they desire to eat, while others agonize over their impossible decision. It is this latter person who will always suggest the family style dining route. What always ends up happening is this, there will be one main decision maker, let's call him the leader. The leader decides what would be best for the table, how many main dishes to order, the appropriate sides to accompany said main dishes, and then he or she will usually offer up some completely off base opinion as to what these items should be. Three or four of the others at the table are the weaklings, the ones without backbone, who will simply follow the leaders wishes because they either don't want to or simply cannot rock the boat. So we are left with the one lone person, the dissenter, who doesn't agree with the leader and has no desire to dine in a family style manner.

The leader has two options here, either to acquiesce to the dissenter, let him or her order their own meal, while everyone else shares the preselected dishes. Usually this person is on the receiving end of dirty looks for the entire meal. The other option the leader has, which is the route they usually take, is to suggest that, fine, we will also order the dissenter's choice dish in addition to the preselected dishes, and the dissenter will be forced to share. This puts the dissenter on the defensive, in an unwinnable situation. You cannot say no to the leader's offer to add your dish to the rest, it would simply make you look like an ass, but what inevitably happens is that the special gnocchi that you ordered gets devoured by the rest of the table, leaving you with a small pittance of the amount you originally desired, forcing you to partake in the other, less satisfying dishes. I always find myself in the position of the dissenter, being both a picky eater and someone who does not like to share. The other dilemma you face as a dissenter is this: do you simply take more than your fair share of the dishes you actually want to eat, leaving not enough for the rest while simply ignoring the dish you don't like? Then you run the risk of being the "hog" at the table, the one who takes advantage of the family style dining scenario by eating twice as much food as anyone else. In the end, you don't get the food you want and leave hungry, or you do get the food you want, and have earned the scorn and disrespect of those dining with you. Either way, you lose, and that is why family style dining is well deserving of unbridled hatred.