Friday, March 25, 2011

Are Small Plates Scary?

a friend of my mom's took her out to lunch today. they went to a build-your-own-burger place, one of those trendy joints that seem to be popping up everywhere, where you're hard pressed to find a burger for under $10. i actually really like burgers, but I'm all about meat, not add-ons, so this kind of place is wasted on me. the concept was apparently a big miss with my mom, as well. 

"There were six steps," my mom said. "Each step had so many choices, and whenever you added something to your burger, the price went up a couple dollars."

faced with this overwhelming arrangement, what did my mom do?

she ordered sweet potato fries and a chocolate-raspberry shake. a magnificent lunch, if i may say so myself.

when i relayed this story to my roommate, his response was: "Well, Americans don't understand dim sum."

first of all, i took issue with his use of the word "Americans". i think he meant "white people." so i'm going to take the liberty of replacing his "Americans" with "white people". 

"What's so strange about dim sum?" i asked. "It's tapas; it's small plates."

"Yeah, but the concept of making a meal out of small plates is confusing to [white people]," he said. "We don't understand how you can have a meal without a main dish."

i disagree. i think dim sum is scary to white people because they're not familiar with the dishes and there's no written description of what everything is. it has nothing to do with the size of the plates.

what do you think?

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