[quote=“brucesw, post:19, topic:2122”]
I asked him about cart service vs. ordering off a list and he was very emphatic that he prefers ordering off a list. He repeatedly stressed that ‘Chinese people like food hot,’ really stressing hot over and over. Food that is not hot is not that good, he said. At a restaurant with carts, food may come out of the kitchen and it could be 15 minutes before it gets to your table. At a restaurant where you order off a list, food should come directly out of the kitchen to your table and that will be better. The implication was that non-Chinese people don’t value hot food as much.[/quote]
Yes this can be sometimes a problem with carts that the steamed food cool down a little. There are four ways around it.
- If the dining hall is big, get a table near the kitchen entrance where the carts come out.
- Walk straight up to the carts that just come out of the kitchen with your ticket and get your steamers instead of letting them come to you.
- Instruct the cart person to get you the steamers stacked in the middle vs the top (where it loses heat quicker)
- Or, if the steamers they set on your table barely has steam coming out, just tell them to take them back.
There is no fun eating steamed dim sum that aren’t steaming (and off-topic, any type of noodle soup). Fried and baked stuff can arrive warm for me. Btw, all of these are culturally acceptable (and normal) so it is not being pushy.
I personally think that the temperature differences between getting orders from servers versus carts aren’t that big, especially if you don’t have a table in the hinterlands. It takes the server time to drop the steamers off from table to table so food can cool down as well.
There aren’t too many of those in HK that still use carts really.
