ChristinaM
(Hungry in Asheville, NC (still plenty to offer tourists post Hurricane))
41
I’m in the minority probably, but I don’t like take-out. If I’m going to be paying restaurant prices and tipping 15-20%, I want the table service, hot food, and cleanup. I hate lukewarm/soggy food, carry-out container waste (although I do reuse), and wiping table, counters, etc after takeout. Pamper me, please .
I should have made the post about your typical order, dine in and /or take-out.
I can’t dine indoors these days, so my dine-in meals are on patios from May-Sept, and take-out year-round. That’s why you might see me post so much about take-out.
I re-plate upscale take-out.
One upscale take-out meal included ceramic dinner plates, and they let us keep them. Only happened once
Eggplant parm, lasagna, sausage and peppers, suppli and a beet salad from an Italian hot table ( much of it as a care package for someone who broke her ankle )
Usually Chinese, from one of two restaurants. From one we get a homemade noodle soup and something like pork with eggplant or fish fillets with spicy bean sauce; from the other, West Lake Beef Soup, Three Pepper Chicken, and something like Cumin Lamb. Today, though, we did Korean takeout with Dolsot Bulgogi Bibimbap and Soon Dubu Jigae.
In PA with Mom, there’s ONE restaurant we get takeout from, a Chinese place in a very nearby strip mall. Order is always exactly the same, because they’re pretty terrible at everything except this:
Moo shu pork, 2 extra pancakes
And for me, on the side: one order sauteed “Chinese vegetables” with garlic
Large container hot and sour soup, which I eat for another day or two
In NYC, my takeout is usually sushi, and a couple times a year I’ll order a Thai curry and mango salad for delivery. For a long time there was a Middle Eastern place 2 blocks from me and I got the same takeout order once a week for years: the soup of the day (always a meat + veg soup, unspeakably delicious) and a mezze platter.
Back in the days of 5 days-a-week in a midtown office, lunches “out” were exceedingly common (and tbh became crushingly annoying and boring after so many years.)
We almost never get take out but if we do, it is from a local Vietnamese place. I always get the vegetarian pho, son gets regular pho, spouse likes the banh mi. Boring.
My Indian take-out order tonight from Manna Cuisine, a take-out only restaurant in suburban London, Ontario which will set us up with leftovers:
mango lassis, samosas, dal tadka, sag aloo, eggplant aloo, lamb korma, chicken biryani, Keralan paratha, rice, and roti.