Eshin Direct

This post about bigotry in dim sum restaurants by BWG reminded me of an incident I had just last week.

I was out with three friends of mine at this dim sum place in Causeway Bay. My two friends and I are foreigners while the one gal was Chinese. We had ordered a few dim sum that come in steamer containers. The kitchen shuttle brings the food out on a tray, and another waitress puts the steamers on the table, unstacking them and making sure all the dim sum are available.

Well, waitress #2 decided not to unstack them and just dumped them on our table stacked. Oh, my Chinese friend went ballastic. She called the waitress back and evidently, the waitress knew what she had done wrong and without my friend asking, started to unstack the steamers.

My friend said something like “Just because I’m with three foreigners doesn’t mean she doesn’t need to do her job”.

On the whole I’d agree. Especially in Asia. There are a lot of jobs (particularly the restaurant field) where you wonder why they have a dedicated person doing that particular function. Hers was to help the kitchen shuttles to unload the dim sum and present it nicely to the clientele.

By the same token though, I can understand the confusion. Coming from a Northern European background, we like our food hot and to stay hot until we can eat it. Displaying five stacks of steamers open on the table will obviously result in having to eat very quickly or five cold dishes. I’ve noticed when I’ve had dim sum in the UK that Westerners are more likely to keep them stacked up. Keeps ‘em warm.

But the waitress was quite surly so there was no doubt really that she was underperforming.