How to agree on the best restaurant? Just make your own
My wife and I like to sample restaurants we haven’t tried before. In Beijing, that usually means Chinese food, which makes sense because she’s Chinese.
Most of the time, I stifle my yearning for a good ol’ American hamburger or a Mexican enchilada or Italian food — or for authentic Brazilian barbecue at a buffet not far from home. (This is less like dinner than a competition of ravenous carnivores in the wilds of Africa. You need bowels of steel to digest all that red meat over the next three or four days.)
Anyway, I usually leave the restaurant decision to my wife, but not before going through the obligatory ritual of proposing places I know she’ll reject. Here’s how it typically goes as we head out the door:
Me: “Where do you want to go?” Wife: “You say.”
Me: “OK, Burger King.” Wife: “No.”
Me: “OK, then The New Yorker in the WeLife building.”
Wife: “No.”
Me: “It’s my decision, right? I say Mexican food.”
Wife: “No.”
Me: “Green Tea restaurant?” (I know she likes it.)
Wife: “No, we went there yesterday.”
Me: “Hotpot?”
Wife: “I’m bored with that.” Me: “Steamed buns?”
Wife: “No. Not for lunch. That’s breakfast.”
Me: “Dumplings?”
Wife: “No.”
Me: “Noodles?”
Wife: “No.”
Me: “You don’t like any of my suggestions, so tell me where you want to go.”
Wife: “You say.”
By now we’re approaching the bus stop near home, and I’m feeling really hungry.
Me: “Shall we ride the bus?” Wife: “OK.”
Me: “But where shall we go on the bus?”
Wife: “You say.”
We wait a long time, and our bus doesn’t show up. All the while, deep down inside I know that I will eventually break down, hail a taxi and take her to a Chinese restaurant whose menu tends toward the pricier side. She loves culinary experimentation and beautiful dishes. It’s a form of shopping, I think. And I want her to be happy.
Me? I just want to eat. And so I tend to stick with the same tried and true dishes I always order. I have a simple calculus: Why gamble when you’re hungry? I don’t want to possess either one of two characteristics when I leave a restaurant, but especially not both together — broke and still hungry.
One day, in an attempt to achieve a modicum of epicurean harmony, we decided to start our own restaurant. It was my wife’s idea. There would be only one table. We agreed on the menu and decided to call the new establishment “Happy Daze”. It would offer free food. (This may not be a great business model, but trust me, customers do flock to the table.)
Every day my wife prepares a lovely formal setting on top of the air conditioning unit just outside our balcony, and greedy birds soon arrive, looking for a cheap meal. She has to stretch almost fulllength to slide a plate of mung beans, rice, chipped corn and other grains to the flat surface. It’s a delight to watch her respond to the customers.
My first job as junior partner in the enterprise was to make a sign on a card and stick it near the food. After all, you can’t expect to get customers without a marketing plan. With my wife’s help, I made the sign bilingual.
We offer only the best ingredients and have sometimes bought delicacies at the supermarket to make the birds extra happy.
As it turns out, however, we could have saved the money. In the cupboard was a container of old mixed grains in which, unfortunately, some little black bugs had made their home. Would our feathered friends be offended if we offered this to them? I added a bilingual sign proclaiming a lunch special, and we quickly got our answer.
When the bug-infested grain was placed outside, eight or 10 sparrows skittered in for a look. They pecked wildly at it. Then two or three large pigeons swooped in like Boeing 737 Maxes making crash landings. The big guys tried to muscle out the little guys, and a sort of flapping, fluttering, chattering bird fight ensued as they all took their shots at the gourmet cuisine. Things got so crazy that they knocked down the bilingual signs. I gasped because our restaurant is not insured.
In the end, we figured it was the black bugs that caused the commotion. Grain was spilled all over the place, but there were no bugs left. The place was picked clean. We should add this dish to the permanent menu, although I probably won’t sample it.
But as for restaurants in Beijing, I’ve never seen my wife happier.