Sharing the love

I like to think of myself an an independent woman, well educated and enquiring, with a well-informed opinion on most subjects (sport and cars excepted) and especially food, so why do I delight in handing over my decision-making capability when dining out?

On a night out earlier this week in Beijing, where I was attending TABEE 2010 (a Tourism Australia iniaitive to sell Australia as a business events location for Asian corporations), I accompanied a group of Tourism Australia staffers and international media to Da Zhai Men, a local restaurant famous for its Beijing Duck and also for being a faithful recreation of the set of one of China's best loved (cheesiest?) TV soap operas.

As we were entertained by sword-wielding acrobats, warbling Chinese opera singers and a dapper-looking xylophone player, I mildly looked on as one of the company, who had admittely been to the restaurant before, ordered for all of us. The food journalist in me should have been champing at the bit to pore over the menu but no, I was just happy to go with the (hopefully delicious) flow as dishes including Chinese cabbage in mustard; fresh, marinated bamboo shoots; fried bean curd with chilli; alarmingly vivid purple Chinese potatoes; a pyramid of tofu salad resembling tabouli; scallops cooked in ginger and soy, and served on the half shell; whole steamed fish; crisp, sweet-savoury red bean pancakes; a soy bean, noodle salad; and crispy-skinned duck arrived in wave after aromatic wave.

Some of the dishes, such as the scallops and the duck, I would have probably ordered anyway but others I most definitely wouldn't, yet I was delighted to try them. Highlights for me were the fried bean curd, an unappealing-looking bowl of grey-brown sludge topped with whole fried chillies that tasted sublime, had a babaganoush-like texture and a complex flavour profile which had our table speculating as to the ingredients; finger-sized garlic eggplant; and of course the duck, sliced into wafer thin slivers of moist, rich meat and crisp, flavoursome skin and served not only with cucumber, shallots and hoisin sauce, but also sugar which cut through the fattiness of the skin and lifted the flavour to another dimension.

Asian food lends itself to this kind of dining, thanks to its shared nature. I would be less inclined to put my tastebuds in someone else's hands if there wasn't going to be a range of dishes for me to try. Even if I hate one of them, chances are there will be several others that I love.

Call it inquisitiveness or perhaps greediness but I love any kind of dining that allows me to try lots of different dishes, taste and textures - tapas, mezze, yum cha  etc... The recent trend toward "small plate" dining, in evidence in restaurants such as Christine Mansfield's Univeral restaurant in Sydney and the recent Gordon Ramsay offering Maze in the Crown complex in Melbourne, get my whole-hearted support.

I also take every opportunity available to indulge in degustation-style dining, transferring the decision of what I shall eat to the chef responsible for sourcing, preparing and cooking the food. Who better to know what stands out on a menu?