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Not sure how embarrassing this one will be but my most memorable "poor choice" moment was when I went for sushi with a friend from my office and his father - I have, and still do, love scallops - cooked. I ordered one as sushi. The taste was mild enough - almost tasteless - but the thing kept expanding as I chewed - like trying to swallow a growing marshmallow. I managed to get it down but not without having to suppress gagging and tears coming to my eyes. I still enjoy sushi - but no more scallops as such, ever again.

I was on a date in a sushi restaurant, and it was my first time ordering sushi. (I'd eaten it before but never ordered and had to manage the menu.) I wasn't sure how many pieces of sushi were in each roll, but I cast my mind back over some extremely fragmented memories and decided there were three pieces to each roll. I ordered three rolls and a salad to satisfy my empty stomach. The waiter didn't blink at my massive order (though my date did), so I figured I was in the clear. The restaurant was really friendly and cute, and they even dimmed the lighting over our table to give it a more romantic feel. It was all going well, but when I realized that they were bringing out the orders and my date's single roll was nine pieces, I started bursting out in cold sweat. Avocado roll and seaweed salad were never so tasteless.

But thank god, those waiters must have come from heaven or been mind readers, because they only brought and charged me for one roll (plenty!) and I was saved from a lifetime of embarrassment. Now whenever I order sushi I make sure to ask plenty of questions first...

Bond St, NYC, about seven years ago. Stunningly modern decor, but the menu was the most foreign thing I'd ever seen, having never ordered at a Japanese restaurant (Benihana doesn't count). The traditionally-dressed waitress was little help, but did her best, and we ended up with an array of gorgeously scaped plates and bowls. But what to do with it?

Suddenly, beyond the gentle wisps of dry-ice smoke emanating from beneath a quail egg balanced precariously on a tiny bridge, I saw something familiar: Green beans. Or snow peas. It was something green, and since it had salt on it, it couldn't be bad, right? I popped the whole thing in my mouth, and, since I'd never had edamame before, found out the hard way that you do not eat the hull. I chewed and chewed, them embarassingly spit out the stringy shell, and desperately disposed of it in my napkin. The waitress, as well as other diners, caught my gaffe and no doubt had a chuckle at my expense.

Nowadays, I can pop those edamame out of the shell into my mouth like a pro! And I just LOVE to meet people who've never had them.

I long time ago my friend and I were eating Korean food for the first time. We ordered an appetizer (some kind of pancake I think) and a few entrees. So, the waiter brings out all of the banchan, including a little bowl of hot soup. Having never eaten Korean, we are both confused as to what we are supposed to do. So, we start by drinking the soup, it tasted a little strong, but good none the less. The waiter comes over to see if we are ok, and gives us a very confused look as he removes our soup bowls. Then he explains that we just drank the dipping sauce for the pancake. We were so afraid to make another mistake that we didn't touch the banchan for fear it was supposed to be paired with something else.

Every time I go out for dim sum and accidentally order too much stuff from the first two carts, and then pretty soon (when I've gotten pretty full) I realize that the best stuff is yet to come! Ugh, why do I never learn...

Now I'm usually pretty flexible. I've tried jelly fish, tripe, and even beef tendons without batting much of an eyelash. One thing with which lack any real strong preference is sea cucumber. It's generally tasteless, squishy, and hard to cook. On a recommendation from one of my parents, I decided to try hot and sour sea cucumber. It was one of those few foods which generally elicited instant feelings of nausea. Not only did the hot and sour flavor clash intensely, the combination of the sea cucumber with a goopy sauce was simply unbearable. Needless to say, I have not yet dared to try such a concoction again.

I was attending a business dinner in Seattle a number of years back and our host was Japanese. He was ordering all types of sushi and sashimi. I was cool with that, except for picking off large amounts of rice as I do not eat rice. He orders sake boxes for us. When they were put in front of us, he tells us it is Japanese custom for the guests to drink the sake without using your hands. We had to bend down and basically slurp the sake out of the box. When we sat up again, our host was having a grand time laughing at us. We were mortified! Hey, what did I know? I am a Scottie from Maine. I got over it have have pulled the prank on other people which lots of laughs.

My parents live by a few large Japanese marketplaces - one of which offers some of the best box sushi in LA, Daikichi Sushi. I have a minor in Japanese language (I'm white), and the cute Japanese grandmothers who work there always switch into English when a non-Japanese person purchases sushi. One time, I bought a few temaki, and upon finding out the total, I started counting out my dollars in Japanese, paid, thanked her politely while bowing, and walked out. I glanced back only to see her blush and smile.

I went to Japan for a study abroad, and the first time my friend and I went to a ramen stand there were only 2 seats, but they weren't next to each other. After someone else left, we switched seats, which is apparently a biiiiiiiig no no. The waitresses were so confused, but apparently they forgave us because we were gaijin >.>

When I was about 14 years old my friend and I went to our local chinese restaurant kind of near closing time to eat. The menu didn't have prices and I certainly didn't know any better, so I wound up ordering Peking duck. Imagine my horror when I realised exactly what I had done...not only did the poor employees have to stay open extra long, but it was a monstrous amount of food and when the bill came I didn't have the 30 bucks to cover my portion! Fortunately, my friend came thru for me, but I was mortfied. Still love me some duck though.

Wow, reading all these stories is hilarious. Love them.

My first time ever eating at a Korean restaurant, the charmingly and confusingly named Japanese Oriental Restaurant in Columbus, OH, I ordered the Bi Bim Bap, which looked good. So the big glass bowl comes out, with all the various nicely arranged components. Thinking that it should be eaten like a composed salad, I took up my chopsticks and delicately grabbed a piece of carrot here, a bit of beef there. The proprietress comes over, tapes me on the shoulder, and asks "You know how to eat?" And without even waiting for an answer, she picks up the hot sauce, splortches a MASSIVE dose in the middle, and then stirs the hell out of the entire thing before nodding in satisfaction and walking away.

Really quite good Bi Bim Bap, as it turns out, and a great story to share ever since.

I'm Chinese, so I've never had trouble ordering at a Chinese restaurant - but I'd never had Korean food until I went to college. A group of us went out for Korean food (most of them were Korean), and someone advised me to order a tofu stew (soondubu jiggae); I didn't know what to do with the egg that came with it, so I ignored it until the waitress came and broke it into my soup for me, rolling her eyes while doing it - I felt so silly, like a little kid!

I made the classic Christmas Story mistake. A complete slip of the tongue had me order a Carifornia Rorr from my local sushi bar. Luckily it was a phone order, and I never had to look the employee in the face. Despite the avoided face-to-face shame, I was nevertheless the color of maguro.

Summer of '06 I went to Japan and was in Kyoto's Old Town district. We went into this traditional restaurant, but I was set on getting soba already.

Upon ordering my soba by pointing at the menu (sigh), it came with a mini teapot of hot water, and a bowl of white goo (it looked like Elmer's glue!). I wasn't sure what I supposed to do with these two items so I had to usher the cute old Japanese woman I had ordered from to help me out.

Turns out, I was supposed to pour the hot water into the goo to thin it out, then dip my noodles into it, then dip my noodles into the dipping sauce. She basically held my hand and did it for me, but I felt really awkward trying to figure out what to do. I felt like she was my mom helping me through the whole process holding my hand, plus everyone else in the restaurant was looking over and giggling. DOH.

That was some good soba.

I ordered a small assortment of baked goods in a bakery in Chinatown. After I paid, the lady handed me all my food except for the steamed bun, so I asked her about that last thing. I didn't really get a response, but I waited for a bit, clueless but thinking that maybe someone else would be bringing it out. I went through that same cycle of asking and waiting a few more times before finally she went to get it. I felt kind of idiotic with my ABCness (American-born Chinese), but it was all really tasty, so it was ok :).

Well one of my funniest "asian" food moments was in Spokane, WA - which is actually a fantatstic town full of deeply nice people... but it's miles from Seattle in more ways than one.

I was there working and my clients decided to take the California girl out for some Chinese food at lunch. We went to this 70's wood paneled joint that could have been any "Flo's Diner".anywhere in the country... At their urging I ordered the Sweet & Sour chicken, which I probably would have taken a miss on otherwise...

I just couldnt figure out what was so darn funny until the waitress brought out one of those frozen breaded chicken patties, warmed up with this weird brown gravy with a vineagar tang to it...

Thats when I figured out that Spokane was a lot closer to Idaho than it was to Seattle....

I went to a restaurant Korea town and it was Korean restaurant week, with lots of restaurants ordering Bibimbap for $7. So I went to one, but when I asked for the Bibimbap, I somehow ended up with a $15 mutil-course meal that was way too much for one person. They kept bringing out plates of unidentifiable food, and I had no idea how much more was coming. When the Bibimbap finally came, I ended up taking most of it home for lunch the next day (and the next)

On the tip of one of my dad's coworkers, for my birthday we got the family together and went to a chinese restaurant, intending to order hot-pot, as it was apparently amazing.

However, it wasn't on the menu, but we were absolutely sure that they served it, as the coworker was trustworthy and had ordered it only days previous.

Compounding to this, we weren't sure what it would be called, I had heard the term 'hot-pot' before but it was only my suspicions that it was the term used for this dish, the coworker had described it more as a soup, and so we had to describe what the dish was to the poor waitress who didn't speak very good English- including details like 'something under the bot with a small fire and it heats it up' and 'it's like a soup but with other stuff and everyone eats out of it'.

Our descriptive power wasn't strong that day, but we did eventually get the message across- it was on the lunch menu. They made it for us though, and it was delicious, particularly the pineapple which disagreed with us later (but we did not regret it).

On a 1st date with a guy I REALLY liked, we went out to a Chinese rest. in Seattle.

While we were waiting for our food and getting to know one another, we noticed that the tea cups had stick figures all around them and upon further notice we figured out that they were many different sexual positions.........AWKWARD!!!

My first time in Japan, I was out wandering around and came across a small hole in the wall restaurant. I went in, not knowing that it was a cook-at-your-table takoyaki place. Too embarrassed to leave, I ordered. Not only was it waaaay too much food for one person, the waitress, seeing my confusion when she dropped off a plate of fixin's and a small pitcher of batter, ended up having to do everything but feed me. She was super nice, of course, but the drunken salarymen at a nearby table thought it was hilarious.

These stories are great! :)

Just a couple of months ago, in Bangkok... menu all in Thai... server spoke about 23 words of English, which was stellar compared to my 3 words of Thai (I'm working on that)... fortunately, it all worked out okay. But I wasn't so sure for a while there.

At the Greasy Dragon, I tried to order dinner in Cantonese.
Our favorite nice & sarcastic waiter said, "Hey, that's pretty good Cantonese. Let's try this again in English, so I can understand you."

My most interesting dining experience was in Beijing. Snake soup, but I didn't realize it was snake soup at first. I was fishing around in the soup bowl, like that scene in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" with the eyeballs... as I raised my spoon to my mouth I was a bit surprised to see a perfectly recognizable piece of snake. Yum!

most "interesting" things eaten while in China- turtle, snake, frogs

I had always wanted to try Korean barbeque, as I saw it in a Korean drama I liked to watch. My boyfriend and I went to a place near my grad school and had no problem ordering it. We were a little slow with cooking, so this really nice waitress (she might have been a co-owner) came over and just dumped the whole plate of bulgogi on the grill. Then she brought out a plate of lettuce and proceded to show us how to make a lettuce wrap. I was about to take the parcel from her hand when she shook her head and stuck the whole thing into my mouth! (Mind you, it had to have been the size of a kiwi). Although I wasn't quite expecting to be fed by a complete stranger, she was being just so nice and motherly that I had to express my gratitude with lots of smiling and nodding.

I spent an interesting afternoon with a new found friend and found ourselves in chinatown. We ordered whatever the waiter suggested, and soon found ourselves consuming the most delectable bowl of wide, rice noodles I've ever tasted. I still don't know what the dish is called, but I've been searching for it, or something like it ever since.

As a child, many moons ago, my dad used to take us to Chinatown for Dim Sum on Mott Street. He fancied himself a linguist and for a time always asked the ladies pushing the carts the names of the various dishes. One fine day we got "shim bao".

My father repeated, "Slim Paoo".

"Noooo..." the cart lady enunciated patiently and slowly, "shrimp ball."

My co-workers and I went to a Thai restaurant for lunch. I was the only Asian person out of the group of 5. One of my co-workers and I ordered the same item, but in differing spice-levels. I had read ahead of time on Chowhound that this particular restaurant serves unexpectedly spicy food, so I had purposely ordered a 'mild' version of the dish. My co-worker ordered the 'spicy' version. Not surprisingly, the waiter had switched our orders and I was served the 'spicy' version. I started eating the dish, unknowingly, and it became all too apparent to me that I was the victim of a stereotype. The server had assumed that I was the one that had ordered the 'spicy' version...not my Caucasian co-worker. The dish turned out to have 11 thai bird chili peppers! Between asking the waiter to repeatedly fill my water glass and gulping down as much liquid as I could to cool my burning taste buds, my face glowed increasingly redder throughout the meal. After the meal was finished, my co-worker looked at my dish, saw the numerous chili peppers, and casually stated, "Hmm...it looks like they mixed up our dishes. Mine was really spicy though, so I'm glad I didn't get stuck with the 'spicy' one"

If you say "a little spicy" in Seoul, that could range anywhere from patronizingly bland to scorching hot. We were trying to be adventurous, but it was always a gamble. After one particularly painful lunch, we stopped by a convenience store for a white can of soothing-looking something (milk tea? tapioca? it'll be fine...). Back at the hotel, we cracked open our mystery drink and discovered it was fish tea. Or soup. I don't know. Maybe we could've handled it if we were properly prepared, but fish tea on scorched taste buds was just too much.

Each summer, my mother and I would vacation in San Francisco, so I had a separate group of friends I made there just to visit over the summer. I am Japanese, 1 guy was Japanese/Samoan, 2 guys were Chinese (twins), 2 other guys were Caucasian.

Being raised Japanese, I was used to all of my dishes I ordered are mine to eat for myself, whether it comes out as 1 dish or 15 dishes at a sitting. Hotpot dishes are different in a home setting - everyone shares - but at a restaurant, it's all mine unless someone decides to opt in on it.

I had eaten at a Chinese restaurant only once at a formal function (100+ people, 8 people at my table) when I was ~10 years old so it was obvious things had to be shared because of the size of the dishes, the lazy susan at the center of the table...and, well, my mother served me.

So here I am at 16 years of age at a hole in the wall Chinese restaurant for the "first" time having to order for myself with a group of my friends, sitting at a regular (wobbly) rectangular cafe table. I didn't know WTH to order, so I ordered noodles. It seemed simple enough. Everyone else ordered a different dish.

The server dropped off the platters of food on the table. My platter of noodles was set a few inches in front of me so I pulled the plate closer, grabbed my chopsticks, and dug in.

I noticed after I had slurped through 3-4 bites that everyone was looking at me and hadn't touched their food.

I asked, "What's wrong?"

The lady returned with empty plates and someone came by with a large bowl of rice. One of my friends remarked, "Haven't you ever been to a Chinese restaurant before? You're supposed to share your dish since it's a family style restaurant." I said, "Oooh, I didn't know that. I don't eat Chinese food."

I'd been hearing a lot about a new "KFC" (Korean fried chicken) in Federal Way (WA), so I took a trip to Cockatoo’s Chicken Restaurant.

It might seem I was drunk, but really it was a case of brain-lock induced by being lost in the Korean-ness of it all. Having ordered some deep-fried wings (with ultra-spicy sauce that didn’t disappoint) and some stir-fried chicken gizzards, I wanted a healthy side dish, and asked the server about the "Seasoning Pupa." (My "poop-a" mispronunciation, itself unappealing, masked the real meaning.)

"That’s hard, uh, to, um, explain," he said, struggling with his English. My dining companion and I played twenty-one questions, and he told us what it wasn’t: meat, vegetable, fruit, noodle, or grain. But not what it was. Best he could explain, "pupa is popular…a traditional Korean food." When he answered yes to our "Is it healthy?" question, we shrugged our shoulders and decided to try it.

The dish came quickly. At first glance, we thought "pupa" were beans floating in a red hell-sauce. If only. From the body curve and markings, we realized these weren’t beans. "Is this some sort of insect?" we wondered aloud. "Yes, insect!" our server screamed excitedly…and ten minutes too late.

Consider this our Bourdain or Bizarre Foods moment. Pupae ("pyoo-pee"—still sounding like a bathroom function) are silkworms, and have a slight crunch with some air pockets. They taste a bit bitter, slightly nutty, and certainly earthy—like something that’s slithered in the sand or somewhere similar. And certainly not popular, at least on this night, as no one else was eating them.

When I was younger, I want to say about 12, my aunt introduced me to sushi, which I was immediately a fan of. I'm pretty sure she just started me off on more tame fare, but we had a family vacation planned to Vegas, where we were going to sample some more adventurous stuff. I should also mention that this was pretty much my first experience eating with chopsticks.

So my aunt and I had a dinner planned at this very nice, all you can eat sushi bar/buffet. I was in absolute heaven! Not only was there an unlimited variety, but the quality was just amazing. (We're from Connecticut, so our sushi is so-so.) I was going crazy, I was trying things my sushi-veteran aunt wouldn't dare go near. I would also like to note, that I was doing quite well with my chopsticks, thank you very much! I had a slip up or two, but nothing too bad. I didn't have to use a fork or my hands at all!

So it comes to dessert time. I was just have a plate of fruit to top off the amazing meal. I fully admit I had gotten cocky with my chopstick skills, and was attempting some pretty tough stuff. So I had two small grapes still attached with the stem in the middle. I grabbed it right in the middle of the stem, and tried to pull off one of the grapes into my mouth.

My chopsticks slid to the end of the stem, and then into the other grape. It went flying across the restaurant onto the table of another family enjoying dinner. I just buried my burning face as low as I could, so I never actually saw if they knew I was responsible for the fruit barrage.

My aunt was away from the table, so I had to explain the entire thing to her when she came back. I figure she thought I might have been sick, red face, slumped into my seat. We laugh about it now though.

Not so much embarrassing, but I never get when to use which utensil (spoon? chopsticks?) - and I wish I could tell the difference between various regional cuisines. Doesn't help when a "Chinese" restaurant serves a little of everything - or a restaurant for a particular region/country still does the same.

A few years ago I was in my in-law's kitchen in Japan and my sister in law handed me a glazed dumpling that she had just cooked. I popped it into my mouth and thinking it rather delicious I asked what it was. At this point there was a chorus of laughter from the whole family. They thought it was so funny that they had just unsuspectingly fed a gaijin Takoyaki. The idea of an American enjoying octopus was the furthest thought in their mind.

At another point during a big extended family dinner, there was a plate of rather appealing looking glazed meat being offered. It looked absolutely delicious so I put a large portion on my plate. Now I enjoy most foods but have never been able to stomach offal, no matter how it happens to be prepared. The look on my face as I tried to swallow the kidney must have so horrified my host that she quickly scooped up my entire place setting and disposed of it in the kitchen, returning with fresh plates lest I come into contact with that foul meat by accident. Very embarrassing.

vegetarian pork skin rolls

I did the same as someone going ignorant to a thai restaurant figuring I had thai frozen and homecooked thai but when you say I like it spicy and hot- get the fire extingusher out at a restaurant---FIRE DOWN BELOW!!!!

My parents love sushi, and I certainly appreciate it enough. Over the years they have picked up enough Japanese to handle themselves appropriately at the sushi bar, and i know a few key phrases (please, thank you, what is this?) as well. My dad gets a kick out of practicing his Japanese with the staff at sushi restaurants.

So my folks come to visit me, and first things first, I take them to a sushi place that I've heard good things about. Restaurant was great, sushi was pretty good, ambience was wonderful. Everytime the waitress comes to our table, my Dad tries a Japanese phrase with her, and she keeps looking at him like he's nuts. Another waitress was filling water glasses, so my Dad tries his Japanese with her too, no response. My poor father is wondering if he's accidentally said something innapropriate instead of "thank you".

turns out everyone who works there is Korean.

Actually, my most interesting experience was at a small local restaurant in the mountains in the Philippines. We asked for recommendations, and the chicken dish was acceptable, but not exceptional. Our beverage, however, was something else. The description sounded rather like lemonade. However... The taste could best be described as a cross between a concentrate of unripened lemons and unripened perisimmons - unsweetened. After swallowing a mouthful, neither of us had any saliva left, or a particular sense of taste. We did not have water, and were extremely thirsty, and tried dumping the entire contents of the sugar caddy into our glasses, to sweeten it enough to be able to drink it. (It didn't work.) I think we managed to eat our food, as it had been a very long day, and we were famished. The food was forgetable, but we'll never forget the beverages.

I was at a Chinese restaurant and asked if they had Sapporo. They told me they only had Tsingtao beer and I didn't know what it was. It seemed like I kind of insulted them.

I am adopting a baby girl from China and I am going to China next year to get her for 2 weeks. I really could use this!

Having a co-worker rudely send back her fried rice because it had peas & carrots in it was my least comfortable moment in a Chinese restaurant.

It would have to be ordering a couple of dishes and then realizing they are designed for more than 1 person

I am so lost when it comes to ordering I only order egg rolls because that is the only thing i know what they are.

Besides not being coordinated enought to use chopsticks (even though I knit - can't be that different right?) the worst experience I had in a Chinese restaurant was when a fight broke out in the kitchen, never heard such loud, screaming people with pots being thrown in my life, we quickly left....

We love Korean food so I felt adventurous and ordered off the part of the menu that was in Korean. I just asked for a soup style dish. Perhaps I should have asked for a translation. I had fish head soup! It was good - I just kept dunking the fish heads so I didn't have to look my dinner in the face.

while eating dinner in a korean restaurant in south korea, we were trying to ask what the chef was adding to each meal, with the language barrier we couldn't tell. finally, we just took a big bite - ah, garlic.

One time my husband and I took our kids to a chinese restaurant while on vacation. We had no trouble with ordering food, but trying to get a Pepsi (which was on the menu) was exasperating. The first waiter looked at us like we were from mars and then a second came over and after three tries, success!

years ago i knew nothing about sushi. nothing. maybe i was the only dummy in the whole world who didn't know it was raw fish. So when my blind date suggested we order some I said sure. Oh my i had no clue. I also didn't know about the hand bowl. thank goodness i wasn't thirsty

I personally don't have a story of my own that comes to mind, but my fiance had an experience at a Chinese buffet with some friends that was pretty ridiculous while he was in high school. Essentially, while they were all eating, one of the friends was stupidly playing with his food trying to make the rest of the group laugh. One of the women running the restaurant saw him and came over to the table and said, "Eat your food. Do not waste it." After he tried to joke with her about it, she even physically tried to force the food into his mouth. Yikes.

Once, when I was not such a serious eater, I went on a second date to a Thai restaurant. My date, being an old-fashioned kind of guy, offered to order for the both of us as I had never had the pleasure of eating Thai food before. The soup that arrived was amazing. Rich with coconut milk, and so tangy and aromatic! I happily slurped my way down to the bottom of my bowl, and then took one last spoonful of what looked kind of like a toenail, in retrospect. Why I would eat something that looked like a giant toenail I don't know, but I chewed and chewed and chewed that woody thing that tasted like Mr.Clean until my date could not hold in his laughter any longer. It was lemongrass, I soon learned. You don't eat everything in the bowl?!? (was my reaction) How are you supposed to know that?

And more recently -- I ordered Jasmine tea at my parents favourite Chinese restaurant. When the tea came, there were no tea cups, only big coffee cups. I flagged the waitress down for a tea cup. "No," she said, gesturing to the adjacent dining room, "you have to sit over there for tea cup". Oh. Silly me.

This may not qualify, but it made me embarrassed to be Caucasian in an Asian restaurant. I was in a nice Chinese restaurant in Orlando, Fla., and man at a nearby table ordered some type of fish dish. When it arrived he became irate because tartar was not included. He was yelling the poor waitress "You don't know what tartar sauce is?" ACK! Who acts like that?

Eight young ladies, and the first Chinese restaurant ever for all of us. Our waiter was very patient and made some excellent recommendations, but we really had a hard time understanding his English. As we finished our delicious meals (we did a lot of sharing), he came back to the table and said what sounded like ah knee sheb'ah? We asked him to repeat himself and were looking at each other extremely perplexed. I spoke up and said okay. We all burst out laughing when he came back with 8 bowls of orange sherbet. Him too. That was over 40 years ago, and we still call it ahkneesheb'ah.

Had a date take me to a Chinese smorgasboard a few years ago. I lost count of his numerous trips to the food that he piled high on his plate, but he put both elbows on the table, head down about 2" from his plate and shoveled as if he had never had food before. No conversation between us at all, as I recall. I just watched in horror, as did others in the restaurant. When he was driving me home, I took my garage door opener out of my purse so I'd be ready for a super quick exit - with no walking to the front door. What a pig!

Vegas at a sushi place. Me and a buddy were just finishing up our "2 hour limit" at the counter and we finish with some raw shrimp. Not the greatest but whatever, anyway all of a sudden the chef starts talking really broken English which usually I'm good at deciphering from my mother but not so much this case. All of a sudden he disappears and comes back with some stuff on a plate. Ends up being the deep fried heads of the shrimp we just ate, tempura style.
Ended up being one of the best bites ever but for that split second just confusing as all get out and go.

Went to a family reunion dinner a a kid with my Chinese family and my cousin showed us the fish eyes which made me so sick that I projectile vomited in the parking lot.

My partner is Asian (I am not) and I regularly make an a$$ of myself when dining with his family. The worst episode to date was when I met his aunt and we went to dinner at China town. Typically one person will order for the entire table and we just pick and choose what we want to eat. I usually let my partner serve me because I am helpless with non-wooden chopsticks. As luck would have it the chopsticks were plastic and as I was inconspicuously trying to reach for a piece of chicken it slipped out of my chop-stick grip and plopped into his aunts tea. Absolute mortification. Now when I dine out with his family I only eat what is directly in front of me with no reaching involved.

I haven't experienced any befuddling experiences at any Asian restaurants. The cookbook sounds great.

I can't think of any befuddling experiences at any Asian restaurants.

when we once went to the china buffet which is an all you can eat..we were eating and my daughter found a fly in her lo mein.. she just went up and got another plate full i was sooooooooooooooooo grossed out i couldnt even eat..how many did she eat that she didnt find..lol im feeling queasy just writing this :(~

It was a Sunday, in 2001, and I was hosting 5 good friends at my favorite Chinese restaurant in nyc - Phoenix Garden - on 40th between 2nd and 3rd. It was one of those special nights where everything that came out of the kitchen was perfect; honey glazed ribs, pea shoots with crab, salt baked prawns, squab in lettuce leaves, filet mignon casserole – it was all bang-on! I was the king. I could do no wrong.

Being a collective group of greedy pigs, we decided to order one more dish. I call over the proprietor who has been running restaurants for longer than I’m alive and ask his help selecting our perfect ending.

The exchange went something like this…

(Me: Long haired blonde, typical sarcastic ny’er)
(Him: Looks and acts a bit like the father in Ang Lee’s “Eat, Drink, Man, Woman”)

Me: “What a great meal. What do you suggest we get to top it off?”
Him “You should get Peking Duck. Best in Ny”
Me: “That sounds great, we’d like a whole duck”
Him: “Very good. One duck takes 30 minutes”
Me: (said with a wink) “Oh no, that’s a long time. If we get ½ a duck can you do it in 15 minutes?”
Him: (said in a loud, agitated voice as he stormed away from table) “You can not rush good food. I get you check”

Clearly, Im not that funny, but I have a long track record p1ssing off asian
restaurant proprietors and wait staff.

More recently, I asked our waitress at Noodles on 28th if they would be changing their name to Noodles on 29th when they moved a block uptown.

She didn't even crack a smile.

The most embarrassing sushi story was when my hubbs and I went out with some friends for dinner. The waitress managed to not write down my main order, but DID write down my order for the natto roll. I had heard of natto and figured I should try it at some point. She delivered the roll and I dunked it in a bit of soy sauce and put it in my mouth. It was a real trial not to start gagging and spit it out immediately. Natto, to me, tastes like what would happen if someone leaving soy beans out to rot in a gym sock that was worn for a few months without being washed, then ate that gym sock full of beans and upchucked a little while later on to the plate of sushi rice. That's natto. Nasty.

A friend of mine lived in Japan for a couple of years and acquired a conversational knowledge of the language. Now his grown daughter is taking Japanese language courses in college. I went with them to a Japanese restaurant in southern Indiana. He was so excited to have an opportunity to practice his Japanese, so he went right up to the Sushi-ya and started talking to him in Japanese. The chef listened to him chatter away for a few confused minutes and then told my friend that the staff was all Korean! My friend was so embarrassed...

I enjoy eating Asain foods but I really don't know how to use chopsticks. I just visited my daughter in New York ,she is a big fan of sushi and knows how to eat with chopsticks. Her belief is when you vist a ethnic resturant you should go by their customs,which is wonderful. I tried sushi for the first time,I liked it and would eat again. What I loved was the wasbi sauce and the thin slices of ginger.( I used a bit more of the wasbi the first time ,now I know better.) I really enjoyed and was surprised to see on the plate.

Probably my funniest "Asian food experience" is also my earliest experience with Asian food. In fact, it was my first experience with any solid food at all! There is a family-owned Chinese restaurant walking distance from my parents' house. It's a place that we've gone to countless times over the years, and is always a nice place to take company when they come to visit. When I was very small, my parents took some guests out to eat there, and set me up in the highchair to entertain myself. Well, apparently at some point, the conversation must have gotten very intense and no one was paying much attention to me, but the next thing anyone knew, I had reached over and helped myself to my fatther's rice bowl, using my little baby hands to try and shove as much of it into my mouth as possible! There was rice all over me, all over the floor, pretty much all over everything in a fairly wide radius around my highchair. I had only managed to get a few pieces actually in my mouth, and fortunately the staff thought it was hysterically funny, and I was young enough that there was no embarassing stigma to prevent me from going back. ;) My parents still say that my first solid food was a Chinese dish called "Sticky Rice All Over The Floor".

While travelling in Vancouver one year, a friend and I decided that we really wanted som authentic Chinese food from their Chinatown area. So off we went to try to find the most foreign place to eat that we could. We found a stairway to an upstairs restaurant above a store. Looked good, so we went up. We were the only non-asians in the place. The menus were all in Chinese (or so I assume). We simply pointed to food and ordered it. It was wonderful, but some of the spices were very foreign. Whilst enjoying our adventure we looked out the window to the store below. It was obviously the market where the local restaurants got their fresh seafood. One man put his entire arm into a tank and proceded to pull out a bunch of snow crabs. When he had all that he wanted, the store clerk reached in the tank and pulled out a bunch of loose crab legs. I realized that being a crab in a tank with hundreds of other crabs must not be fun. They were literally tearing eachother apart.

What I don't like in our local Chinese restuaurant is the lack of teaspoons. I like sugar in my tea (gasp!) and find no utensils available to stir it in. At least there are forks, I could never master chop sticks. But the taste of the food keeps us going back.

At least everyone else's embarrassing/odd moments appear to be at GOOD Asian restaurants.

I am Korean (adopted as a baby, cultural background Midwest, USA) and my husband is Caucasian. However, we like Asian food, authentic when we can get it, Americanized when we can't (my husband gets late-night eggroll cravings).

Once, we were on a long car trip, were somewhere in the Toledo OH area, and decided we just HAD to stop and get some food. We were at the "don't care what it is as long as the neighborhood is safe and the food is edible" stage. We got off the highway and drove along a main road for awhile and found a small Chinese restaurant. It had a karaoke stage and a neon Tsingtao sign in the window...but by then we didn't care. I don't think there was anyone else in the restaurant.

Truthfully, I don't remember what we had (so it can't have been horrible) but what I do remember is that when they brought out our drinks (I think we'd ordered a pot of tea) they also brought out a small plate with a stack of...

Wonder Bread slices.

I think we were laughing too hard to taste the other food.

I've taught our daughter to try something new every time she has the chance. Well, that's tough to say when her dad orders the same thing every time we go out for asian food: Teriyaki chicken. The last time we went out to eat, she shocked both of us by ordering sea urchin sushi. Oh, my!

Just realized I never formally announced winners here in this space. My bad. We all had a look-see through the amazing stories here, and these emerged as our faves once we balloted in secret and compared notes:

jellybeans
tina_eats
astiles55
cdziuba
pequenalooloo

Thanks -- I think ;) -- to everyone who shared their stories of mortifying proportions. We cringed as we went through this thread.