Last updated: May 11, 2023
Family-style eating is great.
It is like a “Build Your Own Buffet” adventure.
Here is a breakdown, dish by dish, of a typical lunch order at a small roadside restaurant.
Me, Michael, Tasia, and Jenny eating lunch at a small restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan Province, China.
Family-style Eating
Instead of each person ordering entrees, there are many smaller bowls and dishes which are to be shared at the table.
It looks like this:
Assorted dishes, which I’ll explain below, served at a small, local restaurant shop in Leshan. Here’s how the meal progressed.
Starter: Seaweed soup
Served in a clear broth. Likely lacking taste and in a hot water broth because one of the people in our party eats gluten-free.
Served on a tray, in white bowls. Not my favorite soup but great as a base layer. It doesn’t look too tasty, and it didn’t taste good, either. But I think it was healthy! Better thought of as a base layer .
Rice
Bowls of plain white steamed rice were brought next, one for each person.
One bowl of steamed rice per person. Cabbage and Pork
My favorite dish!
I love the salty pork flavor mixed with the cabbage stirred with some sort of oil. There is a little bit of spice.
We ordered two or three plates of this cabbage and pork mix. Closeup. I could eat a few of these all by myself! Eggs and Tomatoes
I didn’t try this, but it looked nice.
Yummy looking egg and tomato dish. Green Vegetables
One of my favorite vegetables that we regularly ate in China. I think it is pronounced con-sin-sai.
Served to the table, sautéed and mixed with garlic. Leafy green vegetable and the stalks, which are hollow inside. Other Items
Cabbage, fermented spicy cabbage, and a spicy sauce for dipping were also part of the lunchtime spread.
These additional items were also brought to our table. Owners
This is our group.
Our group L to R: Me, Michael, the owners of the restaurant, Tasia, and Jenny. We added some text on the picture for an added bonus that they can use on their website:
We added text to the photo so they could use it. Menus
We also drew our own menus:
Tasia working on our version of the menu. The photo we made for the owners. See more from my 2017 trip to China:
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