What's the expectation when an expensive Asian restaurant doesn't have rice?

[Gweiloman]

Many high end restaurants in China do not serve rice with the meals. Rice is considered peasant food and the dishes are cooked in such a way that they are meant to be enjoyed on its own without rice. 
 

[Jingthing]

9 minutes ago, Gweiloman said:

Many high end restaurants in China do not serve rice with the meals. Rice is considered peasant food and the dishes are cooked in such a way that they are meant to be enjoyed on its own without rice. 
 

My understanding is different than that. It's more a matter of a higher ratio of wonderful dishes to rice, NOT removing the rice entirely. But you're right that the idea of filling up on lots of rice with bits of "real food" is seen as a peasant thing. 

[Khunangkaro]

You ordered dishes with cooked rice.

Then no cooked rice is served but have to wait. 

I would say: "Thank you, I'll wait outside." Do not touch anything. Just pay for the drink if you had one and leave. 

Waiting can be until (after one hour or better) the next day, week or month. 

[Gweiloman]

27 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

My understanding is different than that. It's more a matter of a higher ratio of wonderful dishes to rice, NOT removing the rice entirely. But you're right that the idea of filling up on lots of rice with bits of "real food" is seen as a peasant thing. 

You would be correct if referring to home cooked style dishes. For banquet style dining however, rice is a no no and even ordering rice would be taboo. 

[Kurtf]

There are people that enjoy eating good food and then there are dining snobs. I think the poster falls in the latter category. 

[Jingthing]

14 minutes ago, Gweiloman said:

You would be correct if referring to home cooked style dishes. For banquet style dining however, rice is a no no and even ordering rice would be taboo. 

Yes, I think you're right about that. But it's academic. I wasn't having a banquet. The place is not a banquet restaurant though I'm sure they can do on special order. 

[Jingthing]

18 minutes ago, Kurtf said:

There are people that enjoy eating good food and then there are dining snobs. I think the poster falls in the latter category. 

You're some random person on the internet and you're free to consider me a food snob. However I don't consider myself a food snob. I also think that people that I consider food snobs wouldn't consider me a food snob. And so it goes. 

[Jingthing]

24 minutes ago, Khunangkaro said:

You ordered dishes with cooked rice.

Then no cooked rice is served but have to wait. 

I would say: "Thank you, I'll wait outside." Do not touch anything. Just pay for the drink if you had one and leave. 

Waiting can be until (after one hour or better) the next day, week or month. 

I prefer to keep my interactions with Thai police to a minimum. 

[sirineou]

On 12/6/2019 at 12:37 AM, Jingthing said:

The dishes arrived. Then I was told they were out of rice and it would be 20 minutes to cook new rice but I was offered a small bowl of COLD AND GREASY fried rice. I was told this would be free.

To which I replied "No no problem we'll come back another time when you have rice  Jai jian?

[petermik]

9 hours ago, Jingthing said:

Yeah sure but back to my sandwich comparison. A sandwich shop serving hot meatball sandwiches would stop serving them entirely if they ran out of bread.

Any enterprising sandwich shop would then serve them on toast...........

[Khunangkaro]

1 hour ago, Jingthing said:

I prefer to keep my interactions with Thai police to a minimum. 

I prefer as you do.... 

But for me in this case I wonder why Thai police would bother to fine a restaurant that does not serve in time the cooked rice as ordered. 

Edited December 7, 2019 by Khunangkaro
Time factor

[cmarshall]

What I have come to in my dealings with Thai service is that, if it's an issue that you really care about, you have to push the envelope.  Otherwise, the predictable Thai response is to "พูดมัวๆ", which is to say to brush you off in any way possible.  Without being rude or aggressive you have to communicate that you will not be brushed off and the course of action that will turn out to be easiest for the employee will be to do what you are asking.  In a restaurant, that means you must be willing to send the food back, which I gather is something that Thai customers never do.  Or you might ask to speak to the manager.  Or tell the server not to พูดมัวๆใ  The most important task of Thai employees is to shield the boss from the customers at all times. 

 

The advantage the foreigner has is that the Thais don't know what we might be capable of doing.

 

It's not a moral issue, however.  And, if it's not worth the bother on some occasion, then you can accept the situation without having succumbed to oriental despotism.  It's just about getting what you want.

[Jingthing]

Since the topic of food snobbery was brought up (I pled innocent) here's a brief humor break about how bad "Chinese" food can be --

 

 

[elgenon]

Sorry, I don't understand how a well-run restaurant can run out of rice.

 

Jingthing, any answers?

[Jingthing]

20 minutes ago, elgenon said:

Sorry, I don't understand how a well-run restaurant can run out of rice.

 

Jingthing, any answers?

They had uncooked rice. 

[elgenon]

4 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

They had uncooked rice. 

I meant cooked rice. Every customer expects rice. It's crazy they would run out. Someone didn't do their job. You could run out of anything but cooked rice.

[elgenon]

I have never have experienced an Asian restaurant that ran out of cooked rice. Let alone an expensive one. It's unAmerican so to speak. 5555

[kokesaat]

My wife and I consider ourselves connoisseurs of fine rice.  Not always, but most of the time, if the rice isn't good, the food usually isn't as well.  We had a favorite restaurant both here and in Houston, Texas, serve us rice that wasn't cooked properly.  In both cases, when it came time to pay the bill, I made it a point of kindly talking with the owner/manager about the rice.  In both cases we went back.  The restaurant in Houston was a one-off.  The one here served bad rice again and we never returned.

Not rice, but a similar story:  Many years ago there was a Baskin and Robbins in Udon.  I ordered two cones....one for me, one for my wife.   The girl served the ice cream in cups.   I asked for the ice cream in cones.  "Sorry, no cones."  That's sort of like McD says 'sorry, no hamburgers' or pizza company running out of pizza.

[kingofthemountain]

8 minutes ago, kokesaat said:

That's sort of like McD says 'sorry, no hamburgers' or pizza company running out of pizza.

That's could happen here 

i am pretty sure you already know the difficulty for the thais

to plan forward, even big shops like Big C have a lot of obvious oversupplies in

some items (I am talking about the non perishable ones) in products where nobody is

very intersted in and regular out of stocks in others very populars.

it seems its too much an effort for them to manage these basics issues, even with a large over staff

[Jingthing]

1 hour ago, elgenon said:

I have never have experienced an Asian restaurant that ran out of cooked rice. Let alone an expensive one. It's unAmerican so to speak. 5555

Well I can attest that its possible! 

[sanemax]

When I go out to eat, if they dont have what I ordered from the menu, I go somewhere else 

[EVENKEEL]

I'm sure if it was so important a 10bht bag of steamed rice could of been procured quite easily.

[Jingthing]

Update -- without it being really intentional I've done a boycott (rice-cott?) of this place for awhile now. I do plan on returning eventually. A bit passive aggressive of me as I really doubt they'll make the connection. 

[tingtong]

On 12/6/2019 at 1:10 PM, Jingthing said:

I agree but remember this is Thailand. Of course they didn't tell me about the issue when I ordered. If they had I would have said, no problem, I will wait. Also keeping in mind this is Thailand, I could have said take the food away and give me fresh food with the rice but I think we all know 99 percent of the time restaurants here would NOT recook the dishes fresh. So they would somehow heat up the existing food, degrading it.

I don't think demanding such excellent service as you describe usually works very well here. Could get fluids in your food for that.

I suppose someone will say don't go there again. But I want to but I don't want them to screw me over the same way again. 

 

there is no way to win if you want to go there again.

if you ask if they have rice now, you are the a.hole.

if you dont ask...happened once, chance it may happen again.

 

want to feel at ease: bring your own rice....just in case ????

[Jingthing]

16 minutes ago, tingtong said:

 

there is no way to win if you want to go there again.

if you ask if they have rice now, you are the a.hole.

if you dont ask...happened once, chance it may happen again.

 

want to feel at ease: bring your own rice....just in case ????

Yeah. The truth is that I don't mind being an A-hole when that's what it takes. But I think in this case it will be more like they won't even understand what or why I'm asking, so more like a perception of being a crazy A-hole with not much chance of it really making any difference.