this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Why Are Pepper Grinders A Thing In Restaurants? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by ScrollinMyDayAway@lemm.ee to c/food@beehaw.org
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Let's say I decide to go to a nice restaurant for a meal. The dish comes out, and I ask for a salt shaker before I even taste it (I never have, btw). That is normally considered an insult to the chef or you are pegged as a neanderthal diner.

Why, then, is it normal for a waiter to offer you grinds of pepper all over your plate before you have even had your first bite?

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[–] Cris_Color@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thats genuinely fascinating! I love hearing about that kinda stuff, its always really neat to hear the life experience that folks get and how it differs in different cultures.

If you were to ask for a salt shaker, do you feel like it would be offensive to the folks working there, or preparing your food?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge of another culture with me ☺️

[–] liv@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If I were to ask for salt for chips in a cafe or something, no problem. But in a proper restaurant, that would be the same as what @ScrollinMyDayAway@lemm.ee describes: it would mark me as some kind of philistine that can't appreciate the chef.

I'm fascinated by this stuff too! We share a language and consume a lot of your pop culture but there are still so many little things that are different.

Eg "tuna noodle casserole" sounded super gross to me because of the language difference. Here, casserole = a thin, liquid stew with chunks of meat in it, cooked in a ceramic pot, and noodles = only Asian noodles (ramen, udon, etc). But it turns out it's more like what we call a "pasta bake", a totally normal dish.