When eating at a Chinese restaurant for the first time, order a shrimp dish.

Chefs can't make anything look like shrimp except shrimp.

I have an aversion to egg whites. I can eat eggs whites in scrambled eggs, especially if the eggs are scrambled "dry", but never on their own (either fried or boiled).

An ancillary rule: Eat at barbecue places whose sign shows a pig in an unpiglike act. Especially a pig in a chef's hat cooking up what is presumably pig.

- No meat ever, unless I can't see it (e.g. chicken broth, Cesar salad dressing) and there is nothing else appealing on the menu.
- Mayonnaise is only good with canned tuna fish. Therefore, I do not eat mayonnaise.
- Whipped cream should be avoided since ice cream is so much better.
- Vegetables should never be allowed in desserts.
- Lettuce should never be shredded.
- Grape juice and wine are good, grape candy and grape jelly are gross. Raisins are the worst.

1) I might be the only person in the world who loathes chives. I always feel like a pathetically fussy person when I tell the waiter not to put chives on my food (and I always have to mention it because restaurants think chives are so innocuous they never mention in them in menus).

2) Leftover pizza is best eaten just slightly warmer than refrigerated (about 10 seconds in the microwave is about right).

Other people's rules:

1) It drives me batty that my in-laws insist that salad can only be eaten after the main course is finished. But I want salad with my main course (and sometimes the only vegetable is a salad), and my MIL leaves me feeling like I'm uncouth.

2) Another MIL rule: champagne for the Christmas toast must be served in those old-style glasses that have a hollow stem and wide shallow bowl (which results in the bubbles disappearing too quicky). The glasses were stylish 50 years ago. They're not functional. Get over it.

I grew up loathing them. I'm not sure what changed in particular, and I don't think I'll ever LIKE them but they're part of a (pretty broad) group of vegetables that I realized in my mid-20s that I no longer cared about one way or the other.

One of my coworkers still hates chives/green onion -- and any other kind of onion; also cilantro -- AFAIK the two aren't related, but because they (or something close enough to cilantro to not matter) go into the Pho most places, hearing him ask for it without either brings them to mind together.

Oh right, another of my rules- don't eat local fare when in Hong Kong, unless there is a place only selling har gow.

There was a small discussion about tomatoes and whether or not they are to be considered a vegetable. Whatever you consider them, they're a fruit to me, and to the Chinese as well- over in the mainland, they are frequently served at the end of a meal with other fruit, or sliced and topped with granulated sugar.

Wow, I just found this thread, terrific stuff. While I’ve only read about 100 of the 697 posts I can say that it is highly entertaining.
(Disturbing, but very interesting nonetheless. :D )

There are a few things which I didn’t see mentioned:

- No squash or zucchini :td: ; cooked, raw, fried, whatever, they just FEEL weird in your mouth.

- No peppers :td: ; red, green, yellow, whatever, they are an assault on the taste buds.

- Dessert should never include fruit or vegetables or anything else that could even remotely be considered “healthy”. Dessert should have absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. Invariably desserts with chocolate are vastly superior to all others. ^

- Dinner leftovers, be it pizza or chicken or pasta or whatever, served hot or cold, are generally more appealing as breakfast than the majority of traditional breakfast foods. @:-)


And of course I haven’t read any proper listings of the 5 basic food groups, which SHOULD be:
- Candy and Chocolate
- Ice Cream
- Cake and Cookies
- Salty Crunchy Processed
- Pizza
- Bacon (Cooked medium to medium well, chewy, definitely NOT crispy, if I wanted it crispy I’d eat a piece of charcoal. :eek: )
(Yeah, I know, that’s 6. What’s wrong with 6? ;) )

Your personal food rules.....
 

Anything but fish soup. Yes, some people boil fish bones and drink it as soup. Stinks and tastes bad!!!

No bell peppers (capsicum) either?

Pudding (the american kind) is disgusting, as are ripe bananas. When drinking a soda, admittedly a rare event, the soda can must be pre-chilled and poured into a glass 2/3 full of ice.

You are not. My partner hates them and anything else green (mint ice cream might be the only exception I can think of). :)

Me too. I don't like scrambled eggs, although I do eat egg mayo provided the egg is well mashed up. No objection to omlettes either.

I won't eat mushrooms on their own but I don't mind them as an ingredient provided they're either in big bits I can pull out or tiny pieces that are hard to detect - I like the taste but I can't stand the texture. Ironically frying mushrooms is one of my favourite smells.

well I finally read this whole thread
you are correct, approx 20% of people think cilantro has a soapy taste.

Many have made statements that echo my own, I very much agree with the following: not just from Thailand, no farmed shrimp from anywhere, only farmed seafood I eat (that I know of) are oysters or mussels. only olives that pass my lips is the olive tapenade on a muffuletta sandwichI will also add an additional caveat, if having pizza (thick or thin) in Chicago, that meat shall be Italian Sausage which is what most pizzas in Chicago are ordered with, NOT pepperoni (which is reserved for the rest of the U.S.)

Then there are statements that are downright wrong:
what about frites mit mayo, or sometimes they are so good they don’t need anything added. there’s a number of delicious black items: black beans, mole negro, blood sausage, etc. bagels in Montreal are fantastic. (bolding mine) nonsense, There are amazing Friday Fish Fry in a number of locations, N Wisconsin being one of them. you are one of 3 things: 1) have limited cuisine(s) that you cook 2) a liar (or delusional) 3) an AMAZING chef with quite a bit of #1 thrown in. a quick summer meal is a big salad with some fresh grilled meat put on it. I make a grilled lettuce dish that everyone I’ve made it for loves. you are an In-N-Out fan:), for me a thicker patty cooked no more than a medium rare trumps a thin patty, no matter how many thin patties you have. Oklahoma Joe's in KC certainly is an exception as well as some Puerto Rican place outside Orlando (name escapes me) which made delicious mofongo or even some of the Iowa truckstops that make amazing pork tenderloin sandwiches.


Statement I'm most puzzled by:why avoid onions if you love onion flavor?

The statements I agree with most however are: I'll do so even if this means going against what I normally like, ya never know what will be good. Amen ! another Amen !
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I stand by my original statement. And Ketchup means Heinz. :)

Not a big fan of the mayo and I find plain fries boring, as are baked without butter or sour cream and boiled or mashed without gravy (or, at a minimum, lots of butter).