Ordering food in Asia is a piece of cake. Or rather, a slice of crab stick. Or perhaps a ladle or miso soup.
The difficult element of choice is usually eliminated by the fact that everything on the menu is utterly unknown. My methods of choice are as follows:
– Find a recognised dish name, then pick the one below to it. At a guess, it might be similar to the dish above which I’ve liked before but slightly different.
– Pick the one with the longest name (because it could be worthy of a long name).
– Pick the one with the shortest name (surely it’s named for ease of ordering due to mass popularity).
– Pick at random.
– Understand that whatever you pick, the chef will cook you whatever he feels like cooking and you will never know the difference.
With this method I have tried a wild array of unidentifiable foods. Among other successes, I am a chicken porridge convert.
There are rarely bad dishes, although there are certainly some that are better than others. Blindingly strong chili sauce soon sorts any blandness.
Best of all, at 50p-£1.50 per meal, if you don’t like the first one, just get another.