Ever since the pandemic has began, I have had Chinese dishes more often than before.
Usually we go to Chinese restaurants as a group.
On a round turning table various kinds of dishes are served one after the other.
My family used to have get-together on my grandfather’s anniversary and so on.
Also, I used to have parties with my co-workers over Chinese dishes.
The restaurants offer a broad range of dishes depending on the numbers of the guests and the budget. (In my opinion, the cheaper, the healthier the dishes are.)
Surrounding the table, we used to enjoy conversation and nice meals.
However, such a custom is also favored by the corona virus’s spreading.
The restaurants have been forced to change their strategies and are now attracting individual guests, who enjoy meals quietly.
Another good thing about the Chinese restaurant is that we can enjoy a variety of dishes in a little portion at a time.
After the pandemic the restaurants have started to provide dishes or boxed lunches to meet such requirements for individual customers.
I had a dinner at a Chinese restaurant with friends I met at a language school in Oxford quarter a century ago. Although there was no turning table, we shared dishes and enjoyed the ethnic dinner.
It was on Friday evening and some students reported they had felt sick on the next day.
On hearing their description, I thought of a syndrome I had learned at my college, “Chinese restaurant syndrome”.
Chinese dishes contain a great quantity of glutamate.
If a person is not accustomed to it, his/her body cannot metabolize it, which would act on the central nervous system, causing sickness such as nausea, headache, and flush, as I remembered.
Since Japanese dishes contain a lot of glutamate, I had not actually seen the case in Japan.
Now, the Chinese as well as Japanese dishes have become popular all over the world, I suppose, the syndrome might have become a thing of the past.
