Restaurant oddities

So I am a bit baffled by restaurants here in Chengdu. I wonder if they are like this everywhere in China.

I find the best quality meat comes from the hole in the wall places, and you can almost always know what you are getting, and the price is CHEAP.

But it's the fancier restaurants that baffle me. We usually order drinks, appetizers, main dish, and depending on where we are and what the extent of the menu is, dessert.

Do remember that in china, most restuarants serve food family style. We've only been to two places that served individually. So we often order a lot of things for the table to share.

As I was mentioning, I find that the food, while presented beautifully in these fancy places, it is typically very low quality- very fatty, boney, etc, just poor quality in general.

And how it comes out... The servers (yes, in the fancy places there is always an army of people serving you) never seem to know who ordered what or what food is for who or when it should be delivered.

For example, the other day at dinner (or was it lunch?), one person got their dessert, one got their meal, two got their drnks, and a few appeziters came out, while 4 people had not been served anything. Then full meals started coming out, but dessert was coming at the same time.

We ate at a place that we call "tavern on the green", thats really not it's name, but there were 8 of us, i believe. Almost all of us ordered our own appetizer (soups and salads), and they had single serving dishes there.

We waited forever for appetizers to come out, but guess what, food came out instead. The soups got put down at the same time, and I think a few appetizers were still missing, and Jonathan didn't get anything he ordered. Soon, we all had our food, yes, everything we had ordered, sitting on the table, unsure where to start since this is not how any other country serves a meal, but jonathan still had nothing.

It's very bizarre.

We think that restuarants just make food as they see fit, so easier things to make come out first (such as desserts and soups), difficult main dishes next, easy main dishes last. And you always have to ask for your drink no less than 3 times.

And they can't seem to serve us with just one or two servers, there is always 5 or more servers, which equates to one or two guests per server. But they can't remember who ordered what, and often wrong dishes come out altogether.

It's quite bizarre.

We have, sadly, eaten at all of the american places here. Pizza Hut twice, mcdonalds, starbucks has nearly become a daily ritual (and they ALL have english speakers), KFC (but it was horrible, never went back). I'm trying to keep to chinese food, it's cheapest and probably healthier, despite the fat, oil, and grease.

You can't seem to win here. It's very hard to eat healthy, unless you eat peanut butter and jelly every day. Even tofu and veggie dishes are smothered in butters, fats, and oils.

So eating gets resorted to whatever you have the time for. Nothing will be really good for you.

Ok, again, I need to shower, I am going to be late for our first matinee!