A Tale of Restaurant Portions

It is 11:30 am and I am sitting at a corner table at Coffee Culture in downtown Thimphu. It is a mid-level restaurant, particularly popular among the young and the hip. With me are my younger son and my wife. We want to take a table on the portico, but move inside after we notice that the floor is littered with cigarette butts of myriad colors. Smoking in public places is illegal in Bhutan. One of our umpteen hypocritical policies is in full betrayal here.  All three of us are non-smokers, so we move in.

At the dark fake mahogany table, we wait for our order to be taken. As usual Buku goes for his favourite Spaghetti Bolognaise and ice chocolate. Tika and I decide to try cheese momo and ice coffee. A Bhutanese can never have enough of momos!

‘How many plates of momo, sir?’ asks the thin waiter, with his trousers barely covering his butt. ‘It depends on the size of your momos!’, I nearly say, before my wife says ‘two’.

Eating out has really picked up in Thimphu. Thanks to the growing critical mass of our eating-out population, restaurants of various shapes and sizes have sprouted around.  With growing competition in the eating and catering market, price has also stabilized. One can get a good meal of chicken curry rice with a few side dishes at Karma’s Dhaba for Nu. 150.  The belch at the end of the spicy dish comes free! Unbelievable, because a taxi from Sabji Bazar to Kala Bazaar costs you Nu. 120. Now, we even have a couple of apps for online order and delivery of foods. One of my nieces uses an app to send lunch to her mom at their medical shop.

Even as we go out to eat more often now, ‘portion size’ of food served by our restaurants has often left me craving for more. As they say, the real world can be stranger than fiction. Those of you who have gone to a restaurant or an eatery and have been taken aback by the ‘portion’ of your ‘plate’ will understand what I am talking about.  If restaurant ‘portions’ have been ruling your thoughts lately, you are hardly alone!

When you buy a kg of potatoes, you know it is a kilo because the scale says so. You get the satisfaction of having received what you paid for. But then, how much is a ‘portion or plate’ of food you order at a restaurant? In Thimphu, a ‘plate’ of momos is five pieces of momos. However, there is no definition and standard on the size of each of those momos!  It is generally agreed that higher the rating of a restaurant, the probability of ‘plate’ size being consistent would be higher. But then, people like me who sit at the middle of the income pecking and picking order can hardly afford to go to Le Meridian or Taj Tashi. So, the ilk of folks as me have little choice but to visit restaurants like Tandin, Coffee Culture and Wine and Dine.

Once in a while, I do get opportunities to stay in relatively upmarket hotels in Phuentsholing such as Lhaki and Druk, when I am on tour in my capacity as a board director. This comes with the all expense borne facility extended to directors. When I order a plate of Spaghetti Bolognaise at the restaurant of Lhaki Hotel or Druk Hotel in Phuentsholing, the portion I get is good. Indeed, I get to share a bit of the spaghetti with my son for he can’t finish it all. The same dish at the same price (if not more expensive) at the restaurants in Thimphu is a much smaller ‘plate’. I am left staring at my son as he licks his plate clean!

I am a pure non-veg and enjoy ‘chicken chili’ a lot. It is a wonderful appetizer for the main course and goes down pretty well with a bottle of chilled Chabchhu – the new frothy kid in town! However, every time I sit at a restaurant table and order for chicken chili, I worry about the portion.  When the dish arrives, you immediately realize that it is chili chicken and NOT chicken chili. You dig through the mound of chili, onion and tomato until you find two pieces of bony chicken hiding at the bottom of the plate. Devil is definitely in the details!

Last evening, I decide to treat my family and some visiting relatives to Sherab Fried Chicken. Lately, SFC has been going strong on Facebook, advertising their products and services. ‘For free delivery, call us at 1760xxxx’ says one ad for good measure. I check with my son and decide to order three drumsticks and four breasts.

When the order arrives, my son and I go into momentary depression. The drumsticks look as if they belong to a sparrow not to a chicken. The breasts are nowhere near what I have seen and enjoyed before. I know chicken breast are not factory made and size differs from one piece to another. We know breasts come in difference sizes. No pun intended! However, it is hard to expect and accept two pieces of fried chicken breast look so dissimilar. To my experience, CFC breasts are much bigger than SFC ones.

What can be done to ensure that we get value for the monies we spend at restaurants? Who can regulate this? Can the Department of Trade, Consumer Protection Cell of MoEA or BAFRA do anything? I don’t know!

Going by the rate at which our momos are shrinking, times may not be very far when we might need a microscope and a pincer to locate and pick the momos. I am not one who can finish a plate of Butter Chicken, but at a restaurant in Thimphu I always ask for two!  This has often left me thinking, I am a beggar of my own choice!  Centuries after Charles Dickens wrote the famous tale of orphans craving for more, restaurants in Thimphu are creating modern day, (although not destitute) Oliver Twists – ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’