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The ladies were puzzled. Cheryl Spangler, Valeria Borunda Jameson and Susan Puckett, three university-admissions workers on a training wisit to Florence, Kentucky, had walked into a local barbecue joint called Chung Kiwha. But instead of sauce-covered mutton served up from the kitchen, they saw a buffet of uncooked meats and vegetables. Instead of knives and forks, they were given large scissors, chopsticks and metal tongs. No candle flickered at their table, but a bucket of fiery wood charcoal hissed in the tabletop grill pit. Chung Kiwha served barbecue, all right—cook-it-your-self Korean barbecue. “I didn’t realize there were restaurants like this,” marveled Spangler to her friends, who hail from Knoxville, Tennessee, and I worked in restaurants for 20 years.
The secret is out, thanks to the growing popularity of restaurants where the customer is the chef. Long a staple of immigrant communities in big cities, restaurants where diners chop, grill, boil, or dip their dip their food are hot in the American heartland. St.Paul, Minnesota, has Thai hot-pot cooking. Indianapolis, Indiana, has Japanese shabu-shabu (another type of hot pot). A pizzeria in Las Vegas lets customers roll the dough.
Why would people bother going out to cook their own meal? “Americans want control,” says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association. “The cook-it-your-self experience embodies the American values of freedom of choice and independence.” With families spending 46% of their food budget on meals outside the home, they miss the cooking experience—sort of. “Psychologically, people want to be a little involved,” says Pamela Parseghian, executive food editor at Nation’s Restaurant News.
Not every diner, however, embraces the experience. Dragged in by enthusiastic wives, “men often sit with their arms crossed…that is, until we fill them up with good wine,” says Will Layfield, owner of the Melting Pot in Westwood, New Jersey. At the Vinoklet, diner Grey Schafer says, “I don’t cook at home, and if I’m going to pay good money, I want someone to do the cooking for me.” What’s more, do-it-your-self dining isn’t cheap. At the minturn country Club in Minturn, Colorado, Kobe beef costs $49.95—uncooked. Still, restaurant-owners insist that the customer knows best. “Who knows what to them is rare?” says Mikulic, owner of Vinoklet. “This way, if they screw it up, I get no complaints.” Back at Chung Kiwha in Florence, diner Puckett sees it this way: “We don’t have to clean up, do we?.”参考译文:
这些女士有些迷惑不解。谢丽尔.斯潘格勒，维丽瑞尔.波兰达.达姆森，和苏珊.帕克特是大学招生工作人员。在肯塔基州的弗罗伦斯培训时，她们走进了当地一家叫做强.吉瓦的烧烤酒吧去吃饭。然而，他们看到的并不是从厨房端出来抹好了酱的羊肉，而是生肉和蔬菜。服务员给她们端上来的餐具也不是刀和叉，而是剪子、筷子和钳子。餐桌上没有闪烁的烛光，有的只是一桶在烧烤架上嘶嘶作响的燃烧着的木炭。强.吉瓦经营的是烤肉——韩式自助烤肉。“我在餐馆里工作了20年，从来不知道还有这样的餐馆。”，来自田纳西州洛克思尔的斯潘格勒好奇地对她的朋友说道。
