If you ever get the chance to go to a Taiwanese banquet, jump at it. As in China, Taiwanese banquets are amazing experiences. Like anywher...
If you ever get the chance to go to a Taiwanese banquet, jump at it. As in China, Taiwanese banquets are amazing experiences. Like anywhere else, banquets are held to celebrate holidays and special events. Business banquets are also common, and many a significant business deal in Taiwan is clinched at the banquet table.
Dishes at a Taiwanese banquet are served in sequence, beginning with cold appetisers and continuing through 10 or more courses, usually comprised of the most expensive ingredients available. Vegetarians invited to a banquet should inform their hosts as early as possible so that a few suitable replacement dished can be rustled up. Soup, often a broth made with medicinal herbs to aid digestion, is generally served after the main course.
Generally speaking a Taiwanese banquet usually ends when the food and toasts end. You may find yourself being applauded when you enter a large banquet. Applauding back is fine; bowing is considered gauche.
A VERY TAIWANESE BANQUET
The weiya is a company dinner party held at the end of the lunar year, usually on the last Saturday night before everyone takes off for the holiday. Much wine or Kaoliang liquor will be drunk by all, usually in response to toasts made by the boss complimenting various employees for having done a good job, or to the company in general. Gifts will almost always be given by the boss, sometimes in the form of hóng pãos (red envelopes stuffed with money), or actual gift items, or both.
Always paid for by the boss, weiyas are massive spreads featuring the best dishes money can buy. You can generally expect a couple of expensive seafood dishes, like prawns, crabs (even lobster if it's been a good year for the company), and of course some sort of beautifully cooked whole fish. There'll be vegetable dishes and a few meat dishes as well, usually something interesting like twice-cooked pork, all served in an atmosphere of good cheer and revelry.
However, one dish always served at a weiya will be anticipated with some trepidation. This is the chicken course, whose manner of serving is fraught with meaning. Traditionally, a weiya is the event in which an unwanted employee is informed that their services will no longer be needed in the coming year, a message conveyed by the direction in which the chicken's head (left on, and not removed as with Western chicken dishes) is facing at the time of serving. An employee who finds themselves facing a just-served chicken at a weiya is being told not return to work after the lunar new year's break.
If the boss is happy with everyone's performance that year, the kitchen staff is instructed to serve the chicken facing him or her, or as part of a claypot dish like ginseng chicken soup), with the head tucked into the pot. For this reason, the serving of a headless chicken dish at a weiya is a cause for celebration for all.
Except, of course, for the chicken.
Except, of course, for the chicken.
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