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Serving Foods, and Tableware
Appears in
By Phia Sing
Published 1981
It is not part of the Lao tradition to sit round a high table, in western style, and to eat successive courses. Instead, they have the food put out all at once, often on low tables of bamboo, such as the one shown below, help themselves and dispose themselves comfortably while they eat.
They have a range of platters and plates which vary from a very large round platter—what we would call a tray—which fits on to one of the low, circular bamboo tables and is called tacit to middle-sized platters and small plates. The name for these last two categories is chan (or tian, as it is sometimes transcribed). Phia Sing uses this term to refer both to small plates and to large platters; but in translating his recipes we have said ‘plate’ or ‘platter’ according to what he meant.