This one falls under the category of Fun Stuff. As a Canadian, I’ve long watched those American TV shows and movies where the characters dine from Chinese Food takeout boxes. They’re so standard as to be unremarkable: hand-sized boxes stuff full of fried noodles or savoury pork, picked out with nimble chopsticks.

In Canada, for the most part these boxes don’t exist. They are a foreign item, completely unused. Perhaps it’s the same in America, where this is a TV-only phenomenon. Who knows? The point is, I’ve always wanted to eat out of one. It would just be cool.

At the last baseball game that I attended this season, I finally had that chance. The diverse restaurants at the SkyDome (and no, I will never, ever, ever call it the !bleep! Center) include a noodle vendor that serves up their wares in this very container (see the picture). With a light in my eyes, I barely registered the $9 cost, and received my cardboard-enclosed meal.

As I worked my chopsticks in the stands, I made a dreadful realization. These Chinese food takeout boxes represent a dreadful user interface! Stuffed full of fried noodles, chicken and veggies, the container made it very difficult to fish out a bunch of noodles, because they were packed and bundled together so tightly. I thought the situation would improve as it got emptier, but the improvement was only marginal. By the time I packed it in, my chopstick hand was sore from maneuvering and pulling hard on the noodle pile.

The conclusion? Canadian Chinese food takeout containers may be entirely unglamorous, but they are a darn sight more usable.

It was delicious, though.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Fun Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.