My daughter had been ice skating with her friend and her friend’s family. I went to pick her up and she was still in her skates, pink-cheeked, and before she had even come off the ice she asked if her friend could come to dinner with us. Saying she asked is being generous. What she actually did was refuse to come off the ice unless the friend could come with us.
We were going for dumplings. She wanted to share them.
She had a restaurant she was excited about, food she liked, and a friend she wanted to introduce to it. I said yes before she finished asking.
The friend’s dad explained at pickup where they were going - dim sum, in Dutch, which I can follow just well enough to understand he did a good job of it. The friend was happy to come. Her dad mentioned, quietly, that she was going through a phase of being more willing to try food when a friend said it was good. More willing than when her parents suggested it, anyway.
I did not say anything out loud about how familiar that sounded.
The restaurant was lit up for Christmas. The whole street was - lights strung between buildings, a large tree set up nearby, the particular kind of cold that makes everything feel more festive than it actually is. We found a table and were handed the menus. My wife and I have developed a system for the menu and the order form, which requires one. The kids and the friend looked at the pictures.
This remained the correct approach.
My daughter took charge in a way I had not seen before. She pointed out the soup dumplings. She explained the soy sauce situation - specifically, that you should dip and not submerge, a lesson learned at some cost by her brother on our first visit. She recommended the things she liked. Her friend watched, asked questions, and when the food arrived, tried things.
The friend tried a soup dumpling. She made a face - not a refusal, just the face of someone encountering something genuinely new - and then ate the rest of it. She tried a bao bun. She tried a duck dish that arrived at the table and that, I will be honest, none of us ended up liking. She tried it anyway, made a significantly worse face, and we all agreed to move on.
My son and daughter, watching their guest try things, tried the same things. This is not how it works at home. At home, trying something new is an ordeal requiring negotiation and preparation and occasionally a sticker chart. At this table, on this evening, they just did it, because someone else was doing it first.
Nobody liked the duck. That was fine. There were more dumplings.
The green onion pancake arrived as part of a larger order. My daughter looked at it. She had, on our first visit, identified a single piece of green onion inside a soup dumpling and declared it salad, which ended that dumpling’s chances immediately. The green onion pancake is, visibly and entirely, green onion.
She tried it anyway. Her friend tried it. My son tried it because they were trying it.
They all liked it. My daughter ate most of it. I pointed out, gently, that it contained green onion - the same green onion that had been salad inside the dumpling on our first visit. She considered this information and said it was different salad.
I accepted this.
We walked back through the Christmas lights after dinner, both kids full, the friend full, everyone in good spirits. The friend’s dad texted later to say she had talked about the dumplings the whole drive home.
My daughter texted her friend that night. I don’t know what they said. But the next time we went back, my daughter already knew what she was ordering.