How to agree on the best restaurant? Just make your own

My wife and I like to sample restaurants we haven't tried before. In Beijing, that usually means Chinese food, which makes sense because she's Chinese.

Most of the time, I stifle my yearning for a good ol' American hamburger or a Mexican enchilada or Italian food - or for authentic Brazilian barbecue at a buffet not far from home. (This is less like dinner than a competition of ravenous carnivores in the wilds of Africa. You need bowels of steel to digest all that red meat over the next three or four days.)

Anyway, I usually leave the restaurant decision to my wife, but not before going through the obligatory ritual of proposing places I know she'll reject. Here's how it typically goes as we head out the door: