A girl sits at a family restaurant, about to eat a spoonful of chowder, and instead sees her own reflection in the spoon. Because the bowl of a spoon curves, her face is flipped upside-down and stretched or squashed depending on the angle, so she looks either "outlandishly skinny / or outlandishly fat." The image is funny, but it also suggests how unsure she is about how she looks and who she is. The comparison to "some girl in China" hints at the old childhood idea of digging a hole straight through the earth, and it adds a feeling of distance, as if she is looking at a stranger.
The mood shifts quickly. She closes her eyes and gulps the food down, as if to escape her own image. Her mother's cheerful "Delicious, isn't it?" is ordinary and well meant, but it misses what her daughter has just been through. The repeated "round, round table" makes the scene feel closed in, a small loop where the girl's private worry goes unnoticed.