As you probably know (unless you are from a non-food-appreciating country like Scotland), food can be so excellent! But Chinese—it can get really tricky with that particular cuisine. Chinese food is often awful, pungent, and mysteriously cheap – to find a great Chinese restaurant is to rejoice!
Here are some of my tips for finding a BAD Chinese restaurant, and hopefully these critical tools will help you eliminate the truly heinous and be left with something approaching good or perhaps even great.
1. Corny name. The name of the restaurant is straight up corny and/or puts out some semi-racist vibes like Chikky Chan’s or Wok N’ Roll
2. Name that alludes to speed. Speedy Wok, China Express, etc. Why? Because! if speed is their main concern, how good can it be? You don’t see any Italian restaurants boasting how they can all whip up some choice manicotti in like 3 minutes. With me?
3. This rule is gospel: if the menu offers SIZES of food items (typically pint and quart size), stay away!! First of all, they try to lure you in with their deceptively low prices; something like $2.99 for ma po tofu, and then BLAM- a whole lot of inedible Chinese food shows up at your house! It’s like magic, if you think of magic as this force that makes you want to vomit on yourself.
Seriously, I ate at a “size place” last week (a joint called A8- which also violated the unmentioned rule of names apparently unrelated to China at all, I’m afraid). I took one bite of this jank and had to call a priest. It was that bad. He exorcised the food, read me my last rites, and miraculously I pulled through. He suggested burning the A8 menu though, and thus, I did.
I saw a few A8 menus in the lobby of Ben’s building shortly thereafter and wanted to write “POISON!!” on them, but I didn’t have a pen. And then I also started feeling bad for the gross food place- thinking maybe my culinary standards are more arbitrary than I’d like to believe, and who am I to try and put a restaurant out of business just because they specialize in a gross taste, etc. Let the MARKET BEWARE I guess. But I’ll say it here, no bullshit: A8 is a real place in Madison, Wisconsin and you should not go there unless you are trying to Litvinenko someone.
Now, clear all that gross Chinese food talk from your mind because a few days later when Laurence, Ali and I were celebrating the weekly pagan holiday of TV Night, we had the opportunity to dine on the culinary epic of Jade Garden. Inauthentic China at its finest! Everything we ordered was like surprising your tongue with an expensive and thoughtful birthday present when it had pretty much given up on you, just like last year. My only complaint is that they did not deliver my food in a huge trough so that I could have eaten five times as much. Oh, and total price for each of us? An awesome $8.00. So, if you ever find yourself within a reasonable distance South Park Street, you should immediately call up Jade Garden and put some of their delicious food in your mouth.
The end.
3 months ago
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