Text 17886, 148 rader
Skriven 2014-10-09 02:55:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: several odd meals 89
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Three meals of less than perfection.

My bud Helen has had some interesting things happen to her,
including having her new book published by Oxford (good), and
when she got her first copy in the mail a couple days ago,
she immediately noticed a couple typos (bad), so as part of
the celebratory roller coaster I took her to dinner, which she
suggested to be at one of her favored (good) haunts, the
Mandarin Garden, where the food is not so good (bad).

She was in the mood for a comfort meal, such as one might get
at a Chinese restaurant catering to Jewish people in New York.
Okay, I've not had any such in a long time, but I'm not averse
to giving my friends what they need now and again.

The restaurant is pretty well appointed, with comfortable and
attractive seating, indirect lighting, and so on, but quite
noisy because of hard surfaces (and a rowdy girls' night out
in the private room next door). We ordered soup, broccoli
beef, and pan-fried noodles, a meal that was comforting enough
but still (I thought) with a chance of being tolerable.

The waiter was pleasant but a bit scattered.

Wonton soup came with fried noodles such as you get from a can.
The soup stock was a thin pork bone heavily augmented with MSG.
Three large very pasty wontons, but well filled with properly
seasoned ground pork. Edible, little more.

Broccoli beef had decent ingredients, but the meat, probably
flank, was stewed rather than stir-fried and so was tough as
shoes; the broccoli was steamed to rare and then just thrown
in - what you want to do is give it a hit of heat and oil,
which deepens the flavor and improve the texture. This was
obviously not done. The sauce was soy and hoisin, rather
peculiar and way too sweet.

The pan-fried noodles didn't come. Inquiry revealed that he
had forgotten to put in the order. He hustled to remedy this,
and ten minutes later, there it was, with shrimp, chicken,
pork, beef, and vegetables (carrots, more broccoli, onions,
and zucchini) but mostly chicken. The pork was almost pure
fat; the beef leftover shreds and shards from our other dish;
the shrimp maybe an ounce of previously frozen babies. The
noodles were regular spaghetti, not a horrible thing, fried
in such a way that they were hard but not crisp. Again, the
sauce was soy and hoisin, this time just a bit more soy, so
it was peculiar and just a little too sweet.

On the whole, quite a poor meal. Ah, well, it did what it
was supposed to do. To add a minor insult, the fried noodles
with the soup were charged at $1.25 extra. 

=

I was off in Topsfield and had the chance to visit an old
haunt, the Crowne Plaza, subsequently a Sheraton, now a
Doubletree. I went up to the executive lounge for the
advertised complementary hors d'oeuvres only to find it
closed; fine, I didn't want cheese and crackers and seedy
grapes anyway. Downstairs there's the Tradewinds Restaurant,
which has hung on through all these branding changes and
where I have had tolerable food on occasion. This was not
one of them. The appetizers are about 10, the mains about
20-30. Sandwiches are in between.

I had fried calamari with jalapeno jam and Thai lettuce
wraps, both potentially good, both not so great in the
execution. The squid had both rings and tentacles but
were not of the freshest, this remedied with a rinse with
probably sodaed water. Then these were breaded with a
rather tasteless breading and fried in oil of insufficient
temperature. Over this mess was strewn an ounce of candied
hot pepper rings (take some pickled jalapenos and boil
with sugar for a while). The first few bites were okay,
but then the sogginess caused by a cooperation between
underdrained oil and the candied peppers took over. The
effect - cloying and not too pleasant. The lettuce wraps
had four components - several well washed but underdrained
leaves of Boston lettuce; about 6 oz of cold diced chicken
with a sweet-sour sauce, scallions, and a little sesame
oil (i.e., not all that Thai); some fried rice noodles;
and a rather sour peanut sauce (hence the Thai claim I
guess). This was marginally better than the squid had
been, though the rice noodles, crisp in themselves, got
sogged immediately when they hit the lettuce. The effect -
okay, somewhat amateurish.

Both dishes could have been better, even maybe somewhat
good with a little bit of tweaking.

This meal's background music was a guy who was trying to
pick up a slightly attractive woman with the classic line
"you remind me of the mother of a friend of mine." And
the conversation, hard to ignore because of the volume
of the two parties being greater than that of the two
TVs that were tuned to sports channels, my favorite,
turning worse from there. As I left I heard the woman
saying, let me get this straight - so you're married, but
it's complicated, right? [sort of contempt]. I hurried
away as fast as possible.

=

Lucy Ethiopian Cafe, Boston, named (so they say) after
the protohominid fossil who was in the news a couple
decades ago.

Pretty waitress, who turned out to be barista, waitress,
busboy, and floor washer, doing all these things while
her (male) bosses sat drinking tea in the back.

I'd heard great things about the food here. They were
wrong.

A small menu, from which I ordered beef tibs. This was
a sizable dish of tiny cubes of lean meat (probably
round) that I was thankful were tiny, as they otherwise
would have been unchewable, and I was thankful were lean,
as the meat was near-rotten, a state easily noticed
despite its being cooked long and hard to an almost
jerkylike condition. I asked for the dish extra spicy,
but it came sort of medium-minus. I asked for something
to hot it up, and a half a sliced jalapeno came. Other
components of the dish - a tomato, some almost raw sliced
onion, and lots of rosemary. Excessively weird. Injera
were the appropriate grayish-brown unappetizing color and
were stone cold. Pleasantly sour, not overpowering but
not sissy, either. Five modest-size pieces, plenty.

Reviews said the honey tea was the drink of choice, but
I asked about the ingredients: it had milk in it, so I
passed in favor of a Coke, which was by comparison to
the rest of the meal interesting and delicious.

While I was there, the waitress served all the tables
(3) in use, made the coffee, rousted the cook out to
do his cooking, and swept and then mopped all the floors.
One eccentricity - she went behind the counter to make
the espresso, then put the finished product on the
counter, then crossed over to the other side, then
picked up the coffee, then delivered it. I saw this
procedure with all the orders. It was almost as though
she was trying to show someone that she was doing the
work of two or more.
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