I knew food was going to be a problem. So one of my colleagues isn’t feeling well, so she went to bed early, while the remaining two of us went to dinner. My eyelids were drooping, so I suggested just eating at the hotel instead of traveling to somewhere, where I might not stay awake long enough to enjoy.
One of the hotel’s restaurants is called Rouge Chinese Restaurant – which is in itself pretty funny, but I figured maybe it’s fusion cuisine or something… The menu proved to be both interesting and, in the end, disappointing. Sure, there were no photos of each dish, like we’d seen the other night, but the entree list had definite possibilities. After a bit of indecision followed by negotiation, we came up with the following choices, to share:
Which was all good.
Until the excessively polite waitress returned to tell us that they were short on donkey meat this particular evening. I was taken aback, since everyone knows that if a chinese restaurant is out of donkey meat, well…. they might as well just go out of business. Right? But ok, we’re guests in this country and we’re easy going kind of guys, so we cheerfully revisited the menu and ordered something else.
Which was ok.
Until our hostess came back again to apologize, but unfortunately there appears to have been a run on pigeon that particular evening and could we choose something else.
Which was tolerable.
So we ordered the chicken and the duck, and returned to our conversation about…. well, that probably isn’t relevant to this story, so I’ll save it for another bloggy day. Until…. friendly waitress returns to tell us that the thing about the goose liver tonight is……. they’re slightly out of it.
Which was annoying.
The good news at this point is that of our original menu selections, the last of the four was available. The ox tongue and tripe both had a very pleasing texture, but for me the taste of whatever they were marinated in was slightly unpleasant.
Did I mention that she came back one last time to ask did we really want the duck? How about just the chicken?
Which was wonderful. What the heck.
P.S. – I freely admit that I’m pretty devastated for having missed the chance to try wok-fried donkey… Seriously.