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A travesty…
November 23rd, 2008 by geek 2 comments »I don’t make many of these posts, preferring to have my blog be like a link spew, but since this is my own little private pulpit of the web, I’m going to use it.
What did I do this weekend? Nothing. Played wow for most of Saturday and Sunday and got from level 71 to 75. Not bad if I say so myself, though I did burn all of my rested xp, so things will be slow going from now on.
Come about 9pm on Sunday, I get the hankering for some food. I’m hardly ravenous, hell, I’ve been sitting at a computer screen for most of the day. No, I’m just kind of in the mood for something pretty simple. Unfortunately, my landlord is renovating, so the kitchen is… well.. it’s 2 walls. Get in my car, and decide to hit up this Thai place I went the night before. Last night I was far hungrier than now, and I had their drunken noodles, which is their way of saying, “nothing having to do with any alcohol, but it’s a chow fun stir fry that isn’t Chinese.” That was pretty good. Very spicy, almost to the point that I had trouble eating it, but that’s what I asked for and I got it. It’s nice to have a Thai place not pull their punches when it comes to spice. Them white people are wimps.
Anyway, I walk into the place, the waitress says “Oh, back for more? (she apparently recognizes me from last night… I was fairly memorable, as I had my macbook out and stealing their internets).” I smile and take a seat at the same booth I was at before, and stare at their menu.
This menu doesn’t have all that much variety. It’s got 1 page in it, and the front is taken for their restaurant logo. So really, 5 pages of food, and one of them is a beer list. I skip the appetizers, as I’m eating alone, and I’m not that hungry, as well as their soups. I’m really not in the mood for a liquid dinner. I look toward their noodle list, and I see drunken noodle again. Remember last night, and how tasty it was, I was just tempted to order it again. But the gourmand in me says, “No, you should try other things.” Looking at the rest of the noodle list, nothing strikes my fancy, though I’ve had their Pad Thai, and their Pad See Ew before. I look toward their specials, and I spot “Honey Duck Dinner” and “Crispy Duck Dinner.” Intriguing.
Duck ranks up there as one of the tastiest of all birds. It stands up well to turkey, and beats the crap out of chicken, perhaps not in versatility, but definitely in flavor. You pay for this flavor in two ways. Duck tends to be far more expensive than a chicken dish, and there is significantly more fat in a Duck dish. But Duck… prepared correctly, practically destroys the competition as far as intrinsic flavor.
I flag down a waitress… though to be honest, it’s late on a Sunday night… I’m one of 4 tables in the whole place, and I inquire as to the difference between the crispy and the honey, as their descriptions are very similar. She responds that the Honey Duck is roasted, but otherwise, they are the same duck. I ask her, “Which one would you prefer?” She calmly responds, “the Crispy one is the more popular one.” Taking that to be a suggestion, I go with the Crispy Duck Dinner, which happens to come with shrimp fried rice, as the starch to complement the protein.
I then crack my MBP, and catch up on some Gizmodo and some Engadget. Go go stolen wireless for the win.
My dish arrives, and it’s a fairly large platter, with a generous serving of shrimp fried rice and steamed broccoli. My eyes dart to the duck, in horror. What is on the platter is a rock hard, deep fried half of duck, covered in some brown sauce. Even someone who eats at McDonald’s everyday could easily discern that the duck had been fried to a lump of… well.. Let’s just say that it wasn’t fit to serve.
I take a bite of the fried rice; it’s a bit bland… but that’s okay, as it’s meant to serve as a complement to what should be a super flavorful main. Bland is fine to be a counterpoint. Besides, it comes with two very large shrimp. Not jumbo, those are amazingly expensive. But better than the frozen tiny shrimp that I was expecting. The broccoli, tastes like broccoli. Nothing to write home about. It’s steamed. Whoop-de-doo.
I tap the duck with a fork. THOCK. Great. I poke at it a bit with my fork. The tines just glance right off of it. This plate is overloaded with food, such that just poking the duck pushes rice off of the platter, so I ask for a second plate. She comes with a smaller plate, and a steak knife. With the aid of some elbow grease (that shouldn’t be necessary when eating duck), and the knife, I manage to lever a piece of duck (?) and give it a taste. The thing is so dried out that it reminds me of a pork rind, covered in sauce. Yuk.
I don’t understand how a chef in their right mind could do such a thing to such a delicious meat like duck, unless it was by accident, and even so, why serve it? I can’t believe that this was the more popular one. Is the other one served with a side of maggots or something?
I was tempted to simply order an appetizer to go with the portion rice they gave me, but I really didn’t want to 1) pay the extra money, and 2) give them the satisfaction of another couple of bucks. I ate the bland fried rice, along with the steamed broccoli and then called it a night.
Geek, sitting at this desk, signing off. Â Still kind of hungry, and sorry to what happened to that duck. No one should go out that way… not even tasty animals.
