Back in the 70s I was in Toronto with a couple of friends and we decided to go to Chinatown for dinner. Obviously, this was in the days before you could look up info on restaurants online, so we just went into a random restaurant. It wasn’t until we were seated that we realized that we were the only non-Chinese in the place. We briefly considered finding somewhere else to eat, particularly since (IIRC) the menu was in Chinese. However, we were in an adventurous mood and decided to throw ourselves on the mercy of our waiter who fortunately spoke enough English that we were able to get across our preferences and possible dislikes.
After all these years I obviously have no idea what we ate except that it was good.
As a further point of clarification, it is indeed listed on the English menu you posted under “Pork with Vegetables & Chinese Mushrooms” for $15.50 or $10.50 as a part of the lunch special so you could have ordered it any time without requiring your Chinese friends’ help.
In this context, I think “dry” means “not soup”. For instance, what I would call “noodle soup”, my wife might call “noodles” and what I call “noodles” my wife might call “dry noodles”.
When I was in college, a friend and I went to a local Chinese place. I ordered the Kung Pao, and the owner said “Kung Pao very spicy tonight.” My friend and I looked at each other and said, “That’s OK.” The owner said, “No, Kung Pao VERY spicy tonight!” We both agreed it was ok, so the owner shrugged his shoulders and ordered it for us.
It was deadly spicy.
We had about half of it between the two of us, and left the rest. My mouth was burning for hours afterwards.
Well, that’s a phrase you don’t hear very often. It’s in the plaza where the K-Mart used to be, right? I’ll try to get out there some time. Did they have less adventurous food as well? It’ll be easier for me to get someone to go with me if they can order “normal” Chinese food.
The excellent Sichuan place where I used to live did in fact have two menus, the regular menu and the “special” menu. The “special” menu contained all the good stuff, but was written in Chinese and English. With groups they would hand out regular menus to everyone and one copy of the “special” menu for the table at large.
The regular menu was actually also quite good, none of the overtly American dishes like General Tso’s. Just not as broad, and with bowdlerized descriptions.
We had a mixed crowd of Chinese-born and everything else. Everyone seemed to like going there, and not everyone is as spice-loving as me. But the stuff I remember was all spicy, but I think that’s because I love the spicy food so much.
There was a really popular Chinese restaurant near me, and I was always underwhelmed with the food. And everyone raved about it. I finally realized that all the dishes they raved about were spicy, and I never ate them. I mean, the peking raviolis were good, too, but not exceptional. And a lot of the food was meh.
So now I don’t trust recommendations from people who love spicy food.
I know that Kung Pao is generally spicy, but it sounds like the owner was trying to warn you that the chef had used a heavier hand than usual with the pepper when preparing it that day.
There’s a Chinese takeout place I order from frequently. One of the dishes I liked was their orange chicken, which was generally not too spicy. One time, however, it was spicier than usual. The next time I phoned in an order I mentioned this, and was told that they had a new chef. However, I could specify that I wanted a “non-spicy” version if I wanted it, which I did on several occasions. Unfortunately, some time later they switched to using DoorDash for their deliveries, and when I tried to order from them the DoorDash menu would not allow “special requests” when placing orders, and I didn’t want to risk getting something that was too spicy for me to eat.
About 15 years ago, I was in Heifei, China for a conference. Our group arrived a couple of days before the conference and the first night there, we decided to go out to a good restaurant, since the conference was going to be providing lunch and we had dinners arranged throughout the week with colleagues, or because of schedule would be eating at the hotel.
We got the hotel to recommend a nearby restaurant and had them write down the name and address in Chinese. We took a taxi to the restaurant, got out, were welcomed at the door by a hostess and led to a private room. Then it got interesting. The menu was entirely in Chinese, and we realized that the waitress, the hostess, and, in fact, no one in the restaurant spoke English. One of my colleagues started trying to draw pictures of things that might prompt the staff to go “aha” and start bringing us dishes (like a chicken, a pig, a cow, etc.). Others were trying various forms of pantomime, to no avail.
It was then I remembered my phone. When planning the trip, I decided to look into alternatives to the extortionate charges associated with traveling with my phone in China. I had discovered that I could quite cheaply rent a phone with English (and Chinese) markings and menus. It was so cheap, in fact that I had opted for the “executive plan”, which provided a little nicer phone with a “concierge” connection for support. After picking the phone up and initiating the service at the Beijing airport (which went surprisingly smoothly- no need for the support) I went about my travels, not really doing anything with what I assumed would be tech support “concierge” service.
But at this point I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, so I pulled out my phone and hit the concierge button (this was the days of physical buttons on phones, folks). To my surprise, a woman answered, in perfect English, “Hello, how can I help you”. I explained our dilemma and she asked what kind of dishes we wanted to order. I explained in general terms that we were looking for a mix of meat, vegetables, etc., and would just like to try whatever the restaurant might want to offer us (fortunately, we are all adventurous eaters). She simply said, “hand the phone to the waiter”, which I did. After a few minutes of conversation, the waiter handed the phone back to me and left the room.
Then we proceed to have a wonderful meal with all sorts of interesting food. I still remind my friends of how I saved us all that day.
There was an Indian restaurant in a tiny food court near the UW-Madison campus years ago. Open kitchen, which was good because if you saw the wife cooking you knew to order mild or medium. If it was the daughter you could order spicy. Even the daughter admitted that her mother’s food was too spicy hot for her.
It later found space off campus to be a sit down restaurant and so you’d have to ask.
There used to be a Bangladeshi restaurant near my office in London that I really liked. First time I went was with coworkers during my first trip there. I was coming from Seattle, a place where no matter what the cuisine, extra-hot only meant the chef had spicy thoughts while preparing the dish.
So naturally, whatever it was I ordered, I asked for it to be 5 stars. Just really didn’t think too hard about it beyond some dim idea that British food was all bland. My coworkers laughed at me but whatbcould they possibly know?
That shit was incandescently hot. Probably the hottest thing I ever ate, maybe excluding the comedy-level-heat wings I had once. I suffered but ate a commendable amount of my order.
I don’t remember if they were watching from the kitchen, but I do know that the waiter and some of the staff all shook my hand when I got up to leave.
Sorry, but I have to correct you on this one. Sapporo is not a Japanese Budweiser. Whilst it is a light lager, it is some much more flavorful than Bud.
Most likely, you got a Sapporo knock-off brewed in either Canada or the US. The Sapporo N America version is much more Bud like modified for the US taste market. Look at the label next time for where it was brewed.
BTW, same is true of TsingTao. You definitely only want the stuff brewed in Qingdao China. It’s the special Lao Shan water in Qingdao that makes it TsingTao beer. Brewed in other parts of China or the US are a pale imitator. (Tsingtao is the old romanization of what is now used as Qingdao)
I don’t doubt people saying there is a Chinese only menu. Only that I have never seen that in SF, Seattle or Vancouver. It’s always been bi-lingual menus and can orally ask for something off menu in Mandarin, Cantonese, Fukien or Hakka (restaurant staff typically speak at least these 4 languages and maybe also Sichuanese or Shanghaiese). The examples on line cited in this thread are all bi-lingual with only the poo poo platter in English only.
Ok, I’ll try to get there sometime this month. To be clear, “Pork with Vegetables & Chinese mushrooms” is what you remember?
Regarding spiciness - I’ve definitely found that New England restaurants for the most part use a much weaker scale than the rest of the country. I’ve ordered stuff “extra spicy” here and wound up with food that would be “medium” anywhere in the south or southwest. Yankees just can’t handle real heat, and restaurants have adjusted to that.
Assuming we trust @Shalmanese has put the right name to the picture (the picture is DEFINITELY right) then yes, that’s it. It’s a fairly light dish, so I’d also recommend the Xi La fish. For some reason I remember the name of that one.
