3 hours ago, KennethT said:We even had a waiter (who moonlighted as an English translator) write it down for us on a card so we could show service staff for the rest of our trip to avoid further confusion.
Do you remember what the written name looked like? There are two ways I see it written in Simplified Chinese as used in mainland China. 芥兰 or 芥蓝, pronounced identically. Then, just to confuse things further, in Traditional Chinese and so in Cantonese as used in Hong Kong and in much of the diaspora it can be 芥蘭 or 芥藍!
Don't make the mistake of only remembering the first character. Many vegetables begin with that character. You could even end up with wasabi!