Dinner was a delivery disaster.
First of all I had selected a dish of steamed sea bass and rice, which I intended supplementing with some of the bags of 酸菜,(suān cài) that I have collected recently. This is the pickled vegetables that Korea took and turned into their kimchi. Fifteen minutes after placing my order, someone from the restaurant called to say that they were out of sea bass. After my berating them for running out of a major protein by 5:30 in the evening yet continuing to advertise and accept orders for something they don’t have, they offered me a full refund. Well, they suggested first I chose something else but I declined. They only have six main dishes on their menu, none of which appealed. Time wasters.
I then skimmed my phone and remembered that I’d heard of a new place offering Zhuang Lemon Duck, one of my favourites. Found it quickly and ordered that with rice. That came to ¥18, under the minimum ¥20 charge. So, I added some smacked cucumber in spicy sauce. That tipped me over the minimum and up to ¥25. $3.50 USD.
18 minutes later it was at my door. Sadly, it was nowhere as good as I’ve had before. The duck was nearly all flabby skin and bone and there was no sign of the statutory Zhuang long-preserved lemons. Instead, I think, they had just squeezed some lemon juice over the delivery container. It was heavily flavoured by thick slices of raw ginger. Also, the dish was swimming in sauce. It is normally a relatively dry dish.
Big disappointment. The rice was over-steamed, too. The cucumber was fine, not having required any actual cooking.
Oh, well try again tomorrow.
