Happy New Year!

So I'm a day late, as usual, but yesterday was Chinese New Year! In my current work environment, this is cause for celebration. So one of our Chinese coworkers invited us to her favorite local Chinese restaurant for a lunch to celebrate.

The selected restaurant, called Sichuan (they don't appear to have a website anyplace), is well known by yours truly. It has long been the favorite Chinese buffet for me and my coworkers. Erin delights in telling people that one of the owners once seated me and three other gentlemen and informed us, "$5 for you, $5 for you, double for you," the last part stated while glaring at me. Apparently he felt he was losing money on me each week. The guys at work used to start chanting "third plate" or "fourth plate" in an effort to get me to take in another 2000 calories at the end of each lunch.

In any case, the food on the Sichuan lunch buffet is as close to what I eat while in China as anything I've ever had in the U.S., so it seemed fitting to eat there for the New Year. When we arrived at the restaurant, our Chinese coworker began having a lengthy discussion with one of the servers. In the end, she informed us that she had ordered lunch for us from the menu so that we wouldn't eat the same things we always eat off the buffet. This seemed like a good plan to me, and it had been rumoured that the real Chinese food at Sichuan is only found on the Chinese language menu. Interestingly, the ordering process took several minutes and there was much discussion between the waitress and orderer. This is always true in China as well. The items on the menu appear to be somewhat negotiable, and it seems that you can haggle to get items prepared the way you like them.

After being served the usual green tea (which to me always tastes a bit like boiled dishwater), out came the initial dishes, served family style as is the Chinese custom. At first there were sesame noodles, which were great. They were cold noodles in a chili and peanut sauce. Then came the jellyfish. This fell into the "Yeah, I could eat this if starving, but would I choose to under normal circumstances?" category for me. My coworker later informed me that she didn't think this was "good" jellyfish. "Good" jellyfish, in my mind, is being shoveled off the beach and into a trash can. This felt like eating the seal from a toilet tank.

The main courses included a super spicy beef dish, some fried pork, and some sort of fish boiled with vegetables (sans bones). It was all very good, and it was almost exactly like what I've been served in China (except in China, bones would abound). Throughout lunch, our coworker taught us some phrases in Mandarin and explained some of the customs we see while working in Shenzhen. I will take pride during my next trip in my new found ability to swear at my coworkers in Mandarin. I'm sure they'll be delighted.

I'm going to have my coworker write down what she ordered so that the next time Erin and I eat at Sichuan, I can order more traditionally. And perhaps by doing so, the restaurant owners will forgive me from wiping out their buffet on a weekly basis for the past five years.