Reply #40: Chinese food in a small lakeside town near our old house

[MorningGlow]

My former elder LOOOOOOVED the place. "Best Chinese food EVER" she and her husband declared. So she mandated that everyone in the coven would get together for dinner every Sunday night there. Went once--couldn't eat a damned thing. I don't remember what I ordered, but it didn't matter--rice that was tough, chicken you couldn't chew, and a sauce that was 99 percent MSG. Mr. MG, who's allergic to MSG, asked for a meal without. Yeah right. They swore it had no MSG, but of course he got a raging headache shortly afterward. He expected it, as he could taste it from the first bite, but he ate it to be polite and not starve to death.

Went a second time (without Mr. MG) and lied--said I wasn't hungry. I just ordered appetizers--ribs and an egg roll. I couldn't even get the rib meat off the bones--it was that tough--and the eggroll was overfried to the point that you couldn't tell the shell from the innards (and it all tasted like grease). How in the world can a Chinese restaurant destroy an eggroll?!

I learned my lesson--never went back--and my elder got offended because she thought I didn't want to hang with my coven sisters and their families. I couldn't tell her the truth, because she was friends with the restaurant owners. As far as I know, they still think this crap is the "best Chinese food ever" (Mr. MG says, "They don't get out much") although the "every Sunday night" dinners went by the wayside after a while (thank goodness). This was 10 years ago, and the restaurant is still open. They do a brisk business with customers who don't know any better.