![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Saturday's centerpiece event was a dinner at Moon Palace with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mollpeartree, princeofcairo, prilicla, lhn, bunj, and some lamos that don't have LJ accounts (namely the Economist and Nuphy). I made some noises about inviting some others, but never did, even though lhn had gone through the trouble of reserving a table big enough to seat them.
Nuphy dragged his feet leaving, so we arrived at the end of the appetiser course. It seemed people had ordered everything but the famous soup buns, so Nuphy mad sure we got a steamer of those. Overall, ordering was a rather uncoordinated affair: A couple people had floated some ideas about what to get, then the Economist (presumably not wanting to wait all damn night to get fed) told the waitron we were ready. She went around the table starting to my right and working counter-clockwise. I thought one entree per person would be too much after so many hors d'oeuvres, so I refrained from naming a dish. Everyone else seemed to be doing so by reflex. I moaned about the fact that about everything we had ordered--twice-cooked pork, General Tso's chicken, shrimp lobster sauce, crispy duck, etc.--could all have been ordered at any Chinese restaurant anywhere. To come to a Shanghainese seafood restaurant and not get any Shanghainese or seafood dishes--it just rubs me against the grain.
When the food arrived, I realised that even if the names were the same, we could not order these dishes at other places. The General Tso's in particular was light-years from the sweet, goopy mess the Cantonese make of it. And, as it turned out, we demolished all entrees and enough people had room for more that I got to order one of my special Shanghainese seafood dishes--
and it wasn't as good as the others.
That's what comes of taking chances, of course. I'm still wondering if, had gone with my first choice, the eel, or talked the collective into substituting the interesting-sounding Shanghai fried chicken for one of the standard poultry dishes, I would've discovered a new love. Fortunately, Moon Palace isn't going anywhere and I've had an object lesson in just how easy it is to get a group together to go. Next time, I won't just deploy my overbearing personality to dominate the conversation, I'll use it to berate everyone into taking risks on odd-sounding food.
mollpeartree, princeofcairo, prilicla, lhn, bunj, and some lamos that don't have LJ accounts (namely the Economist and Nuphy). I made some noises about inviting some others, but never did, even though lhn had gone through the trouble of reserving a table big enough to seat them.Nuphy dragged his feet leaving, so we arrived at the end of the appetiser course. It seemed people had ordered everything but the famous soup buns, so Nuphy mad sure we got a steamer of those. Overall, ordering was a rather uncoordinated affair: A couple people had floated some ideas about what to get, then the Economist (presumably not wanting to wait all damn night to get fed) told the waitron we were ready. She went around the table starting to my right and working counter-clockwise. I thought one entree per person would be too much after so many hors d'oeuvres, so I refrained from naming a dish. Everyone else seemed to be doing so by reflex. I moaned about the fact that about everything we had ordered--twice-cooked pork, General Tso's chicken, shrimp lobster sauce, crispy duck, etc.--could all have been ordered at any Chinese restaurant anywhere. To come to a Shanghainese seafood restaurant and not get any Shanghainese or seafood dishes--it just rubs me against the grain.
When the food arrived, I realised that even if the names were the same, we could not order these dishes at other places. The General Tso's in particular was light-years from the sweet, goopy mess the Cantonese make of it. And, as it turned out, we demolished all entrees and enough people had room for more that I got to order one of my special Shanghainese seafood dishes--
and it wasn't as good as the others.
That's what comes of taking chances, of course. I'm still wondering if, had gone with my first choice, the eel, or talked the collective into substituting the interesting-sounding Shanghai fried chicken for one of the standard poultry dishes, I would've discovered a new love. Fortunately, Moon Palace isn't going anywhere and I've had an object lesson in just how easy it is to get a group together to go. Next time, I won't just deploy my overbearing personality to dominate the conversation, I'll use it to berate everyone into taking risks on odd-sounding food.
Tags: