When you can’t decide what to order at an unfamiliar place, I’ve always figured your best bet is to go with their specialty. At a steak house? Order steak. Sushi shop? Order sushi. It should be a no brainer. If in doubt, don’t order the seafood platter in a burger joint. Don’t order the cheeseburger in a fish and chip shop. Both will usually contain frozen elements and possibly nuked back to life.
There’s a trend for places to offer too wide a menu and instead of doing a few really things well, they do many things badly or average at best. An Australian coffee chain was offering “authentic” Thai cuisine not long ago. Really? I wish I could have a Thai fish cake with my espresso…said no one ever.
The other day I went out for lunch with The Koala. Going out for lunch is a treat that every worker should reward themselves with once in a while. It breaks up the day and for a moment during the week, you can pretend you don’t work for a living.
Our usual Chinese BBQ shop was closed so we tried a BBQ duck restaurant around the corner. I ordered their BBQ duck on rice. Perhaps the lack of BBQ ducks hanging in plain view should have triggered warning bells.
Lunch was average at best. The duck was bland, the expected crispy skin was flaccid*. Some of the rice was ok, some of it was dry and hard. I suspect the plate had done a stint in the microwave. I wasn’t all that keen on last night’s leftovers. If a duck restaurant can’t do duck right, I’m worried. So I’m pretty much sworn off the place.
* I’ve always wanted to use the word flaccid in a non dirty manner.
Bunny Eats Design 
LOL, well I have to say, flaccid duck skin is a truly disgusting image that makes me gag. I skin my chickens before I cook them because skin is so gross.
It is isn’t it? I usually love skin, but it should be crisp.
Kind of like the word moist isn’t it. Blerggh. I have a bad review for a place sitting in the back end of the blog but I can’t bring myself to post it. No matter how bad they are I feel cruel posting names. You must be the same!
Yeah, I don’t want to be THAT blogger. There is so much to swoon about, I prefer not to dwell on the bad. If you were local though, you might be able to guess who I’m pointing to but you could never be 100% about it.
Your “*” made me laugh! But you are bang-on with your observation, Genie. I also hate restaurants that offer too many menu items…a sure sign that most or all of it is not made on site.
Yeah, if I wanted frozen and microwaved meals, I’d get freeze and microwave it myself.
What a great post – funny, yet oh-so-true. Some restaurants do manage to have a large menu which is all well-executed, and I am more likely to return to one of those than to a place which does a few things perfectly, but offer the same few things every time (even though the last time you visited might have been over a year ago). I guess I would prefer to have many different good meals, rather than the same excellent one over and over, but that duck place you went to would not fit into either category, by the sounds of things.
Yeah, if the duck place did duck well and nothing else well, I would forgive the other items on the menu. When I crave something, I want it to be executed perfectly otherwise the craving doesn’t get satisfied.