Halfass Review - Happy Chef BBQ - Wickham St Fortitude Valley
...you know how they say..... location, location, location? well...i work in an interesting location... right smack in the middle of brisbane's Chinatown. yes, red lanterns, semi existent pagodas (which are in the middle of being torn down apparently....to make chinatown look less like chinatown... which not only sucks but is really rude....anyway) and a lot of asian restaurants. i say asian cuz it's not just chinese food.....there's thai and vietnamese as well and a couple of japanese places.
anyway, i went a-wandering before my shift started at 2pm cuz i wanted to find Oxlades (an art supply store) to look for some colour remover (which i didnt find any of yesterday...major bummer). i found oxlades, but dammit, they're closed sundays. (BOOOOOOO!!!)
anyhoo, on my meandering back to work, i opted for something to eat for lunch and walked back to McWhirters (shopping centre complex on brunswick st/cnr of wickham) and looked at the phillipino place, but nothing looked appetizing and they didnt have any Adobo....which i like,. but they put peppercorns in it and i hate picking out the peppercorns.. so i decided to walk back past the chinese restaurants on wickham st. i pretty much picked the first place that mentioned take-away and had roasted items hanging in the window....and cautiously opened the door.
now, here's where the comedy starts. my mum took me to a lot of chinese restaurants as a kid, and some smallish places that if you blinked as you walked past, you would miss it. this was even SMALLER than the smallest restaurant i had been in, and to demonstrated how small, i opened the door to see someone sitting right in front of me, eating their lunch. i'm like ....oh shit... and make my way inside...
now the scene as i walked in was odd too. no sound at all... except for clinking of forks and plates and things... but no aircon, no crappy chinese muzak either. and a couple of people from the tables peering up at me as i walked in...and there were less than 10 tables in there. and all these tables were FULL. not kidding.
anyway, i didn't feel like chicken, so i got something simple.....barbecue pork and rice.... $9.50 ....a little bit pricy, but once in a while wouldn't break the bank. anyway.... she takes my order and then proceeds to slice the meat right there behind the counter. none of this.... yelling an order in fluent chinese babble to some hidden away chef who would conjur up my order. she literally reaches over, picks up a piece of barbecued pork and grabs a cleaver and begins to slice away, on a cutting board that probably doubles as part of the register.
it's only then that i sort of take in the garishness of the place. the usual painted golden buddha statue on the counter... one or two faux jade items and lots of those red lantern thingies. she's fiddling behind the counter...ladelling on some sort of sauce and adding some green vegetables. she packs my order into a box, and i grab a menu on my way out, after paying.
when i get to the break room at work...i open my meal and have a nibble. the pork was really good, and the greens....although a little bitter were tasty. the sauce was sweet with soy and probably a bit of garlic in it. then i started reading the menu, which was a good laugh.... for starters, they mis-spelled "noodle" (noodel) and mistyped "bean curd" as "bean CARD", as well as misspelling "chicken" (chichen) ...and even more embarrasingly "szechuan" (szechen)....
...and chicken was misspelled directly under where it was written in the previous line.
so for their dodgy engrish menu and crap decor i give them a 2 but for the food, which didn't make me sick and was actually worth it (ok maybe if it were $1 cheaper).... i give it a 4 out of 5.
anyway, i went a-wandering before my shift started at 2pm cuz i wanted to find Oxlades (an art supply store) to look for some colour remover (which i didnt find any of yesterday...major bummer). i found oxlades, but dammit, they're closed sundays. (BOOOOOOO!!!)
anyhoo, on my meandering back to work, i opted for something to eat for lunch and walked back to McWhirters (shopping centre complex on brunswick st/cnr of wickham) and looked at the phillipino place, but nothing looked appetizing and they didnt have any Adobo....which i like,. but they put peppercorns in it and i hate picking out the peppercorns.. so i decided to walk back past the chinese restaurants on wickham st. i pretty much picked the first place that mentioned take-away and had roasted items hanging in the window....and cautiously opened the door.
now, here's where the comedy starts. my mum took me to a lot of chinese restaurants as a kid, and some smallish places that if you blinked as you walked past, you would miss it. this was even SMALLER than the smallest restaurant i had been in, and to demonstrated how small, i opened the door to see someone sitting right in front of me, eating their lunch. i'm like ....oh shit... and make my way inside...
now the scene as i walked in was odd too. no sound at all... except for clinking of forks and plates and things... but no aircon, no crappy chinese muzak either. and a couple of people from the tables peering up at me as i walked in...and there were less than 10 tables in there. and all these tables were FULL. not kidding.
anyway, i didn't feel like chicken, so i got something simple.....barbecue pork and rice.... $9.50 ....a little bit pricy, but once in a while wouldn't break the bank. anyway.... she takes my order and then proceeds to slice the meat right there behind the counter. none of this.... yelling an order in fluent chinese babble to some hidden away chef who would conjur up my order. she literally reaches over, picks up a piece of barbecued pork and grabs a cleaver and begins to slice away, on a cutting board that probably doubles as part of the register.
it's only then that i sort of take in the garishness of the place. the usual painted golden buddha statue on the counter... one or two faux jade items and lots of those red lantern thingies. she's fiddling behind the counter...ladelling on some sort of sauce and adding some green vegetables. she packs my order into a box, and i grab a menu on my way out, after paying.
when i get to the break room at work...i open my meal and have a nibble. the pork was really good, and the greens....although a little bitter were tasty. the sauce was sweet with soy and probably a bit of garlic in it. then i started reading the menu, which was a good laugh.... for starters, they mis-spelled "noodle" (noodel) and mistyped "bean curd" as "bean CARD", as well as misspelling "chicken" (chichen) ...and even more embarrasingly "szechuan" (szechen)....
...and chicken was misspelled directly under where it was written in the previous line.
so for their dodgy engrish menu and crap decor i give them a 2 but for the food, which didn't make me sick and was actually worth it (ok maybe if it were $1 cheaper).... i give it a 4 out of 5.
posted by FrostilicusFrost at 12:05 am
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