Excuse me, waiter...

...There's a bug in my kung-pao chicken!!

A few nights ago, my girlfriend and I went to Chinatown Seafood in Coolidge Corner (Brookline, MA) to get some dinner. It was the night of the blizzard, so the place was nearly empty.

We ordered some soup, a seafood medley, and a plate of kung-pao chicken. After about 45 minutes, everything had come out except the chicken. Shortly thereafter, the waitress came over and annouces, "Here is your kung-pow beef!"

"Um," my girlfriend said, "I ordered kung-pao chicken, not beef." The waitress looked surprised, then slightly offended, as if to say "Of course you ordered the f--ing beef, you idiot." She took the plate back without so much as a sorry and stalked off back to the kitchen. We were pretty sure that we got the order right, since my girlfriend doesn't eat red meat. Anyhow, another 15 minutes expired, along with most of the seafood dish, until finally the waitress came back with the correct dish.

We dug into the steaming plate of chicken, vegetables and peanuts. I was muching happily on the mixture, taking small sips of my Tsing-Tao beer every now and then, when all of a sudden, I hear my girlfriend say in a low, but distressed tone, "EW... Oh ... My... God..."

Now, knowing my girlfriend can be picky about the meat she eats, I expected to look up and see her holding a questionable piece of chicken in her chopsticks. Boy, was I wrong. Instead, I looked up to find her poking at a DEAD BUG that had been mixed in with the rest of the chicken.

I've worked in restaurants before. I know that, sometimes, restaurant kitchens aren't quite as clean as you'd expect them to be. But I've never actually seen this sort of thing happen.

We signaled the waitress again. She came over and almost whisked away the plates without a second glance. We stopped her and pointed out the little creature in our food. Once again, she didn't show the slightest bit of regard for the mistake and said "Oh okay, we'll bring out another one."

When we asked about getting a discount on the check, she said "We don't normally do that. But I'll ask my manager." Right.

In the end, they offered us a 15% discount. Too tired and too nauseous to argue, we just left it at that.

Ugh. Consider yourself warned. Don't ever go over to that awful place. You might eat more than you bargained for.

-e