Mandarin Kitchen

For dinner I first endeavored to eat at the Texas BBQ restaurant that I had seen on my way to work. After a route that a kind person might have called innovative and any other would have called stupid, I had arrived. My worst fears were realized when I saw the sign prominently displayed on the counter that read “cash only.” I was completely out of cash and therefore out of luck. As I continued home I passed several strip malls and on a whim pulled into one of them. I was searching for a restaurant that would give me food in exchange for brief possession of a plastic card. I arrived at the Mandarin Kitchen and ordered the orange chicken. I sat waiting for my meal listening to a playlist that was mostly made up of heartfelt Chinese ballads, but that also contained Greenday’s “Wake Me up When September Ends.” Huh? The food was given to me in a brown paper bag inside of a plastic bag, so it was not until I got home that I actually saw what I had ordered.

Sometimes Chinese restaurants include a large amount of vegetables in their meat dishes, and while that probably would have made my mother happier, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this serving was all meat. With a large container of chicken I was sure to have plenty in the event it tasted good and plenty in the event it tasted bad. This chicken unfortunately fell on the side of the latter. It was neither low quality meat nor over fried, but I would say that the rice had substantially more flavor than the chicken. In a restaurant authentic enough to have Chinese on the menu I have no clue as to how they got away with serving food so bland. Maybe I just picked the wrong dish or maybe some people around here just can’t handle flavor. The fortune of “you will be coming into a fortune,” rounded out the meal by adding a tasteless prediction to tasteless food.