22 March 2024, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2319: trust the yummy duck
This post was inspired by today's 5-minute freewrite writing prompt -
22 March 2024, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2319: trust the duck
Enjoy !
The restaurant windows looked like they hadn't been washed in an age. The faded sign outside, made of golden 3-dimensional letters on a red background appeared to say "P king Ex ess". The net curtains behind the filthy glass were yellowed with age, and fraying at the edges.
"Soooo....," began Sue. The sentence was finished by Ted, her husband. "Are you sure about this. I mean, it's not exactly an upmarket joint, is it ? You've bought us to a restaurant that appears to call itself the Pee King Excess."
Frank grinned. Felicity, hanging off his arm matched the grin.
"Oh yes ! It'll be fine. As long as you avoid the sweet and sour chicken balls. And the ribs. No-one is quite sure what kind of animal they come from. The rice isn't bad, but have the plain rice, not the one with all the unidentified shellfish in. The chow mein is a little... odd... but perfectly edible."
Sue and Ted looked at each other with growing apprehension.
But then Frank waved everyone inside, to a vista of plastic chairs and tables with ancient vinyl table coverings (one could hardly call them tablecloths).
"The one thing you just have to try is their Peking Crispy Duck, with pancakes, cucumber, spring onions and hoi sin sauce. It's their signature dish, and totally out of this world. Everything else here might be a bit dodgy, but you can trust the duck."
I love Peking Duck but with pancakes?
I have a sneaking feeling that Chinese cuisine is subtly different in each country 😉 I'm sure they adapt it to whatever works there.
So here in the UK, we roll the duck up in thin pancakes with spring onion, cucumber and hoi sin sauce. But I bet it's done differently elsewhere !
We found one big difference when we visited Finland. We're used to ordering a main dish, whatever rice we want and a vegetable or two. When we were there we did that, and the waitress' eyes got bigger and bigger. Then a local leaned over from the next table and explained that we'd just ordered 10 meals for the two of us, and that what they do is order the main dish and everything else is automatically included with it. D'oh !
It's true it is different I noticed it in Germany also if it comes to Italian restaurants. Those pancakes sound like 'roti'.
Most Chinese restaurants are a mix between Chinese x Indonesian food since we Dutch are used to that type of food since hundreds of years. We are most likely not even aware of it (we isn't me). The Chinese jumped into it and with that their restaurants became our snackbars, the next takeaways.
With us dishes are served with:
Plain rice
Nasi
Bami or
Motown
And 'krupuk' and 'sambal' of course.
The only Chinese restaurant I know is in Rotterdam with completely different dishes.