SOMETHING ABOUT KICKING YOUR BRAUNSCHWEIGER

It's been nearly two years since I ate there last. That time was so memorably horrid that I haven't been back. I walk by it at least once a week, but I dare not go in.
When the food is edible, the service is repellent. If the service at least sincerely means well, the cooking is somewhat on the far side of mediocre. I've tried the place often enough to know what I'm talking about, and to know better.


The only thing good is the Hong Kong style milk tea.
I'm a sucker for a really nice cup of tea.
Strong, sweet, bitter, creamy.
Served near boiling.

If the saucer wasn't awash while the waitress carried it, it will be when she has plonked it down. But it's not that she wishes to infuriate.
She's completely and genuinely oblivious.
And she really doesn't care.

And by "she", I mean all of them. Each and every member of the staff, as well as the people who own the place. For such a thoroughly miserable restaurant it is surprisingly long-lived. It's been around for years, and some of the old chumps who go there are doggedly loyal.

It was one of the very first cha-chanteng (茶餐廳) in Chinatown, and their pastry items are actually quite good. But their cooked dishes are often absurdly appalling.
I'm a white dude, and even I can do better than that. Far better. Heck, the affable Palestinian burger-flipper three blocks away could do better.
An elderly Russian bachelor boiling a pair old boots could.
Common, guys, you're supposed to be Chinese. Culinary dna flows through your veins, you nose-bleed kitchen skills.
You pride yourself on your cooking.


你嘅肝腸係壞咗。


I keep walking by, and remembering the last half cup of milk-tea I had there. I would have liked a full cup, but it had spilled into the saucer before I got it. And that saucer did not look clean.


No, shan't mention the name of the place. That's something that the scum on Yelp would do. Besides, unless you're a crusty old Toishanese fart you aren't likely to go there.
Because you already know they don't like you.
The milk-tea can't possibly be that good.
You'll get it somewhere else instead.
Without the shitty attitude.


There are, in fact, a number of places in Chinatown that do very nice Hong kong style milk-tea. Most of them unfortunately close at six o'clock, but two places within a block of the worst restaurant in Chinatown are open till eight. One is a very nice bakery that also makes a stellar Japanese-style cheesecake (日式芝士蛋糕 'yat sik ji-si daan-gou'), the other is a cha-chanteng where the boss-lady and waitresses welcome me, and are sincere and considerate to strangers.
You know, I like that.
Warmth.


YOUR HONOURABLE LIVERWURST!

By the way: the phrase in Cantonese shown above is what I heard one of the customers at the worst restaurant in Chinatown snap at the waitress.
你嘅肝腸係壞咗 'nei ge gon cheung hai waai jo'.
At least, I think that's what I heard. It means "your liverwurst is spoiled".
A baffling commentary, if I've understood it correctly. Very likely a superlatively imaginative insult that I am unfamiliar with.
But I agree. The metaphor is quite apt.
It's beyond off, it's rotten.

踢你嘅死人肝腸。




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