The Tea Is Only Two Days Old...

The Tea Is Only Two Days Old...

By Gloria Faye Brown Bates/aka Granny Gee

I don't believe it... I shake my head and look at Skip.  There's something not right... this is a Chinese restaurant.  This is the first time I've eaten at a Chinese restaurant that did this!  We have eaten in many, many of them all over the United States.

The waiter brought our bowls of wonton soup in pretty spring-green bowls sitting on spring-green saucers.  It was so hot... I love hot food.  We knew we were going to enjoy it.....

What the heck.... something's not right about those wontons!  I begin to cut them apart to see what was different.  Do you know what?  The wontons didn't have any meat filling in them!  The soup didn't have any scallions... also, I suspected they used broth to make the soup.

Skip and I began drinking from the glasses of tea the waiter brought... oh my God.  The tea was 'spoiled', it tasted awful.  We got the attention of the girl waiting tables, asked her to bring us a drink instead, we couldn't drink the tea.

The girl smelled the tea, she said it smelled awful.  She told another waitress.  She came to the table to tell us that the tea wasn't good, she brought drinks to us.

She also, talked to us.  She said the tea was 'just made on Tuesday', it shouldn't be spoiled today (Thursday).  I don't know about you... I don't drink tea that is two days old.

We talked to the male waiter... I asked him 'why' there wasn't pork meat filling in the wontons.  He said he didn't know, he'd been there for six months and they served the wonton soup like that.

We asked him 'why' couldn't we order 'shrimp chow mein'... he said they'd quit making that dish just before he came.  He had no idea 'why' the wonton soup was like it was, 'why' they didn't make shrimp chow mein now.  He said that they were told to use one tea bag to make the tea like that... and two days wasn't too long to keep it.

We did enjoy the dishes we ordered... so, all wasn't lost.  When we paid for our meal, the woman at the register asked us how was everything.  I decided to tell her the truth in a nice way... well, she became defensive, wanted to argue with me saying that really the tea was good, it was only two days old.

I wasn't going to let that escalate into something ugly... I told her that she shouldn't argue with a customer whenever they tried to tell her about their dining experience.... especially after she'd asked them.  We paid her, left the restaurant.

Needless to say... we won't go back to that restaurant again.  It's a beautiful restaurant... for some time now, things have changed there.  Things such as the waitresses walking outside the glass doors to smoke, come back in and go to someone's table, pick up glasses they are drinking from ... to take them to refill them.  No one had thought of .... simply washing their hands first.  I'm always the one to see such things as this.

Once we went there for lunch, our waitress said she'd just gotten there.  Her clothes were really dirty... like maybe she had worn them the last time she worked.  They were also, wrinkled.

We've given the restaurant a lot of chances... this was the last today.  There were more things I haven't mentioned, I don't think there's any need to.

Goodbye Chinese restaurant... we didn't see any Chinese people working in there... maybe that's 'why' a lot of things.  Who ever heard of a Chinese restaurant serving wonton soup without meat filling in the wontons... not making shrimp chow mein?

I have to say this much... it's sometimes hard to find good tea in a lot of Chinese restaurants... so, that didn't bother us.