64 Shaftesbury Avenue
W1D 6LU
Tel: 020 7437 5088
Date of Last Visit: Friday, 29 December 2006
The Victims: K&A
The Damage: £27.40 each
The Mark Up: We paid £21 for a bottle of Hilltop Shiraz from Chalkers Crossing in Australia. (I unfortunately didn’t write down the year. I’ll get this right eventually.) Now, we’re not in Australia, but the 2003 appears to be going for $26 AUD there. That’s roughly £10.50 over here.
The Background: We were so very hungry. We had tried to have dinner at Cork & Bottle, but they were out of everything we wanted, and we (OK, maybe just me) wanted to go. So we wandered over to Chinatown for some Crispy Duck. A mentioned that he’d been to a good place about a year ago, so we headed that way.
The Starters: We quickly sent in our order for chilli and salt spareribs, chicken satay, and some vegetarian spring rolls. The food quickly arrived, and our waiter quickly disappeared. (We had still to place our orders for drinks and mains.)
The spareribs were good, but gosh darnit if they weren’t deep fried somehow. So too the chicken satay. Maybe not deep fried, but fried somehow. And the veggie spring rolls–one day, I will prove that every veggie spring roll com es from a factory in Cleveland, Ohio. Thinking of the Laureate, I imagined a big box of frozen everything somewere in the back of the restaurant. Why can’t food be fresh? When did we become some removed from our food supply? Why? Why?
The Mains: Our server finally resurfaced and we placed an order for 1/2 a crispy duck, some Kung Pao Chicken, and some fried rice. You know I love the crispy duck. I asked another server to explain the difference between crispy duck and Peking duck and she tried, and I was just not functioning and I couldn’t understand a word she said. I didn’t feel THAT bad because K&A didn’t understand either. The only part I got was that crispy duck isn’t the duck that hangs in the window. That’s Cantonese.
The End: I saw some people get orange slices, but not us.
The Verdict: Eh. I’ve had better duck.
