"You should go to the new restaurant," he says, while on the phone to someone else.
They've built a Western restaurant (we'll examine this concept soon) on the ground floor of our building, with space for a bar/ library/ souvenir shop - rumours abound - as well. Today was the opening day, and the laowai teachers had been invited as honorary guests to test the food, for free, and offer advice to the chef.
"For lunch? What time shall we go?" Anna asks Morning.
"Eleven Thirty."
"Oh, so now then." I reply, thinking it's a bit early and I only got up 15 minutes ago.
"No, you should wait some minutes." For what is unclear, and not important, so we head straight down.
The Riuerside Western Restaurant - this is NOT a typo, on my part at least - is underneath the apartments at our end of the building. Part of the restaurant is underneath our living room, so I'm hoping I'll get wireless reception down there when they fix the bloody internet... Nobody else seems concerned about the spelling mistake on the three foot tall signs. I'm obviously not normally a stickler for spelling, and I particularly like some of the other Chinglish botches around campus, but when there are 30 Anglophones living in the building above the restaurant, who are in China to teach English, a typo as big as RiUerside on our doorstep is a bit too much to stomach.
As is the food. It just kept coming. We must have had eight courses. It started with hot water - how very Western, eh? - which was laced with plaster dust as th builders left this morning. Coffee followed, in a reversal of Western dining traditions, with popcorn and then spicy tomato and pork soup. Then T-Bone steak and (seven, count them) chips, with peppercorn sauce. This was actually pretty good, although the steak and been sufficiently well walloped as to taste more like burger-on-the-bone.
Spicy chicken (cold, with skin on), spicy pork (cold) with pak choi, garlicky celery, hawaiian pizza with prawns and meatballs covered in rice all followed and filled us all up. It was strange to be eating with knives and forks too! The food was actually quite tasty, but flicking through the menu it looks very pricey - I won't be going there with my students - and there are some very suspect Western meals on offer: fancy a whole turtle, on a plate, head and all, drenched in tomato sauce?
The chef was then came out to enthusiastically ask for comments and advice. We tried to convey the idea of English Breakfast, Anna drew a picture and Morning translated, but the idea faltered when it turned out that they don't have baked beans in China. Importing these may make a small fortune...
The Riuerside is apparently opening 10.30-22.00 which is quite cool - it serves beer, very suspect Chinese red wine and 60% proof baiju, the Chinese traditional let's-get-smashed drink used for toasting people you want to see be sick. So it'll be a nice place for a quiet drink at night, and won't cause too much noise below the flat every night, I'm sure...
And who knows what they could ever need a souvenir shop here for...