CHINESE ORDER TORTURE

“It was the best of time, it was the worst of times.  Message, Spock?”

If you’re married with kids then nights out are special.  They take organisation, they take strategy, they take an arse-numbing amount of effort, and, as such, you can’t risk them on ...well risks.  When you’re young and all the world lies in front of you risking seeing a bad film is fine because the next one will be next week or so.  If the next film you see however is 3 or 4 months away, you have to be damned sure that you’re gonna like it.  

As such when good friends invite you out for a meal, friends you always have a good time with, it is an event not to be sniffed at, and so when Derek and Andrea invited us to be part of Andrea’s birthday meal with a few other friends and going to an ALL YOU CAN ENJOY Chinese buffet, it seemed like fate had just handed us a guaranteed good night on a plate, and for a set fee.  Top!

We get to the restaurant after drinks elsewhere and all 11 of us settle down for a good night.  The waitress comes over and for some reason our boisterousness seems to offend her.  Now, as anyone will tell you, I don’t like drunken rowdiness but we’re pretty fucking far from that.  Anyway we ask about the food and how the buffet here works and she informs us, curtly that...

“Any food you don’t eat you must pay for!”

“Okay” we say, but now we feel tense and that makes her tense.  As we ask further questions it becomes clear that she speaks very little English (and even less Chinese!) but we persevere and after a brief chat decide to order one of each starter.  There are 18 starters on the menu and if anyone wants to order more of a particular one then they can do just that.  So we place our order...

“Any food you don’t eat you must pay for!” 

She barks before leaving the table.  Now upon hearing that comment smarter people might have checked with her that she understood the order, but of course this isn’t some crap Dane Cook film, this is reality.  Stupid stuff like that doesn’t happen in reality.

And then the food starts arriving.

And there is plate after plate of it.  They keep bringing plates out, and it gets to a point where we think surely that is it.  There’s no more room on the table, it’s got to be it.  But it’s not.  The last thing to arrive are two small baskets of pancakes.  Yes, she interpreted the order as 18 of each starter ...each!  The faces of the people at the table are a picture.  We look like we are on stage at an eating contest we were unaware we were entered into, and the worst thing is whatever we leave we have to pay for!  We are gobsmacked that such a disaster should befall us to spoil the evening.

But then something else happened.

We all suddenly became very British. Winston Churchill didn’t give up, David Beckham and Steven Gerrard didn’t give up in those Champions League finals and did Darius give up during Pop Idol ...No! (And now he’s married to Natasha Henstridge.  If life is saying anything there it’s that life LOVES a trier!)  And so we set out on a Herculean task to demolish the food, and at first we’re mad, we’re mad as hell.  We are officially eating ANGRY!  

“Can’t believe they’ve done this” “Cheeky Bastards!”    “Are you leaving a tip?”

“I’m not leaving a tip!” “They can fuck off!” “Unbelievable!”

“Yeah, I’ll leave them a tip, don’t bring out 198 fucking starters!”

And as 1 plate goes and then another and we realise that there are still a ton of plates left the entire situation becomes ridiculous!  One of the 11 drops out early as he claims he doesn’t like spicy food leaving the rest of us to attempt to eat more, which we valiantly do (Once more unto the plate, dear friends!)  The food is going down but after about five plates we are already starting to feel bloated and at this point it gets funny.  The ridiculousness of the situation really hits home and as much as we are trying to eat we also increasingly laughing.  We get to about ten plates down and there’s still eight plates left but we’re halfway in.  WE CAN DO THIS NOW!

We keep on chomping down and somehow another four plates eventually go.  Now it’s the last four, and, as funny as we’ve found it so far, it now gets really stupid.  Basically we’re full to fucking bursting but we don’t want to pay for the extra food.  So where we have thigh bones and ribs we stars hiding food underneath.  Yes, it wasn’t big and it wasn’t clever but   we did.  Eventually, due to what look like huge stacks of bones the plates look less like plates and more like the Wampa cave in The Empire Strikes Back.  Somehow the final plate falls, well, becomes empty, you get the idea, and we sit back, not so much out of relaxing but because we’re simply unable to sit forwards anymore.

At this stage the night had descended into an absolute riot, I cannot remember a time during a meal when I have laughed more.  It was a terrible situation to get in but, not just by pitching in together, but also by the strength of the company we had, it turned into a great night.

At the end of the evening, in spite of everything we did leave a tip (Mr “I Don’t like spicy food” then ordered a curry which pissed me off but there you go) and that was that.  

And the moral of the story?  None that I am conscious of, except of course happy birthday ...surely the best of times.