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Princeton is an Ivy League town, with presumably ivy league tastes. It is host to innumerable eateries of exceptional quality. Even the dives are often above average. There are, of course, exceptions.
I've eaten at way too many places that believe ambiance will make up for culinary incompetence. If a restaurant is in a nice area or has expensive tablecloths and a couple of salad forks, people seem unwilling to point out that the food came from a can. The show makes diners uncertain; it's nice, how can the food be bad, it must just be my uncultured palate.
Princeton has a problem, their Chinese food tastes like road kill. I have never, ever, had good Chinese in Princeton. Today, attempt number three since we noticed the trend of mediocre middle kingdom meals in the area, confirmed the failing.
It smelled good, the aroma of hot peanut oil drew us there. It is a nice place, full of patrons, smiling staff, comfortable seating, and... dim sum! Luck day, I love dim sum. The cart was making the rounds, I flagged it with high hopes.
The first little dish they showed me had chicken feet. While not my favorite, it's usually a good sign; Americans rarely touch them, so they must have some Asian clientèle. I picked the mostly familiar; shrimp shu mai, shrimp dumplings(har gau), a little leaf wrap thing (Lo mai gai). These are dim sum staples and a good way to judge the place.
First, so I don't repeat this too often, everything came from a frozen bag. Nothing was fresh, all the noodle wraps were gummy and unevenly steamed. I realized later the steamer cart wasn't even steaming. They didn't even feel the need to try!
The shu mai looked like little shotgun shells; they might have been scared by shrimp, I was scared. The har gau did have some shrimp, they tasted like fishy paste animal crackers.
The lo mai gai, inedible. This food consists glutinous rice around chicken and other. The other is stuff like mushrooms and sausage. These are mostly shrooms, which is bad. The rice is wrapped in a leaf that can be lotus, banana, grape, anything that's big enough to hold contents and take steam. These weren't steamed, the leaf was burnt! The flavor of scorched leaf permeated the thing. Sometimes black tea is thrown in the steamer to give these a slight tanic flavor and offset any odd flavors from the leaf. This wasn't tea smoke gone mad, it was food prep gone wrong.
They had bubble tea. I love bubble tea. Again, I ordered the baseline, black tea. It came from a mix, they added ice, the tapioca was parsimonious, there was powdered milk that congealed. It was the worst example of this drink I've ever seen.
Ultimately, we were laughing. It was so very, very bad it was almost unbelievable. People around us were ordering with gusto, some apparently regulars. Other craptasic Chinese in Princeton had the same phenomena, bad food and enthusiastic customers. It is a mystery, but one not worth pursuing.
I've eaten at way too many places that believe ambiance will make up for culinary incompetence. If a restaurant is in a nice area or has expensive tablecloths and a couple of salad forks, people seem unwilling to point out that the food came from a can. The show makes diners uncertain; it's nice, how can the food be bad, it must just be my uncultured palate.
Princeton has a problem, their Chinese food tastes like road kill. I have never, ever, had good Chinese in Princeton. Today, attempt number three since we noticed the trend of mediocre middle kingdom meals in the area, confirmed the failing.
It smelled good, the aroma of hot peanut oil drew us there. It is a nice place, full of patrons, smiling staff, comfortable seating, and... dim sum! Luck day, I love dim sum. The cart was making the rounds, I flagged it with high hopes.
The first little dish they showed me had chicken feet. While not my favorite, it's usually a good sign; Americans rarely touch them, so they must have some Asian clientèle. I picked the mostly familiar; shrimp shu mai, shrimp dumplings(har gau), a little leaf wrap thing (Lo mai gai). These are dim sum staples and a good way to judge the place.
First, so I don't repeat this too often, everything came from a frozen bag. Nothing was fresh, all the noodle wraps were gummy and unevenly steamed. I realized later the steamer cart wasn't even steaming. They didn't even feel the need to try!
The shu mai looked like little shotgun shells; they might have been scared by shrimp, I was scared. The har gau did have some shrimp, they tasted like fishy paste animal crackers.
The lo mai gai, inedible. This food consists glutinous rice around chicken and other. The other is stuff like mushrooms and sausage. These are mostly shrooms, which is bad. The rice is wrapped in a leaf that can be lotus, banana, grape, anything that's big enough to hold contents and take steam. These weren't steamed, the leaf was burnt! The flavor of scorched leaf permeated the thing. Sometimes black tea is thrown in the steamer to give these a slight tanic flavor and offset any odd flavors from the leaf. This wasn't tea smoke gone mad, it was food prep gone wrong.
They had bubble tea. I love bubble tea. Again, I ordered the baseline, black tea. It came from a mix, they added ice, the tapioca was parsimonious, there was powdered milk that congealed. It was the worst example of this drink I've ever seen.
Ultimately, we were laughing. It was so very, very bad it was almost unbelievable. People around us were ordering with gusto, some apparently regulars. Other craptasic Chinese in Princeton had the same phenomena, bad food and enthusiastic customers. It is a mystery, but one not worth pursuing.