TOP CHINESE MEAL...

BEIJING, CHINA: Going out for a restaurant meal in Beijing is one of the things I look forward to most at the end of the day, that and a nice cold beer to quench the summer thirst. There are many great restaurants to choose from which serve awesome food and there is also an equal amount of pretty ordinary restaurants lying in wait for the unsuspecting. Choosing the right one is sometimes a case of trial and error but I have a theory....PAUL LEE REPORTS...

When choosing a restaurant I try and get a recommendation from one of my Chinese colleagues or even better still, I go out to dinner with them. This is usually much safer as they can actually translate the menu more accurately than the dodgy English translation that is usually there. Upon reflection, almost exclusively, these restaurants have been simply decorated internally and externally with no garish signs.

So when I happened upon a restaurant which was painted bright red and gold, covered with the ubiquitous red lanterns and complete with bright neon signs the alarm bells should have been going off. They weren't and I was drawn almost against my will towards this beacon. The second big clue I missed was that this restaurant was named ‘Top Chinese Meal'.... but inexplicitly I could not stop myself entering.

I was ushered inside and escorted to my table for one. No sooner had I sat down when they asked if I was ready to order. I asked for a menu but was prompted to follow the waitress to an area where laid out before me was every dish the restaurant serves, and there were many. Each dish was under a see-though dome with a Chinese sign explaining the contents... there was no English translation, bad or otherwise. No-one in the restaurant spoke English either. I could sense trouble on the horizon.

When I eat Chinese food I need to know exactly what I am putting into my mouth. The Chinese do not waste any part of the animals and I generally do not eat the very outside (head, feet, claw etc.) or the very inside (heart, liver etc.) of the animal. So I take a casual cruise past the display, looking intently trying to guess at what each dish was. On my first pass I didn't recognise any of the food, this is where I should have exited (but again for some reason I stayed). On my second pass I thought I recognised a couple of things, one of which looked like vegetables and the other beef which I duly ordered together with some rice.

A very short time later my food arrived. It actually looked like the ones under the see-through domes and given it came so quickly I was tempted to go back to see if they were still there. So with great trepidation, and a cold beer on standby to wash things down, I commenced my meal. I gingerly tasted the beef. The beef I wasn't sure about so I had a couple of smaller pieces.... nah, definitely not beef.

The rice and beer ended up killing most of the taste. I didn't eat very much and I think the waitresses were concerned that the food was bad. I was trying to tell them that the food seemed ok but I didn't like the taste and I didn't know what it was. A Chinese guy dining on the next table overheard and he turned to tell me that I was eating ‘cow's lung'.... Eeeeuuuuwwww, I'm still gagging now. It sends a shiver down my spine just to think about it.

My theory about Chinese restaurants is that the quality of the meal is inversely proportional to the amount of decoration needed to entice people inside...from now on I think I will always go with a local.