I’m quite looking forward to our rapidly approaching trip to Taiwan to visit my wife’s parents, but there’s just one area that really bothers me… but things are looking up this time.
That area? The Toilet Paper dilemma.
The details may not be for everyone. Only read on if you dare…
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I’ve been digging through the old archives and found this, my December 1988 review of the Sylvester McCoy story, The Happiness Patrol, published originally in the TARDIS Index File. I’ve resisted the urge to edit it.
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I was on my own for lunch today, so I sallied forth to a place that recently opened up near my office, the Pita Jungle, which has taken over the spot that was once occupied by the now-defunct Off-The-Grill.
Since Off-The-Grill was configured for an order at the counter and sit down in one of the 5 tables, I was surprised that they’d managed to greatly increase the seating area and was a proper “sit down†restaurant. They had both inside and outside seating and Arizona’s total smoking ban that went into effect yesterday means there wasn’t a bad seat in the house; however, I chose to sit inside since it reached 103º this past weekend.
My first sign that this might not be my typical “I love any kind of flatbread with grilled meat on it†experience was when I noticed the menu said, “Natural Healthful Vegetarian Cuisine.†I was mortified, but I remembered a review over at FeastingInPhoenix.com that clearly mentioned gyros and chicken, so this is some new “loose†definition of the word “vegetarian†that I was not previously aware of. I am gratified to know that, by that same definition, McDonald’s is also a “vegetarian†restaurant.
A quick check of the menu revealed that all was well, there were beef, chicken and seafood dishes on the menu.
I chose the Mediterranean Roasted Chicken (Shawarma) because I’d never met a Shawarma I didn’t like. It was only $5.75 and was described as “Grilled marinated chicken breast in a pita, with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, garlic sauce and tahini.†A Dr. Pepper was $2.25, which is just outrageous!
When the pita arrived (sans tomato, at my request) it looked wonderful: chock full of fine looking chunks of grilled chicken and slathered down with the garlic and tahini sauces.
One of the pieces of chicken had fallen off the top and had not come in contact with the sauce. I picked it up, popped it into my mouth and discovered something truly unique: I had finally met a shawarma I didn’t like. It wasn’t quite repulsive, per se, but it had an odd, unpleasant flavor in the spicing. I was glad that the pita had plenty of sauce to mask the flavor of the chicken.
Another weird thing: the pita wasn’t fresh. You’d think a place named “Pita Jungle†would at least serve fresh pitas.
Time to come clean, somehow, of all the various Mediterranean and Middle Eastern sauces I’ve eaten (and enjoyed) I must have never had tahini before. My apologies to fans of tahini, but it is repulsive. I could barely choke my meal down. It was only the unlimited refills of my massive over-priced Dr. Pepper that got me through 3/4 of the pita before I gave up and cut my loses.
It’s hard to describe the tahini sauce, it reminded me of nothing more than having my pita covered in hummus. I do not like hummus. Luckily, it did not look like hummus, which has all the culinary visual appeal of the contents of my son’s diapers. Turns out tahini is actually one of the major ingredients in hummus. Well, live and learn, I can’t blame Pita Jungle for my ignorance of the clearly-labelled ingredients, but it did make for a memorably bad-tasting meal.
Apologies to hummus and tahni fans.
I can’t blame them for my personal dislike of the toppings, but what I can blame them for is what happened next.
My bill was $8.65 and I was paying with cash, which I rarely do, and I put a $10 in the bill holder. (Has that little black fold over thing got a proper name?) My plan was the use the change to tip my waitress who, despite my dislike of the food, was attentive, pleasant and efficient. $8.65 * 15% = $1.30 and since the change was to be $1.35, that seemed perfectly equitable to me.
The problem is, I never communicated that to my waitress. She came and got that nameless black folder over thing and my $10 and took it back to the register. I could see her in the large mirror that dominates one wall. I saw her ring up the amount, put the $10 in the register, take the $1.35 change out, put it in her pocket and then returned that nameless black fold over thing to the pile for reuse.
She’s lucky my wife wasn’t there because there’d have been blood running down the aisles if she’d seen her take the liberty to decide that must have been her tip. The fact that I was fully planning on giving her the change is not an acceptable excuse. She couldn’t possibly have known that, and there are those (my wife included) who would go so far as to say that was outright theft.
Nonetheless, between the not-fresh pita, the odd-flavored chicken, over-priced soft drinks and the inexcusable behavior of the staff, (and not because of the revolting tahini sauce) Pita Jungle is forever off my list of restaurants. Maybe they just had a bad day, but that kind of screw-up prevents me from giving them a “I should try them twice to be fair†visit.
This constituted one of the three memorably bad meals I’ve had in my life. The last being in about 1986 at the Two Pesos, a once-popular mexican (thankfully now-defunct) food place near ASU, which just goes to show that college students really have no taste and a little mom and pop Mexican food place in Las Cruces, New Mexico sometime back in the early 1970’s that was actually able to screw up a bean tostada by, I can only assume, not cleaning the dirt off the beans before cooking them.
I never forget these things.
I’m disheartened though that there was a long line of sheeple waiting to get into the restaurant for lunch. I’m afraid they won’t go out of business fast enough at this rate.
Pita Jungle
4340 E Indian School Rd
Phoenix AZ
Not recommended.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Phoenix, Restaurant, Review
The View from Taiwan => A Pinch of Fate
Never let it be said that I passed up an opportunity to mock another culture…
Every time I pinch my wife’s cute little nose she says, “Don’t! My nose will get longer!†Never mind that she’s a college graduate with an above average intelligence, this is one of the weird cultural things around our house I just don’t understand.
Now it’s beginning to make sense… link, with picture.
There’s a strong Taiwanese folk belief that the shape of the nose can be changed simply by pinching it. In local society a long straight nose is preferred, with the result that the childhoods of many local women saw periodic torture with clothespins and other devices to lengthen out a beautiful pug nose. Like my wife.
Here an intrepid company has capitalized on this belief by offering a specialized nose pincher, a “nose lengthener.†The original price was $250, but it’s on special for $199. Use just 5-10 minutes per day, while driving, reading, watching TV… Very convenient! And you can use it with any nose.
After the devastatingly cold winter freeze we had, both Michelle and James’ trees appeared to have been wiped out.
Recently, though, Michelle’s tree has been showing a strong surge of new growth.
I’ve tried pruning some of the old, dead branches off and am really unsure if I should finish cleaning up the top area. These particular trees is a ficus nitida (Indian Laurel Fig) and apparently, all I can do it wait for spring (it’s here, yeah!) and see which branches can spring forth new growth.
James’ tree, on the other hand, is only showing a few leaves forming on the main trunk. Maybe, just maybe, some of those can turn into new branches.
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Postponed!
As this is a two-parter, I’ll reserve the review until next week.
But I’ll leave you with just a couple observations…
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With our upcoming trip to Taiwan planned for June, I decided it was time to upgrade our secondary camera.
Normally I use my Canon DSLR for most of my photography, but that’s just not always convenient to haul around. Chu-Wan’s got our old Sony Cybershot, which is a lot more portable, but it’s now 6 years old and beginning to wear out.
Based on a lot of reading on Steve’s Digicams I decided that a Canon SD600 was a good fit for us. Very small, decent picture quality and, most important, fast on startup. I can’t tell you how many pictures we missed because of the slow startup on the Sony. (My Canon, like most DSLRs, has a near instantaneous startup.)
Just as I was getting ready to order it, the next generation, the SD1000 came out and since it was basically the same camera with slightly higher megapixels, higher ISO capability and some other technological improvements (for roughly the same price) I decided to go with it.
I ordered it on the 14th from Amazon.com and was amazed that it shipped the same day.
So here’s the problem, I’m tracking the package and this is what I get:
Shipment Date: April 14, 2007
Destination: PHOENIX, AZ, USA
Estimated Arrival: May 2, 2007
It shipped from Wilmington OH. Google says thats 1,893 miles by road and can be driven in 1 day, 3 hours.
DHL will apparently take 18 days.
That’s 105 miles per day.
I’ve ridden further in a single day on a bicycle. That’s slower than the Pony Express back in 1860.
I’m glad I didn’t wait until May to order this, it might not arrive before we left the country.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Commentary
Ben Elton is one of my favorite comedians, but let’s face it, he’s an aging lefty in a changing world…
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Martha’s joy ride continues…
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Life on Mars is gone. The final episode aired this week.
It’s past 2 in the morning and I’m wide wake. I’m wide awake partly because of how disturbed I am about the final episode. I did not like it and I will say no more about it so as not to spoil it for anyone else.
Perhaps we could say it is a credit to the writers that they have been able to produce a compelling drama series that could both draw me in and, ultimately, deeply disturb me.
While the adventures of Sam Tyler in 1973 have come to an end, immediately after the airing of the final episode, this BBC press release announces a sequel series, Ashes to Ashes starring Philip Glenister as DCI Gene Hunt, now transplanted to the 1980s in London.
I’m already questioning how they’re going to end this one.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Television, UK, Video