Earlier this week, Patrick found out that the Far East Cafe had reopened, which we were pretty excited about - it was the site of our first "date" way back when. It was quite possibly my first time ever in a Chinese restaurant (I led a very sheltered life!). I was about 18, I guess, and pretty much had never been anywhere or done anything. Anyway, we read this review, and it kind of changed our minds: we were interested in seeing the reopened restaurant (it's been closed for several years now), but we weren't that jazzed about the descriptions of the food. So we thought we would try the other restaurant mentioned in that review, the New Formosa Cafe, but they were closed. It was hard to tell if they were just closed today, or forever. We turned around and drove back to Little Tokyo and decided to try the Chop Suey Cafe.
All I remember from that first date is that I was impressed with the restaurant's cool little private booths, and that we ordered hot sake, which I, of course, had never had before. Patrick thought he remembered what we ordered on our date, but I didn't. After that dinner all those years ago, we went to a Japanese animation store, which Patrick used to be really into, and then drove around Hollywood in his big white truck, laughing at all the hair-band fans milling about, in their spandex and big hair, on Sunset Boulevard.
Anyway, our dinner tonight was pretty disappointing. I ordered the barbecue pork, and Patrick had the house salad and chop suey. We also ordered some egg rolls, but were told by our waiter that they were out of them. It was a Saturday night, and there were only about 4 customers in the whole place, so I wondered at what point in the night they had run out of egg rolls, and just how long it takes to make them. I don't know, it just didn't seem like a good sign.
Our waiter was nice enough, but he brought out the dishes in totally random order, and only when he was refilling our water glasses sometime after we'd already been served, did he ask if we wanted some white rice, which sort of seems like the obvious acompaniment to this meal. And we said that we would like some white rice, and by replying in the affirmative, we kind of expected that we would actually receive some.
Stupid us.
Without the egg rolls, our food consumption was pretty light, so after we left there, we decided to check out Weiland Brewery, which is right up the street. Patrick just went there with his friend A.D. and really liked their garlic fries. And he was right - their garlic fries were pretty good. I had that beer I've been craving (they carried Fat Tire Ale, which we first tasted, if you remember, on our trip to Denver), and it all successfully cleared from our mouths the taste of that bad first dinner.
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