Beware of Menu-Pointing

Kelly and I went on a date to a self-proclaimed Korean-influenced Japanese Restaurant (a Japanese restaurant on the little Koreatown-like stretch of a street between my place and Wudaokou.) Choosing a new restaurant is always a gamble, but we get by when there are picture menus. This way with pointing and my extremely limited Chinese (a.k.a. numbers, how much, rice, I want a beer, and check), we can usually make it through a meal.

One dish that we ordered was called Chicken Oka-some-Japanese-word Style. Based on the picture, we guessed that it was chicken kabob with some flakes on top that I guessed was some sort of Korean-influenced tempura. What was set on our table was nothing like I’d ever seen. Yes, there was what could have been chicken on sticks. Wrapped around the meat was indeed flaky looking, moth-wing thin pieces of …something…and it was moving.

I feel like a horror novelist as I write that: “and it was moving, dun dun dun.” Each flake was part of a long, thin, transparent strip that had been wrapped around each skewer. They smelled oddly like bacon, but could not possibly have been, sliced as thin as they were. The dish was brought out on a sizzling pan, much like fajita meat, and at first I thought it just appeared to move because of the heat. But then they kept moving. As I watched them(it?) move and weave around, I was reminded of a video I’d seen of my friend eating live squid, whose tentacles moved with the same sweeping, curling motions. My least favorite movements are of squirmy worms, and Kel’s are of moths. How rightly then, were we served this dish of squirmy, moth-thin mysteriousness.

Eventually, the movements slowed and slowed, and finally stopped.

I have to say, it tasted damn good.