Text 4389, 80 rader
Skriven 2006-08-16 07:30:28 av DAVE SACERDOTE (1:123/140)
Ärende: Picnic Day 2 (Sat.2)
============================
Saturday night was at the Hu Ke Lau Polynesian/Cantonese restaurant in
Chicopee MA for their triple lobster special and hokey "Polynesian" 
stage show.

Attending (in no particular order):
Dale & Gale Ship
Joan MacDiarmid
Manny Rothstein
Michael Loo
Burt & Shirley Ford
Dave, Maryanne, and Lynn Sacerdote
Lynn Sacerdote (my Mom)
Carol & Cindy Grandmont-Beaudine (friends of mine from glassworking)

The restaurant used to bring out bowls of crispy fried noodles with
duck sauce to munch while waiting for the meals to come from the
kitchen.  I found this to no longer be the case, but ordered them
anyway for old times sake.  Scanty little bowls.  I bet I could have
brought my own can of LaChoy noodles for about a quarter of the 
price.  Oh well, plus ca change, eh?

Most of us ordered the triple lobster special, which was a decent
deal at about $30.00 a head.  Softshell lobsters (best for the group,
I guess, because they're easy to shuck) but they were all a decent 
size - mostly between 1.25 and 1/5 pounds.  They were served with
some crispy-cooked stir-fried green beans (not too bad if you ate
them hot, pretty offputting cold) and small cups of Hu Ke Lau's own
pork fried rice, which is the PFR I grew up on.  I still favor the
taste, though the rice that came with our meals was a little drier
than usual and was lacking the sprinkling of veggies and egg that
they normally dress the stuff with.  Fries could be substituted if
desired; I think a couple of people did.

Of those who did not order the triple lobster:

Michael ordered garlic spare ribs (good flavor, a little dry,
could have been more interesting if they were meatier) and 
salt-and-pepper calamari (nicely done, included tentacles, but
which turned limpid and a little greasy-tasting when they got
cool.)  Somehow, he also got talked into getting an order of pork
lo mein by the waitress.  Hu Ke Lau's lo mein is pretty good
stuff, but the portions of the cheap things like lo mein and
rice are enormous and this was no exception.  He had the majority
of the portion boxed for carryout.

Joan ordered a scallop/vegetable special with which she seemed
very happy.  She encouraged Lynn The Younger, who sat next to her,
to help herself to the ample broccoli in the dish, which Lynn
gladly did (broccoli being one of her favorite veggies.)

Carol G-B is a pescovegetarian; she ordered sea bass on a bed of
julienned vegetables and enjoyed it a great deal.  Cindy G-B 
ordered a kind of chicken dish, the name of which escapes me, but
it was served with a conical tower of sticky rice.

Lynn ordered a pupu platter (spare ribs, chicken wings, chicken
fingers, tempura shrimp, teriyaki beef, egg roll, all decent except
for the egg roll which is spectacular - they don't buy them frozen,
Hu Ke Lau makes them right there) and lo mein.  She took a lot of
it home, too.

Interesting note: Even the non-lobsterizers got tastes and tidbits
here and there if they wished.  People at my end of the table were 
passing me their lobster bodies because they don't eat them, and
people at Michael's end of the table were passing theirs to him.
So I shelled out some of my claws and passed them along to Lynn and
the G-B's.  I noticed Michael doing the same with his.

No mention of the Hu Ke Lau is complete without telling of the stage
show.  I read Michael's description of it the other day, and he pretty
much hit it on the nose, so I won't bother with a bunch of details.
It's enjoyably campy and completely cheesy, and lots of fun but about
as representative of Polynesian culture as Leave It To Beaver is of
American culture. [g]


---
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, 
minutus carborata descendum pantorum
 * Origin: Try Our Web Based QWK: DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)