Adventures in Japan

Won't eat there again even if they are giving away collectable Pingu spoons

While we're on the topic of weird food experiences...

We ate at a Japanese Denny's the other day. Can't really say it was much like the North American Denny's, other than the food was overpriced and not very good.

If you go in there expecting breakfast, you will be sorely disappointed. Unless you go in the morning, I suppose. But even then your only western-style breakfast option is scrambled eggs, sausage & toast. No omelettes. No Grand Slams. No nuthin'. Just fish, rice & soup, and various combinations thereof. Why they bother to use the Denny's name at all is beyond me.

So. No breakfast. What did we eat then? I think Tyler had curry, which musn't have been too memorable because I don't really remember it, and I had the Pao Pao! Soup-less Tantan Noodles. Next to it on the menu was a little picture that looked something like this:


I took that to mean that the dish was spicy. "Odd choice," I thought, "Why not some chili peppers or flames or something?" As it turned out, that was almost exactly the face that I made while I choked down the noodles. They weren't awful, but they certainly weren't good. They had kind of a funky smell, like something in the sauce had gone a little off and that maybe it was going to make me sick. I ate it anyway.

The noodles came piled in the centre of a lake of chili oil & something dark, dark brown. I sensed trouble, and was being very careful not to make a mess, yet somehow I managed to splatter sauce on my shirt before I'd even had my first taste. I didn't see it happen, and neither did Tyler, but there it was, a bright orange stain on the front of my brand new shirt.

To add insult to injury, the waitress saw me trying to clean the spot off my shirt and brought me a fork and spoon because obviously I didn't have a clue how to use chopsticks. The fork & spoon combination turned out to be terribly cumbersome, but I took my time and ate very carefully (it's not hard to eat slowly when you're not enjoying the food). Tyler was about to congratulate me on not soiling myself further when he noticed another, even larger spot. Once again, neither of us saw how it got there.

That stuff was pure evil.