Spontaneous Orgasm

This past Thursday evening dinner choice was Little Village, located on Smith Street, downtown. A mid sized eatery for the area. Chinese food, Fabio was hard pressed to give it a style. When we arrived, it was fairly crowded, a little unexpected as past visits have been pretty quiet. Interior decor is a bit unusual, it seems the thought was to make it feel like you’re eating outside in a “little village”, in the comfort of airconditioning. It does give it a bit of a theme park aura. There’s a little faux oriental style bridge leading to a double door facade seperating the farther dining area. We were half expecting some kung fu fightin to break out and some various martial stunt man to come crashing through the round window.

Anyway, on to the food. As is common for somewhere like this, we  go family style and order Monoglian beef, seafood noodle, and the spicy steamed fish. Dave started of by ordering an iced milk tea. Warning, it seems you’ll be batting 50/50 on this. His first instance, he ordered a milk coffee, and found himself with a milk tea. He enjoyed it so much he orders that exclusively now, but now it seems half the time gets iced coffee, which is what he found himself with this time. The ticket from their computerized POS system even prints it out, go figure.  

The Mongolian beef is pretty festively red, not quite local kine char chiu red. Sweet, tangy and tasty. I thought it could have been tenderer, and pepperier, but they were meaty. I like chinese parsley so I liked it here.

We decided since ordering noodles, to forgo the rice. Rice is for when you run out of the good stuff and have to fill up the rest space, right? Although in Japan rice holds a high spot as a symbol of prosperity. Taxes were paid in rice. Rice was precious, if you were struggling and poor, you’d be lucky to have it and would not waste a grain. Anyway, I get distracted. We chanced the seafood noodles, Fabio does get an allergic reaction to shrimp sometimes. He’s fine here, the shrimp are clean and good quality, as is all the other ingredients. The preparation is likewise good, all cooked to the right doneness. This is a definite winner, we’d order it again.

The steamed fish is a known quantity. It’s one of our must gets and resides on their regular menu, happy happy! Steamed white fish, generously covered in green onions, chopped garlic, red pepper. Spicy! Delicious!

At this point, we come to a decision. It looks like we haven’t had enough as we all look at each other and ask if we should order another dish. Fabio states that he feels a bit vegetable deficient. The meal has been a little light on vegetables, just what was in the noodles. So the suggestion was put up to look at the vegeterian section. Browsing the menu earlier, the tofu with bamboo fungus had perked our interst. What is bamboo fungus? Dave correctly figured this dish also wouldn’t be very heavy on the veggies either, but what the heck, it sounded interesting. What we discovered were sections of tubes of a netlike material, and an occasional more solid nugget. The theorey was that the nugget was the cap of the fungus, and the netlike stuff was a veillike thing. It was quite wonderful, the netty tubes were perfect for soaking up and holding sauce like a sponge, and yet the fungus had a nice crunch. One of those great contrasts of textures.

Now we are pretty happy, but Fabio and I have got space for dessert. Fabio tries for a Pink something or another, but they’re out, so we both do the mango pudding. It’s actually pretty light and refreshing. I had this last time, I’ll have to remember to try something else next time.

Oh yeah, of course the next day, the Google topic was bamboo fungus. It’s actually a variety of stinkhorn. Phallus indusiatus. Yes, that phallus, go look at images and you’ll immediately see the resemblance. That’s probably why there, ahem, arose the thought listed in wiki that the odor of it can induce spontaneous orgasims among females. Supposedly there is someone in medical field who did a study on it. I dunno, none of us are equiped with the proper equipment, none of us experienced any of that kind of happy ending.

Lack of orgasmic dining experience aside, we give 3.5 of four happy monkeys. The only shortcoming I can see is for people expecting heaping mounds of food to gorge themselves on. You don’t get that kind of quantity, but it was quite satisfying for us.