Wine with Dinner?

I scheduled a dinner out with our American guys and some of our local Chinese Team. I wanted to go to Little Mao’s (aka: The Bald-Headed Friend) for some good old fashioned snake and such, and thought I might need some language help, so Bill Zhong and Andy Jiang went with us.

Josh (the American with me) hadn’t had a dinner of this, um, variety, so he was cautiously looking forward to this only because I hadn’t steered him wrong yet on our other meals.

Bill decided it was up to me to order without any help, so when the waitress came over, I got started. Most of the menu has pictures so pointing to the snek (that’s the way Bill pronounces snake) was easy. Of course the waitress asked something and was using her fingers to indicate 1, 2, 3 which I guessed meant either “1, 2, or 3 sneks” or possibly “small, medium, or large size” so I said 3. She replied “How Da” (OK) so I had guessed correctly (which Bill confirmed). Then she asked another question that I had absolutely no idea what she was asking and couldn’t guess because there were no hand motions, or body language to give me a hint. Bill just smiled and said “Figure it out.” Since he wasn’t going to help me I just said “How Da” (OK) figuring I had a 50% chance of getting it right. Turns out, I guessed right. But Bill wouldn’t tell me what I agreed to so who knows where that was going to go.

The balance of the ordering went along those same lines. I point. She says OK. She asks a question, I guess an answer, repeat. Bill did help out on one item. It was a sweet potato paste cake (about the size of a large cookie) surrounded/wrapped in a green tea leaf paste material with some sesame seeds sprinkled on it. Served warm. It was really good and I’m not a sweet potato guy.

The snek was delicious. Not too spicy (based on my observations) but Josh was sweating pretty good. The best part of snek is getting the big bowl of noodles dumped into the snek sauce at the end. Best noodles you ever put in your mouth.

Anyway, the waitress disappeared and re-appeared later in her street clothes ready to go partying but as she was leaving, she was talking to an older woman (I assume wife of the Bald Headed Man Owner) and doing that girly “Hair Flick” thing and we were watching her do this and I, of course, had to mimick her (with my somewhat balding head of hair). The older woman saw this and pointed it out to the young girl who was very embarrassed and everyone had a good laugh from across the room.

Meanwhile, as is customary, when the dinner crowd begins to wind down the family who own the restaurant and the hired help all sit down together for their dinner. Now the Bald Headed Man settled into his usual place at the large table in the corner as all of their food arrived (think gangster in corner table in old movies). He had decided to relax with a good bottle of wine for his dinner. And what a bottle it was. The largest bottle of wine I have ever seen. The cork had to be 1.5 inches in diameter and the cork screw was the size of a small football. It took all of the strength the poor kid who was opening it possessed.

We got this picture with Josh so he could send home to his wife and tell her we had a quiet dinner out with just one small bottle of wine.

I need to find this for Elise to take to the beach with us!  I wonder if maybe then Elise and Lucia can have a bottle last more than a day?