| rev:text
| - Too often my enthusiasm for Chinese food detracts from my ability to say anything meaningful about the establishment.
I order, get food, eat food, rant and rave about food, find out that nobody shares my opinion of said food, rinse, repeat.
With nearly identical menus and service, I was having a hard time finding something interesting, meaningful, and most importantly funny to say about any of these places. It was starting to cramp my style, and I feared that Chinese food would prove to be the knight that slayed the mighty Jetta Dragon.
I bet you all pegged me as the unicorn type, huh.
Chen and Wok broke what could have been an otherwise endlessly repeating cycle of pointless reviews by being popular with people I knew and giving me something to criticize them for; their service.
First let me start off this review by laying down the obligatory (though not undeserved) lip service.
The food is pretty fucking fantastic. Ever since my coworkers and I discovered their menu at the bottom of our "take out menu" drawer, we've been eating that shit like it's going out of style.
Normally just the sight of steamed rice makes me flail my arms and scream in tongue, but after that spicy kung pao or house chicken hits me and my stomach balloons with burn and gas, I'm grateful that I'm not being tempted with a side of lo mein. I usually keep a shamrock mmmmmmilk nearby whenever I order anything denoted on the menu as "spicy". Once I experimented with chocolate milk.
Turns out chocolate milk and kung pao sauce get along like leather daddies and mountainbike enthusiasts; amicable yet jarringly indifferent.
Look up any takeout menu from any other Chinese place, pick five random items. C&W has it, and its fucking DELICIOUS.
The food is so good that it warrants the often mindfuckingly tedious task of dealing with the staff. For now, at least.
I admit off the bat that I have a skewed perspective. In my group of co-workers I am the official "C&W ambassador."
I can tell the difference between chow mein and lo mein so apparently that qualifies me to be a fucking interpreter of the culture.
One day not too long ago the IT department managed to pull ourselves away from Japanese Bug Fights and Star Wars done entirely in Terminal long enough to decide that we were hungry, we wanted Chinese, and that although Jetta was in no mood to be yelled at over the phone, she was a bitch and deserved it anyway.
I called in the order and was greeted by my friend Asian Lady With The Inappropriately Loud Voice, who after rushing me through my order and snapping at me when I tried to explain (for the fifth time now) where our office was located, would interrupt my giving of the credit card number by reciting numbers that in no shape, way, or form resembled the ones I gave her. You know, to keep me on my toes.
One of the people on my order really wanted chow mein with his orange chicken. Chinese restaurants' legendary personal grudge with special orders and substitutions aside, I thought that if we just asked for some on the side and not substituted for their flavorless white rice, maybe they would take advantage of the opportunity to provide something resembling customer service and make a few extra bucks.
We all know how this ends, right?
The lady argues with me for a while, and then she argues with Clarice for a while, and eventually we compromise; we have to buy A WHOLE ENTREE of chicken chow mein so our friend can eat the noodles.
Needles to say my credit card company LOVES C&W.
Perhaps to punish me for my insolence, C Dubs sends an obnoxious and easily confused driver in a bad "I'm going to community college to learn how to be a game show host" suit in lieu of our modest and very smiley normal delivery guy.
The driver refuses to park in the parking lot and instead drives in circles around the parking lot waiting for me to meet him. After I spend 6 minutes on the phone just begging him to park and wait for me, I spend another 10 waiting for him to finish his victory laps.
After botching my name once or twice (how do you get "Liberty" out of "Jetta"? They're not even made by the same manufacturer!), he hands me two plastic bags which he has TIED together (am I supposed to slump it over my shoulder hobo style?) and drives off.
Once inside, I find my entree to be so spicy it makes my nose run and my rice to be even colder and more flavorless than usual.
Hell hath no fury like a Chinese place inconvenienced.
All in all, Chen and Wok is still the Peoria-area Chinese takeout for me.
But believe me when I say I've never been so happy and excited to see the Goodcents girl walking towards our office.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)