There is a ‘Chinese’ restaurant in Nantwich I got invited to recently with the remarkable name ‘Chopstix’ (no real Chinese restaurant would call themselves that so it’s quite a giveaway). Dermo probably knows it if he has been home to Nantwich recently.
The place is the type of totally crap Chinese restaurant Smallman thinks is good. Bland food in a thoroughly European style dining room. The kind of tip for people who don’t understand Chinese food at all and order all their own dishes for their own place at the table.
Anyway, the only women front of house were British/Irish. So I asked our waitress what style of Chinese food they specialise in and she said “Er, Cantonese I think”. Anyway, being the twat that I am I asked her, quite stealthily, if the head chef would come and talk to us at some point so I could talk to him about some of the dishes. She went and asked the other woman who bizarrely completely flipped out and started going “I’ve been front of house in restaurants for twenty years! If he wants to ask about any of the dishes, he can ask me!” (It was utterly bizarre and really at odds with simply asking to have a chat to the chef, which I’m sure say LT for example might do if he found himself in a Turkish restaurant outside Turkey).
So, no chance of ordering off menu, I let it go.
Later I looked up the restaurant and found, predictably, the actual owner (and probably the chefs) are Vietnamese, hence the flip-out.
