Out for duck

This evening we went to American Peking in Wan Chai for some Peking Duck. Well, I'm vegetarian, so I went to watch my friends eat duck, while I had rice and bean curd. Yeah, that's living alright.

American Peking is easy to find because it has an enormous neon sign outside. Then again, all the dodgy bars down Lockhart Road have enormous neon signs outside. American Peking also has a board by the front door of everyone who has made a booking. That wouldn't work so well at the other bars, unless you wanted to see that Mr Smith is having a joyless handjob and Mr Smith (unrelated) is drinking expensive beer and talking to a nice lady who wants to be bought a drink.¹

Then again, it shows a certain trust that people won't just walk up to American Peking, pick the first name off the board and pretend to have made a reservation already. I wonder if that happens very often.

American Peking is on two floors: downstairs is usually better than upstairs, because there's less tables at ground level and upstairs seems to be where they keep the oldest, deafest and most doddery waiters. Although we had a grumpy guy serving us downstairs this evening, he was the exception. A gloomy faced exception, an exception apparently disgusted by anyone who ate duck, but an exception nonetheless. And food did arrive quickly, whereas upstairs you're never quite sure when it will appear, or if the waiter even noticed your order.

There's a fair amount of food, and as the name suggests, it's Chinese food American style. Or so I'm told. I've never had Chinese food in America, so I wouldn't know. There's deep fried prawns, like small seafood-related doughnuts, there's beef, and of course there's the duck, which is brought to the table for you to inspect before the waiter slices it up with a knife and you jam it onto a pancake.

The duck is cooked before they bring it to the table. It's not the kind of place where they carry around live ducks for you to look at before you have dinner. Although perhaps that would be a good idea for a theme restuarant: "Here's What You're Going To Eat". Well, not a good idea, but an idea, anyway.

Anyway, everyone else ate duck and was very pleased, and I got to eat some rice and decompress after a day at the office that had gradually become more and more painful as it continued, from peaceable and calm in the morning, all the way to wanting to punch through my desk by the evening time.

(Didn't punch anyone. That's something.)

The final part of the meal was deep fried apple segments, dropped into a bath of ice water to cool them down. I was less taken by this, because I like hot fried fruit, not cold fried fruit. Also, having drunk a few Tsing Taos by then, I couldn't really taste anything apart from squidginess.

After a full meal there's nothing like putting yourself through some agonising pain, so we finished the evening with a foot massage in Happy Valley. It's been a few weeks since I last had one, which means some of the nerves in my legs have recovered sensation, which is bad because that meant I felt every part of a big man trying to pull the tendons out of my legs.

It was particularly bad on the calf that I'd crippled two weeks ago on my last cycling crash: I really did think I was going to lose a significant muscle group. But I've survived another brutalisation. It hasn't killed me: has it made my feet stronger?

Meanwhile on the internet, Blogger has stopped working, leaving me wondering when these words will actually appear anywhere. Fifteen hours of it being out of action that I've noticed, with no sign of it letting up yet, and no explanation yet. I guess trusting everything to one company on the internet isn't so great an idea, eh?

¹ Please don't get confused. I'm not saying you can get a handjob at American Peking.