Consistent Service

I’ve almost given up going to restaurants in Hong Kong. I find the food tasteless, the chefs complacent.

But there’s one place right here in throbbing metropolis Mui Wo, the venerable Rome Restaurant, that I occasionally visit, mostly for a laugh, to see what they will come up with this time. The food is reasonably priced, it’s close to the ferry, the cook works relatively fast and the air con is so hard-working you can break off pieces of your frozen clothes and use them as a face cooler when you leave the place.

Not the Rome Restaurant

The thing is, they have never, ever given me what I wanted. In my more hard-drinking days I sometimes went there for that proven hangover cure: Hong Kong style club sandwich. (公司三文治 Gong Si (company) saam man ji) Each time I’d say 唔要芝士,唔要青瓜 (m yiu chisi, m yiu cheng gua, not want cheese, not want cucumber)In those days I thought 唔要 (not want) was the way to say “without” in restaurants. It worked everywhere else – except the Roma. Each time the sandwich came with plastic cheddar and limp, cooked cucumber hanging out of it.

“I said don’t want cheese and cucumber?”
“Oh yes, sorry.”
Every time! It became a joke.

Then I learnt that “without” was actually 走， jau, which means leave or run but also, presumably, leave out. This was about the same time as I realised that in Chinese culture, 肉 (yok, meat) only means pork. All the other meats just aren’t meat.

Not meat

Last month I went to the Roma and ordered 廈門炒米 (Ha Mun Chao Mai, Xiamen rice noodles), a delightful dish with barbecued pork, ham, prawns, egg, peppers, onion and spring onion. Some HK places sensibly add a little pickled ginger for sweetness and moisture.

The Roma does a good one, but it’s normally so full of barbecued pork that all other tastes are drowned out. I told the waiter 走肉 (leave out the meat) and got a Xiamen Noodles with so much barbecued pork it had actually elbowed out the prawns and eggs. I was in such a hurry i couldn’t send it back, but I was not a little irked.

Then yesterday I tried again. I had half an hour to go before the ferry and was overcome with an urge to eat Xiamen Noodles. Again I crazily said 走肉。 By no means a vegetarian, I still don’t like the overpowering taste of HK style barbecued pork.

The waitress came beaming a few minutes later. This was indeed rice noodles, but where was, er everything? This time, “leave out the meat” had been interpreted as “leave out the spring onions, eggs, prawns, sauce and onions. And the meat and the ham.” It was, in fact: Rice noodles on a plate.

New record for Roma! Many people were happy that day. The waitress, the customers sitting nearby, and, to a certain degree, me! I had proof that 走 indeed means “leave out.”