One thing I’ve always wondered is how Matt – our Ang Mo bud – can manage all the food he takes in, and still lose weight. Now that I get to dine with him in cuisine and food types he’s familiar with, I’m even the more stunned. On both occasions, the workflow is about the same:
1. “Hey, this looks like a cool restaurant – let’s check it out.”
2. “This menu item looks neat. We don’t know what the heck it is, but it sure looks interesting! We’ll have it, waiter.” (repeat several times).
3. <One hour passes>
4. “OMG – I’m about to die here. That was waaaaaaayyyy too much food.”
Basically, what routinely looks like a good idea – checking into a new restaurant – almost always turns out into a really bad idea. And only because we’ll usually order too much food than we both can finish!
Say, for instance, on Friday evening, we checked out an Indian restaurant in Central Square that Matt walked past earlier on. The restaurant prides itself as being the first Indian restaurant in the city:
We’d barely sat down before we were served with Chapatis first – which was ordinary – but the very red-colored chili dip was murder! Or at least, I thought so, because all I could manage was a very thin layer on my Chapatis. Whereas Matt dipped it all in, scooped up a load, and ate it all up in a gulp.:)
Then the appetizers. I had an Indian chicken sort of soup that was very tasty (it looked like it had been stewed for a while), and a Mango lassi. I haven’t had this before – lots of stuff I haven’t tried even as a Singaporean – and it was all good.
Then trouble began. Matt said “I got to get me some of those naans!”, and here we went: two naans. Mine was garlic, and his a minced lamb sort of naan. They were HUGE. In the picture below, they’re sliced up into halves and quarters respectively:
The naans alone would have qualified for a full meal. Unfortunately, there was also the main course… I ordered the lamb vindaloo, and Matt a Chicken something vindaloo; he’ll have to comment here to let me know what it was! I haven’t had a lot of vindaloos before, but this one was super spicy. I had a small bit, and the lips went aflame in horror. Matt sampled a spoonful, and said – “Yep, that tastes about alright. Average only though in spicyness – yummy.”
Had water to the rescue. The waiter came with one with a few ice cubes floating in my glass. I called for another glass… but this time FULL of ice!
By the time we were done, we felt sick. I was all camel, downing one mango lassi and three huge glasses of ice water, and still I felt like I’d eaten only chili padi for dinner.
As we stumbled out of the Indian restaurant, I swore that I was going to eat salads for the next dinner.
On the following evening, Saturday, we’d finished the whale watching trip off Gloucester and it was late in the evening at about 9 PM. We passed by a small town – Peabody – that was about midway between Gloucester and Boston, and decided to go get dinner… and Matt was all up for steak at the Outback Steakhouse along Andover Street. Oh boy.
First they feed you with a sort of brown bread:
Then Matt ordered a huge plate of Mexican something that was very much like those KFC cheesy melts that Ling loves:
We should have stopped right there, because the above plate was enough to fill us both up. But heck no. Matt ordered a plate of very unique looking deep-fried onion rings which he remarked is the sort of stuff that will kill us – the dish was called ‘Bloomin Onion’:
And that wasn’t even the main course. We had the same: The Outback Signature Sirloin Specials, with mash garlic potatoes and fresh greens sides. Both of us had 12 oz steaks, he had his medium-rare, mine was well-done. It doesn’t look like a huge plate, but believe me when I say that the plate was “American”-size:
And this time round we couldn’t finish the food. Half of the onion rings were left on the table, the mash potatoes for me went largely untouched, and Matt didn’t have stomach space for either sides. When the waiter came and asked if we’d like the remaining food packed to go, we could only wave – sickly – no need to.
There’s a funny bit of post-mortem. We were returning the car to the rental agency back near Central Square, so Matt put the car through a wash. A very unique sort of wash that I video-taped for fun. I’ll post it up later.:)
Hahaha, this is so Matt. Reminds me of him running out of our house for roti prata supper every now and then. He’d never turn down food offered to him even when he was all pigged out. And if Indian or curry or chilli anything, he’s game. :)
I must add that the Indian food looks delicious from the pictures taken, dear! :)
Great post! At the Indian restaurant I had the same dish you had, vindaloo, but with chicken instead of lamb. The vindaloos were definitely pretty spicy, though as I remarked, they weren’t quite as thick as I’m used to. That I think was a blessing given how stuffed we were.
The first Outback Steakhouse appetizer pictured above features chicken quesadillas. The steaks were 12 ounces, which is fairly large portion. But this just occurred to me: we were supposed to receive chopped mushrooms and shrimps as toppings on our steaks, and yet we clearly didn’t!