ciao asian chao

Even though I have two mega-popular features going on right now on the blog -- Picture of the Day and This Day in History -- I thought it might be a good time to revisit one of my older mega-popular features: The Great Food Court Project. I know that many of you have been moved to tears some nights by the seeming abandonment of this project. It just happened that I got too busy at work to go over to the food court on a regular basis. But don't you worry. I won't let such a lapse happen ever again.

One reason why there can't be any more lapses is that in just a few months, the food court has changed dramatically. The pizza place that isn't Sbarro is gone, which takes away my glorious idea of having a pizza place showdown, and the burger place that used to be Burger King but then turned into Flamers is now a Checkers, which means the Best Burger in Lenox Contest is back on.

But today I turned my attention to Asian Chao. Asian Chao is the kind of food court place that I try to walk by slowly in an attempt to get samples. But I don't really ever eat there. I just want the samples. While I was getting my sample of orange chicken on a toothpick today, the man behind the counter advised me that there was a special going on -- two kinds of meat and either fried rice or lo mein for $5. It seemed like as good a day as any to consume Asian Chao.

For my two kinds of meat I picked sweet and sour chicken, which even to my normally forgiving eye seemed to be a very weird shade of orange, and chicken and mushrooms, mainly because it had gigantic hunks of zucchini in it and I really like zucchini. It was definitely not a hard choice deciding between fried rice and lo mein. I would pick fried rice every time, even if the lo mein came with chunks of gold in it. Gold is not very good to eat.

While I ate my meal, I had to endure a thing where the mall is having the choruses of area schools come in to sing holiday songs. I suppose it is meant to keep people in the holiday spirit but it is more akin to torture. For one thing, the acoustics of this food court aren't particularly good, so it basically sounded like a lot of middle school kids were yelling at me….which is what "Feliz Navidad" sounded like. I WANT TO WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS. Okay kid. Pipe down. Wish it to me in a quiet voice. Though quiet voices didn't really work in this environment either. There was one particularly nuanced and melodic ballad they sang that I just couldn't identify. I could hear the word "responsibility" being used a lot. I don't know of a holiday song that involves responsibility and I'll probably be okay if I don't hear that one again.

Anyways, while it's possible that the tuneless children had an adverse affect on the meal, Asian Chao was probably my least favorite place of the Great Food Court Project so far. But strangely, I don’t think Asian Chao should leave the food court. I firmly believe that every food court needs an Asian place that serves subpar food and offers samples on toothpicks, and Asian Chao fits that niche for this food court.