Food Court

 

This is the pretty waterfall in the food court area of The Mall. There’s another, larger, one outside in front of The Mall. The pond into which the water falls  has huge fish, about 6 feet long. I suspect they are Mekong catfish, which are known to grow to be large. There is a shallow pond just to the right of this one. That pond has two Manta Rays, and children “pet” them regularly. The orchids and trees and other plants are all real. It creates a lovely calming atmosphere.

Yes, that’s a Dairy Queen just visible behind the waterfall.

Yet Another Lifestyle Upgrade

When we decided to live in this housing development, there was a nice little restaurant in the clubhouse. It served a Western style breakfast, and a Thai lunch and dinner. The food was delicious, the surroundings were clean and pleasant, and the prices were low. Since town and restaurants are 10 miles away, it was nice to be able to get something within walking distance.

Two years later, when we moved into the house permanently, there was no Western breakfast anymore. There was no longer a menu, and dining room service didn’t exist. You had to go to the kitchen door to order food, and see the filthy kitchen, complete with rats and roaches. The prices had increased, and the food was barely palatable. Worse, the food was frequently spoiled. We quit patronizing the place after I got a bowl of chicken curry containing chicken so spoiled I literally hurled after placing one spoonful in my mouth. I never even swallowed it.

Business flagged so badly that the owners of the restaurant-minimart-clubhouse franchise from the developer finally decided to lease out the restaurant to new management. It was taken over by the wife of a Western man who lives in the housing development. She is a fabulous cook; she made a larger profit the first week she served food than the previous management had been making in a month. She was only serving a rice congee breakfast and a fried rice or noodles lunch at the time.

Now she is serving full meals, some of them Western and some of them Thai. Her fish and chips is delicious; she makes her own french fries. Her cottage pie -shepherd pie to Americans – is my new favorite. Her fried rice is a lunch standard at our house. I can’t wait to try her curries.

We now have the convenient place to get a meal that we expected when we chose this place to live. The place is spotlessly clean. There is a Thai menu, and we are working on an English translation. The dining room is again a pleasant place, but they also will deliver to your home. The prices are reasonable; not too high, but not the lowest we have seen, and  the food is much higher quality. Yet another lifestyle upgrade.

I Vote No

Can you call it “spaghetti” if:

• the pasta is the size of elbow macaroni, but the length of  spaghetti
• there is no tomato sauce, just diced tomatoes and sauteed onions
• there is no cheese
• chili sauce is an ingredient

Jim found this to be a perfectly acceptable form of “spaghetti.” I did not.