I like to think I have a small reputation among my friends for knowing places to eat and drink. Though the flak they have given me for the 'unfair' 4 Mile House review says they aren't frightened to tell me my opinions are sometimes very, very wrong. I'm now going to add to the evidence that I don't know what I am talking about by making a confession:
Raymond's is not very good, and yet I have eaten there on several occasions.
I always do it on my own, and always having regrets a hour or so afterwards. My only thought process when I drive by is I can get food quickly, and it really isn't -that- bad. And every time I realize, it really is that bad. And more over, its getting more and more overpriced for mediocre food.
I hope by pushing out this review, the world will know my shame, and I will stop eating there, and find a better place when the buffet craving strikes me on the way downtown.
Raymond's is a Chinese Buffer in the small strip mall at Cloverdale and Blanshard, opposite the Accent Inn. You can see it on from the highway, sitting there next to the Jenny Craig centre. It advertises a buffet and dim-sun. I've never seen Dim-Sun served. I have seen people order off a menu. I have never been offered one, but I've never asked either.
I walk in, and take a seat on a small dining room chair, a nice white table cloth and single fork. I see the central buffet bar, stacks of plates, and with no further waiting, head over. The buffet area is tiled, and always feels slippery. This should have be a clue. But despite it being offered, I go ahead and take a good pile of fried rice with pork, a spoonful of salt-and-pepper salmon, some ginger beef and garlic pork. And maybe a serving of vegetables. Which are primarily bok choy leaves in a sauce that is very watery, but tastes of the tears. Everything, they say in large labels, has MSG in it. I would guess the sauce is actually just water, MSG and maybe a lemon.
I carefully step back to my table, and the waiter offers me something to drink. I get Chinese tea. The Chinese tea here is good. I can't fault it. Maybe I have developed an addiction to it, and that's why I go back again and again?
The rice is heavy on a sour spiced flavour, that seems to be in almost everything here. It's not unpleasant, exactly. It just lurks and hangs around for a good while afterwards. If you want to keep tasting your food afterwards, this is just the place for you. The salmon is crispy fried in the skin. There's a chilli flakes on the thin batter that covers it. It is a complete waste of salmon. It feeds you, but the poor fish could have been jerked or candied. Or treated with a little more care than the hard fried chunk dished up here for gluttons like me.
The ginger beef is better, though lots of expense is spared on the cuts of beef. The gingery sauce is unctuous, sticky, slightly sweet and not huge on the ginger flavour. It sort of covers the food in a thick film, protecting it from whatever harm the chef imagines it might come to out there in the wilds of the buffet land. The garlic pork is a ear sized slice of pork, heavily battered and fried in the same grease as everything else. There's that sour, spiced flavour again. Just in case you missed it. Garlic might have been used too, but it's probably hiding with the ginger, to be used sparingly. The pork used here is great if you are trying to up your fat intake. It satiates the appetite. Sprinkle on some of the soy sauce, and it goes down fine. The soy sauce, like the chinese tea, is pretty good. Plenty of umami flavour, a slight sharpness to the saltiness.
Perhaps I should just work out what brand of tea and soy sauce they use and save myself.
I decide after all that I will try seconds. It's a buffet. That why I go to the buffet, to over consume. My shame for eating here again needs to be assuaged, and the way I deal with this is to eat more. The cycle continues, and needing my fix, I take some chicken balls, a piece of fried chicken and the shanghai noodles.
The shanghai noodles are thick, rubbery strings with onion and a coating of something that looks like a thin motor oil and tastes the same as everything else that isn't in the vegetable sauce. That sauce is now feeling like a refreshing change. The chicken balls are tough on the inside, and battered in a way that makes the batter crumble into powder when you bite in. It reminds me of the flavour and mouth feel of the one time I ate gluten-free pizza base. Which was made of dough.
The fried chicken is a trap. First, the buffet centre is kept hot by a direct thermal jet from seven leagues under Victoria. This is directed around the food and onto any metal serving spoon used for the chicken. You might get away with just a painful sting, but I'm sure that at least one person a day will be getting first degree burns from the handle.
The second part of the trap is the chicken itself. They slice it into chunks the size of a small chocolate bar, straight from the fried carcass. It doesn't matter what bones were in there, it's chop-chop-chop. So the next task is to eat the morsel without stabbing yourself in the mouth with a splinter of bone. The meat you do get is typical fried chicken, crispy skinned and still moist inside. I love fried chicken, and this isn't bad, if you can eat it with out lacerations. It's not dried out, it still tastes like chicken, and the grease is possibly fresh. I'd do better to go to Hanks or Pig, mind.
By now, I'm full up, which was the main aim of coming in here. So I head off to pay at the cashier's counter. I fork over $20 and get no change. I question my life choices, for the fifth time in thirty minutes.
But it is a meal that keeps on giving. This time it was just the salmon sitting uneasily on my stomach. In times past, my gut has sent my brain messages that though it was indeed full, it was not comfortably so, and the contents were not well regarded down there. My brain however filtered out most of that message and merely stored the information 'Raymonds made the stomach full fast, yay!'.
And thus I keep the cycle going. Every few months I drive by thinking about where to eat, and turn off, past the Red Robin, down the ramp and park in front of Raymonds. Like a good little automaton, enticed by the '#1 Buffet in Victoria' sign.
Except now, my dear friends and readers, by admitting I have a problem, I hope to end it. If I am going to eat fast food, I can find better choices, and if I want a chinese food fix, there's better places a short drive away.
I apologize to everyone that may have been misled in thinking I know anything about eating out. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me ten times, I have no shame left.
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