Mai Lee rents space in places that don't even seem like they should be restaurants and then passes the savings on to YOU in the form of Chinese and Vietnamese food that's better than you can get anywhere else, but at a significant premium.
I'd explain why that makes sense, but it's more work than I'm capable of, on a day when the weather is finally getting nice enough to go "knees out." My boss should feel lucky I even showed up today. He can't reasonably expect me to actually do anything.
I've eaten here once or twice over the years and only ever ordered off of the Chinese menu, from which you really can't go wrong. I was there last night with members of my running group. I wasn't sweating showing up in gym clothes, like Sam Jackson and John Travolta after they had to clean out the back of that car in Pulp Fiction, because this place is next to a gym, and I bet they get a lot of larger women who wander over in ostensibly not transparent yoga pants.
Granted, a lot of girls dress like that everywhere they go, especially in Richmond Heights.
This was my first time visiting a Vietnamese restaurant since I went to Vietnam, and I was feeling adventurous. I'd seen the proverbial man in black pajamas up close, and I was ready to sample his wares. No Diddy. I toyed with the idea of just picking a number between 1 and 200, since this place has roughly 200 numbered menu items, but I decided against that. I needed to at least read the descriptions, uselessly vague though they might be, lest I received something with a "protein" I wasn't expecting. Ahem.
No matter how much you study the menu, as if it's test-prep for a crucial GED exam, you never really know what you're going to get until they bring it out. But you probably can't go wrong. I went with number 165, which was the first thing listed under Specialties. I can't remember what it's called, and the name might be utter nonsense, like when people get Chinese characters tattooed on their lower back. It consisted of shrimp, scallops and crab sticks, along with vegetables of some sort, with charred rice in oyster sauce.
It's served in a boiling cauldron that must be kept six miles below the earth's surface, where they're keeping Epstein until the coast is clear, until it's ready to be served. The top layer is just rice, like mashed potatoes on a shepherd's pie, but you can hear the inside sizzling like a fajita. You're warned to not try to actually eat it from the serving dish. The food itself is insanely hot. You have to let it sit on a plate a little bit just to cool off.
It's a generous helping of seafood, except when you take the cost into consideration. One of those items is those imitation crab sticks they used to sell deep-fried at Chinese food restaurants in the hood, known colloquially as... uh, never mind. I'd complain, but I find them weirdly delicious. Everything about this dish was delicious. The sauce was slightly, almost imperceptibly, sweet, with a caramelized onion flavor. The scallops were somehow not overcooked despite how hot everything was. I'm at a loss for how they got the rice perfectly crisp and yet not overcooked into oblivion. I could have done without the tails on the shrimp, but what are you gonna do?
I ordered a Japanese beer that the waiter forgot to put on my bill. I pointed it out, in order to appear to be classy in front of women, but he said don't worry about it. He may have been concerned that I was toying with the idea of not leaving a tip, for cultural reasons. Admittedly, I was. I'll have the users of this app--including any ladies who might be reading this--know that not only did I tip 20%, but I rounded up to the nearest dollar.
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