Saturday, July 24, 2010

X = X.O

X was never going to be easy. Of course, the oh-so helpful suggestions were of course X-rated but kiss and tell is just not my style. So, we went to X.O a small, crazy, little bit dirty, restaurant in the heart of Chinatown with the idea to try Xtreme and Xtraordinary foods, and that we did.

Walking in it's chaotic, noisy and full of locals, a good sign. We grabbed a small table and perused the gigantic menu of choices, there was of course all the yummy usual things I'd liked to have ordered like boring old spring rolls and safe chicken satay but that wasn't the name of the game. So, we ordered the house speciality - snails - followed by jellyfish and white weird dough things I can't remember the name of as they literally expanded to huge thick vile tasting tennis balls in my mouth, so bad I've blocked them from my mind, and a little weird beef dish on the side. 

The snails were obscenely bad, teeny tiny ones that you had to pick out with a toothpick, they were hot, greasy, garlicky and not good, unfortunately our hosts were very generous and served us up a huge bowl of maybe 200 of the little critters with a huge excited grin on their faces. They proceeded to watch us eat them so eat them we had to, thank-you Si for once again coming to my aid and polisihing off most of them. You are a true prince.

Next up - jellyfish - a huge quivering plate full, not cooked, not really anything, just sliced up and coated in some sort of ginger type spice, it was cold, slimy and the texture was like old tyres. It took an incredibly long time to eat, you couldn't really chew it too much, the best thing to do was to just swallow it down with a swift glug of beer straight after. The beef wasn't too bad if you ignored the weird colors and tried not to imagine that it was old meat that had been festering away waiting for someone to order it.

After consuming as much as physically possible we decided X stood for swift X-it. We casually asked for our leftover food "to go" so we didn't appear rude to be leaving half of it, especially the jellyfish  and promptly left depositing said leftovers in a bin a few blocks away and heading to the nearest bar for a nice, safe and Xcellent glass of Rioja.

Chinatown in New York doesn't feel fake, it feels like you've been transported to China, the language, the smells, the food and the bustling streets are Xciting and well worth a visit, just avoid nasty sea creatures at all costs.

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