The Mayo Clinic: 'The Wrong Noodles'

The Wrong Noodles Submitted By: Andee Joyce
Created: 22 November 2001

In case you weren't aware of it, Vietnamese food rocks hard. It's tasty, it's filling, it's cheap, and it's not altogether horrible for your health (i.e. there are things in it that used to grow in the ground, often several in the same dish). And San Francisco is practically drooling with great cheap Vietnamese food, especially in the Tenderloin...er, 'scuse me, theatre district (har). There's just one catch...oh, hell, it's easier to explain this by example.

Should this one restaurant example remain nameless? Or am I performing a public service by naming it? Oh, okay, you talked me into it. It's the Rose, on the corner of O'Farrell and Larkin Streets. If you go there, you could luck out and get yourself the best danged imperial rolls and seafood pan-fried noodles you'll ever scarf, as I did one slow weekday when I had lunch there. Or you could get...something else entirely. To wit:

I and my pal Marilyn Wann, a pioneer goddess of the size-acceptance movement in S.F. (her book, based on her zine, is called FAT?SO! -- read it, read it, read it) were ISO good, cheap dinner grub, and I, my stomach growling in memory of those pan-fried noodles I'd had weeks ago, suggested the Rose. She was game, and we got into her Plymouth Voyager van and headed for the 'Loin.

Did I tell you Marilyn is brilliant? She is. She has two degrees from Stanford. Thus, she ordered pho, which is this fabulous soup that has meat dumplings in it. No problems there. She orders it, they bring it to her, she eats it, she loves it. That's what a restaurant experience should be, right? Ahem. I order my beloved pan-fried noodles. Ten minutes later, the waitress emerges from the kitchen with a plate of...fried rice.

Uh...actually, I ordered pan-fried noodles, not fried rice, I tell the waitress, with as much decorum as I can muster with my blood sugar scraping rock bottom. She smiles apologetically and takes the rice plate back. Marilyn continues to blissfully slurp her soup, and offers me a bite. Mmmm. Good stuff. They know what they're doing back there in that kitchen. I mean...don't they?

Fifteen more minutes go by. Then, as Marilyn's draining her pho plate, the waitress comes out again, this time with chow mein. (A note to non-Californians reading this: in California, chow mein is soft noodles, much like lo mein is in the rest of the country.) And this time she has something extra for me: a guilt trip.

I'm sorry, she tells me, they don't have any of the pan-fried noodles, they ran out. Won't I eat this instead?

And unbelievably enough, either because I'm starving or ridiculously codependent (am I still allowed to use that word?), or maybe both, I agree to try. But the magic isn't there. The veggies aren't the same, the meat isn't the same, nothing's the same. I poke at it for a minute, and then it dawns on me:

WHY THE BLOODY HELL DO PEOPLE BOTHER ASKING YOU WHAT YOU WANT IF THEY'RE JUST GOING TO GIVE YOU WHATEVER THEY FEEL LIKE GIVING YOU ANYWAY??

And:

IT TOOK THEM TWENTY-FIVE FRIGGING MINUTES FOR THEM TO TELL ME THEY DIDN'T HAVE WHAT I ORDERED?? WTF??

And:

WHY AM I ENABLING THIS KIND OF B.S.? IF PEOPLE KEEP PULLING THIS KIND OF CRAP, IT'S BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE ME ARE TOO WIMPY TO SPEAK UP. NO MORE. I WILL GET WHAT MY STOMACH WANTS, EVEN IF I HAVE TO GO ELSEWHERE. NYAAH.

Since I'm a Libra, though, I don't have a tantrum right there in the restaurant. Too messy. (Too Aries -- sorry, hon.) Instead, I call the waitress over with a spidery little grin on my face and tell her, I'm sorry, this isn't what I wanted.

No? she says.

No, I say. I'll just go get it somewhere else. Could you please take it off the check?

And millions cheer. They all live in my stomach.

Meanwhile, Marilyn's apologizing her butt off for the whole incident. I tell her she has nothing to be sorry about. There's another Vietnamese place around the corner where she's parked the van, so we can just go in there and get the blasted noodles. Everyone can't be out of them. That's like every Italian restaurant being out of mozzarella cheese. I tell her I can even get them to go, if she doesn't want to sit through another restaurant experience, but she's a Libra, too, so she agrees to sit there with me.

I wish I could remember the name of this restaurant, because they did everything right. I ordered the noodles, they brought them, I ate them, I loved them. I highly recommend them...they're right around the corner from the place I don't recommend.

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, exactly, except that when you have a great meal where everything goes right, it's not a story. Or at least, not a very interesting one. That, and Vietnamese food still rocks...but make sure you have a backup place.

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