New Culinary Low

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Jay and I went to eat at Noodles Corner last night, an independent restaurant in Columbia. We had been there several times when it first opened and found it to be just okay; not great, not terrible.

Last night I ordered the stir-fried vegetables, which was the usual melange of overcooked broccoli and bok choy in a gooey brown sauce. Jay ordered the pineapple shrimp, which sounded promising. But when it arrived it was the strangest looking dish I have ever laid eyes on. There was some white rice on one side, a little pile of julienned cucumbers on another side, and in the middle a pile of plain, deep-fried, breaded shrimp. There was no sauce, but there was a strange rope of thick white substance draw on top in an abstract curly pattern, with I think three pineapple chunks on top.

Many of you know Jay to be a creamy-white-foodaphobe, so I took the plunge. As Jay predicted, the white rope was plain mayonnaise, apparently squeezed right out of the Hellman's plastic bottle. It was the strangest food idea I've ever seen presented, was as disgusting as it sounds, and I still cannot figure out how the chef (Asian immigrant, I believe) decided upon this dish. Is it somehow based on a real Asian dish? Did he figure that Americans like mayonnaise and so it would be okay to top his plain shrimp with it? Did someone play a practical joke on him and lead him to believe this was an American classic?
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