Saturday, April 24, 2010

Restaurant: ???

Topping off Boojum for value (but maybe not for taste and definitely not for healthiness) is a Chinese restaurant with no English name, English menu or English-speaking staff! I spotted the sign a few weeks back and recognised some foody words and a big €6 and figured there must be a restaurant up there above the hair salon. Thursday night I had to figure out my own dinner so decided to check it out.

Up 4 flights of steps I went and on the last one was met by a woman who was clearly confused by my presence. I sat down in the small, bright and clean restaurant she hurried off to get someone. She came back with a younger woman from the kitchen who had a few words of English and between that and my Chinese (which is getting almost unusable these days) she set off to bring me lots of small things to eat.

A while later she came back with battered fish, you tiao ("oil sticks" - deep fried bread things). A few minutes later another plate with some battered squishy sugary thing with peanuts in it and some turnip pancakes (had them for the first time ever a few weeks ago and they are not as bad as they sound at all). I also ordered some soup dumplings which came with some kind of long straight sea-food that I have never had before. Finally I ordered some dou fu nao (a kind of gloopy soup with tofu, vegetables and maybe pork).

All very tasty and at the end of it I was nicely full and actually left a few bits behind (turnip pancake is not exactly awesome). Add a pot of Chinese tea which I think was free and the whole thing came to €5, yes five quid.

There are about 20 things on the menu, all €1-5, so my plan is to go back with more people and and just order 1 of everything and see what we get! Who's on for it? It's on Parnell St, just past Sichuan House (still awesome BTW, I had hotpot there recently and it was super-tasty)

Restaurant: Boojum

It's a new Mexican fast-food place in the "Italian quarter" just over the Millenium bridge. I had lunch there with Ríona today. Very tasty, Ríona ate all of hers. Also very helpful and friendly staff. When I asked about something suitable for Ríona, they suggested I order the 3-tacos meals and they'd make one of them for her. They then let her sample the 2 mild sauces to see if they were OK for her spice-wise by dipping a chip in. They do a lunch special, €7 for a main meal and water (the main fed myself a Ríona just nicely). Can't argue with that. Or can you...

Monday, April 19, 2010

As usual, complete nonsense from Indo letters

When it comes to global warming you can assert that white is and the Indo will publish your letter.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano/

has the real figures, supplied by Nordic Volcanological Institute of the University of Iceland.

The volcano is putting out 15,000 tons and the airplane are not putting out 206,000 tons.

in reference to: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/man-will-never-be-mother-natures-boss-2143073.html (view on Google Sidewiki)

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

random kid stuff

Some things are better for kids to learn through experience. The fact that you can't grab hold of a stream of piss is not one of them.