Robardo H.
Yelp
I am new in town. I love Chinese food, and am working my way through the Chinese fare offered in Lincoln. Recently I thought I would try China Inn. When you arrive, you get the distinct impression that you are on a China Restaurant ride at Disneyworld. You are assaulted by Chinese lanterns and lots of other hanging reds. I should have taken it as a sign that, but for me, the place was completely devoid of customers. Eventually a woman came out of the back and told me to sit anywhere.
She left me alone to read the entire menu multiple times. I was in the mood for seafood, but there was none available for lunch. You have to break the $30 barrier to get seafood. I wasn't that hungry. I had also been craving potstickers for a few days, so I opted for that route: I'll try some potstickers and hot and sour soup. After all, my mission is to catalogue the Chinese restaurants of Greater Lincoln, and there is no better test of culinary skill than guōtiē.
Eventually the woman finally comes back to give me a glass of water. Then a couple comes in, and she fawns over them for what seems like forever. I use the time to renew my search for seafood on the menu. I read the ENTIRE menu for a second time. I think there may be a part of the menu I am missing which contains the seafood. I notice that the menu entries are numbered, so I decide on a strategy of counting up the numbers to make sure I haven't missed anything. I immediately notice that in going from one page to another, they have left out #23. But I do NOT discover a hidden seafood section.
When the woman finally comes back to me, I tell her I am thinking about having potstickers, but I like the Chinese style sauce. I ask her if I order the potstickers, can I get some vinegar, hot chili oil, and soy sauce on the side. I ask her if they make the $8 potstickers themselves. She tells me, "No. They are made by a big corporation," which I consider an odd description, but I get the message: They are not real potstickers. They are mass-produced machine-fabricated pieces of meat-like substance excreted by machines in a factory somewhere, and purchased locally, in bulk, by the restaurant from a Costco-like facility, and kept in a deep freeze until they are ordered. OK. But when you have a hankering for potstickers, even Price Club potstickers are better than nothing.
An aside about potstickers: Historically, potstickers are very time-consuming and difficult to make. It's kind of like the unspoken agreement you have with the bartender when you order a margarita at the airport: Both you and he know he is going to have to interrupt his mass production to construct the margarita, and the silent understanding is that you will make up for it in the tip. A similar arrangement did not emerge with respect to potstickers, so they historically earned a high price on the menu. But the high prices persist even when the potstickers have become tiny excreta produced by machines.
I was denied my request to have my potstickers the way I like them. Instead the woman simply said they make-up their own sauce, and I should try it.
And we go back to another bout of interminable waiting. For what? The woman has now chatted-up AND SERVED the couple who came in after me when she finally brings my potstickers with a small bowl of hot and sour soup. And I mean small. My $4 soup was in one of those tiny thimble-sized bowls popular in many US Chinese restaurants, but such is not de rigueur for Lincoln, so I wasn't expecting it. Now I am hungry; I'm into the restaurant for $15 with tax and tip; and I'm going to have to stop somewhere else afterward for lunch. Oh, well. I'm looking forward to the potstickers. Maybe they will be really good. The lady brings some chopsticks, and I attack my potstickers.
With the first bite I notice that the food has gone cold. Not even luke-warm, but cold. Now I know what she was doing in the kitchen all that time while I was waiting: She was letting my food go cold. To add insult to injury, their "special sauce" tastes exactly like that weird pre-packaged stuff in little plastic packets that is called "duck sauce" in little hole-in-the-wall restaurants across the US.
I sit there steaming. Even if the potstickers are not. I realize that there is no way I can wait forever for the "lady" to come back. I take the plate to the servers' window into the kitchen, and say my potstickers are cold. Lady asks if they are frozen in the middle -- as if anything less should be acceptable. She takes the plate as if to investigate my claim. I return to my seat.
After a while I realize the absurdity of the situation, and the amount of my time wasted. I do something I have never done before: I walk out of this horrible establishment without paying. And I'm never going back.
I cannot recommend that you ever visit this poor legacy of an excuse for a restaurant. But if you do, order the number 23. And order it hot.
