Palace Hotel - they had real food!

i was stumbling home from a disappointing night out and decided to cut through Thai town to the late bus. out of the dark back streets loomed a red neon dragon with chinese writing and and arrow saying VIP.

i went in.

it was dark and at first disappointing. the hostess seemed bored and after a quick walk through i didnt even find basic level snacks (no lollies or nuts) and suspected the dragon wasn't guarding anything..

how wrong i was.

i spotted on the far table a bottle of chilli sauce. on closer inspection i found plastic containers, soy sauce, cutlery, mugs, tea and finally a small steamer.

of course i didnt dare draw any nearer under the watchful gaze of the hostess..

i perched myself at a pokie machine and began the 100 hits method (described on the home page). once i had established my presence i finally ventured back out to the steamer and opened it.

it contained BBQ pork buns and chicken dim sum.

a boon, the perfect food to keep fresh and edible for extended periods!..

...well the bun was a bit gooey and the dim sums a bit crusty, but they were both extremely edible doused in chilli sauce AND i can confirm that i have had no stomach issues almost 12 hours since.

Star hotel - hand-made sandwiches, full-length sausage rolls

a run down dingy pub in the heart of china town. tables covered with sticky dry beer and walls with TVs showing every conceivable outlet for gambling: sports, horse racing, dog racing, chariot racing, computerised racing, keno and more and in the next room are the pokies.. this is truly a pub for gamblers...

but that's not what we're interested in.

at the bar is a help yourself mixed nut and wasabi pea dispenser. the mix sports a good variety including coated peanuts, rice crackers and soy chips. the requisite lolly mix in the VIP room is also up to standard including sherbies, milk duds, mentos and (the somewhat divisive) minties.

not a bad start but really these are the minimum we are to expect from our VIP cuisine.

what really sets this one apart are the hand-made sandwiches and the full-length sausage rolls.

the full-length sausage rolls which aren't cut up into party sized bits and still in their original packaging, are kept in an oven behind the bar with party pies as well. to access them you indeed will need to do a human interaction with the bar staff.

in the VIP room on the ledge facing the bar are a number of lollies, packaged buiscits and also hand-made sandwiches! usually some combination of ham, cheese and tomato, and sure the cheese is that plasticy radiation resitant kind, and sure it's only white bread and the tomato has made it all soggy from sitting out for several hours.. but still that is pretty damn close to what real meal might look like!..




4 stars!

AB Hotel - they didnt even have chicken nuggets

THEY DIDNT EVEN HAVE CHICKEN NUGGETS!!!!!

i made a significant alteration to my route home from work to go past the vip room in the AB Hotel and they didnt even have chicken nuggets. they didnt have anything.

i saw chicken nuggets there weeks earlier when i was passing by, communal nuggets, on a big plate with a communal dipping bowl of tomato sauce.. i know, who even eats chicken nuggets with tomato sauce (my housemate, she's weird.) and who wants to eat them like that where everyone can finger them and double dip and they'd probably been sitting all day and were probably cold.

yet still in spite of all that i decided to get the nuggets, i made plans and dealt with all the attendant self loathing and social humiliation on the walk there. i dealt with it and there were none. i am owed nuggets.

ZERO STARS!