Mid-week 'merican!
Posted by marshall Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:24:00 GMT
Every Wednesday, the IT department in Redlands goes out for "Mid-Week Mex". It started out as visiting all kinds of different Mexican restaurants in the Redlands area (there are a lot!), but now we've settled into our favorites and tend to favor those.
I wanted to honor our tradition while I'm here, but as far as I know, there are no Mexican restaurants in Banda Aceh. So we settled for American food instead, and went to the local KFC. Hey, it's "foreign" for here.
I haven't actually been to a KFC in the US for quite some time, but I don't remember steamed rice, spiced Indonesian potatoes, french fries, or soft serve ice cream being on the menu there. In fact, about the only thing I recognized was the chicken itself. The women working at the counter had head coverings with the KFC logo on it, which I wouldn't have thought of but makes sense. The best thing was the poster on the wall advertising "New! Improved! Original Recipe".
It may have had a different selection of side dishes, but it was still all very good. The rice seems to take the place of the biscuits; it comes in a kind of ball wrapped up, and while some put it on their plates and eat it with utensils, others just unwrap a bit of the packaging and eat it from that as one might eat a fast-food hamburger. Packages of ketchup and chili sauce come with the meal; in our case the KFC folks stuffed the to-go bags full of packets, and we wound up with a massive pile of them.
All in all, a tasty meal, and a little reminder of home...with a definite local twist.
I'm just guessing ... no Atkins dieters go to this restaurant, right? Hey, did you feel the latest quake?
I think Atkins dieters would have a pretty hard time here, given the prominence of rice and noodles. But there are options like omelettes and goat-on-a-stick. Regarding the quake, I didn't know there was one until I saw it on the news. :-)