Lost at Sea

When I travel through Rhode Island, I usually stop at Cosmic Steaks and Weiners in Warwick. Many times I stop there to have a classic New York style weiner with a friend of mine, but they are also open late. About a block away I drive by a Chinese restaurant that resides in a cement block building called China Sea. From the outside it looked a little tired and something from the 60's.

An old Chinese restaurant that seems to have been around for a long time always seems to pique my interest and I made a plan to stop here one of these days. On this trip I decided that I would rather have a full meal instead of a weiner for dinner so I figured that tonight would be a good time to try the place.

I had asked my friend Fred about this place before but even though he was a life long resident of the area, he never went there. He did say that it had been there as long as he could remember.

I should have taken that as a warning along with the fact that the parking lot was empty at 8pm. Still it was a Monday and many restaurants are not very busy on that day.

When I went inside it was like stepping back in time. The place was clean and tidy but the walls were wood paneled, giving it a very dark atmosphere. The bar was recently refurbished and after placing my order 2 guys probably in their late 20's came in and bellied up to the bar.

They seemed to be in a good mood and said hello to me. One of them then started to tell his friend how he and his mother would come in every Friday for beers. He then got quite excited about a news reporter that appeared on the tv above the bar. He said that he knew that reporter's brother. They had spent time in jail and his fellow inmate said that his sister was a reporter for the local news station.

The menu at China Sea was fairly typical of current Chinese restaurants. I had ordered a combination dinner of kung pao chicken with fried rice and an egg roll. I am usually interested to see what the egg roll was like. My mother used to make egg rolls for my grandfather's restaurant when I was growing up. She would roll up to 1,000 egg rolls in a day. I would spend most of that time playing with the restaurant's cat.

The first thing I noticed after biting into the egg roll was how green it was on the inside. It looked like something you would serve on St. Patrick's Day. The green was from all of the celery that was inside. Most egg rolls use cabbage as the filling but this one was predominately celery. The outside was a little crispy but the taste was only OK as it tasted mostly of celery.

As for the main course, the kung pao chicken was not very good. It consisted of dry chunks of white meat in a sweet, slightly spicy sauce. It was more sweet than spicy as there was no chili peppers in the dish.

This was one of those places that you should pay attention to the obvious signs and not go in. Sometimes you are pleasantly surprised but the percentages are against you. Still I probably haven't learned my lesson yet.