Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Am I the only person who's noticed that "Happy Holidays!" is a phrase that's rapidly supplanting "Merry Christmas" as the customary spoken greeting of the season? While "Happy Holidays!" has certainly been around for a while, I'd always thought it existed almost exclusively in the realm of greeting cards and department store ads. But just this year, I'm hearing it more and more in person, and the political-correctness of it all makes me cringe. Not to mention, it always comes off sounding like a bad Hallmark commercial. Next year, someone's going to smile cheerfully at me and say "Season's Greetings!" and I will go absolutely berserk.

Let's not forget the original reason for the seasonal cheer: rejoicing in the birth of Jesus Christ, sent to fulfill the Father's great plan of salvation. Keeping that in mind helps me see the significance behind the phrase "Merry Christmas!"

While you're probably expecting a Christmas-related entry, this is actually a "food" entry that I've been meaning to post for the past couple weeks. I've got a little down time right now, so here goes.

We went to Seasons for our annual company Christmas lunch, and the meal did little to change my opinion that it's the most overrated restaurant in town. I usually don't mind paying a little extra for a meal, as long as it's made up in either:

1. taste
2. quantity, or
3. atmosphere.

Seasons, I'm assuming, is banking on the first and third, and falls short. Their lunch menu is somewhat uninspired, consisting mostly of pizzas, sandwiches, and pasta dishes. Nonetheless, they charge around $5 more for what you could get somewhere else. The only discernible difference is the nomenclature: the pizzas are actually called "flat breads," for example. And don't you dare get the name wrong. Last year, when my co-worker Will asked for a hamburger, the waitress corrected him and said it was a "chuck burger."

Last year, I ordered fettucine carbonara. While it tasted alright, it didn't leave me satisfied. This year, I wanted to make sure I got my company's money's worth (thankfully, they paid for the meal), so I ordered a "chuck burger." It looked like a slightly-seared hamburger, and it tasted like a slightly-seared hamburger, but there must have been something indiscernible about it that let them charge another $6 and give it a different name. I couldn't help but start thinking about The Emperor's New Clothes: is it possible that people only speak well about the restaurant because they'd be embarassed to admit to spending a lot of money at a not-so-great place?

In their defense, Seasons had great service (maybe it helped that I knew our waiter from high school), and the presentation was very nice. It's worth ordering one of their lemonades just to see one: they became conversation pieces. The dessert menu was pretty good, too, although my chai cheesecake didn't taste too much like chai (though it did taste very good.)

But for what my drink, meal, and dessert cost, I'd be able to feed two people at, say, Ding How, for much better-tasting food. Like their heavenly "chin ju" chicken. I have no idea what they put into that (it can't be much more than salt, pepper, and ginger) but it tastes so good, and unfortunately, I can't find a recipe for it. You'd figure I'd be able to find one through Google—that's how I figured out how to make honey walnut prawns—but so far I've come up short. Any tips in the right direction would be appreciated.

Speaking of chicken, this past week I tried the buffalo wings at Grand Central Station (see picture above), a little restaurant in West Sac named after the NYC depot. The hot sauce is rated on the following scale:

1. medium
2. hot
3. inferno
4. nuclear
5. insane

I tried out the "inferno" wings, and although they were very good, they weren't that hot: probably equivalent to a medium-hot elsewhere. I didn't even break a sweat, and didn't need much water relief. Still, it's kinda nice that I can now impress people by letting them know that I survived "inferno" buffalo wings.