09.14.09
Run, don’t walk PAST Hong Kong House, Atlantic City, NJ or suffer The Emperor’s Revenge
After we checked in to our hotel this afternoon, we were very hungry so we went out for lunch. The first place we found that we could both agree on – and our hunger was getting the better of us – was a Chinese restaurant called Hong Kong House at 1330 Pacific Avenue, Atlantic City, NJ.
Our first clues of the Emperor’s impending wrath should have been the cracked glass door we walked through to enter the restaurant, the lack of patrons in the restaurant, and the cracked glass table tops we passed as we searched for a “hostess.” Our next clue should have been the brown, sticky, greasy residue on the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle on our table, and I should have suspected when I pulled my chair into the table as I sat down only to come up with a gooey brown slime on my hand, and also when I spooned through my serving of Won Ton soup and discovered one of the won tons looked as if it had been re-served from a left over WonTon from the day before that had sat out on a counter over night so that once side become dried, cracked, discolored, and mealy.
Our final clue of our time to come was when we had both eaten less than half of our entrees, and almost simultaneously, pushed our plates away. Even our remaining hunger was not enough to entice us to continue with the meal. By the way, the first ingredient listed on the menu for my entree was shrimp. There were no shrimp in my entree. I’ll give the sullen, dragging her feet waitress credit though, she did reduce our bill by a few dollars when I told her about the absence of shrimp.
After lunch, our stomachs laden with agita, we stopped back to the hotel to change and headed to the beach. When we reached the boardwalk I looked in a few shops for a pair of disposable beach shoes so as not to ruin my dockers. I realized that as we moved from one shop to the next, the farther we moved down the boardwalk and away from the entrance to the beach, the lower the prices became in the shops for the exact same items. I found a pair of plastic sandals for $6.99 and when I went to pay, the shopkeeper charged me $5.00. Post season prices are great!
We walked down to the beach and found a spot well above the waterline where put down our blanket. Daniel headed right for the water, and I walked through the remnants of the waves as they reached their limit on the beach hunting for shells.
Ever since I watched the movie “Jaws” in Ocean City, NJ in 1975 when I was in my mid-teens, I’ve gone swimming in the ocean only once. I would have landed in the lap of the man sitting behind me in the theater as I back-peddled out of my seat when the shark was eating Robert Shaw, had he not thrown his hands up to stop me and yelled, “Whoa Buddy!” The summer between 1975 and now that I did go swimming in the ocean was just before syringes and medical debris washed up on the Jersey Shore. Between the intermittent bacterial count scares over the past dozen years, Stephen Speilberg and Peter Benchley’s creation, and the syringes, I haven’t been in Atlantic water since.
Daniel body surfed for nearly 2 hours while I picked through broken shells, counted waves, seagulls, and pigeons, and took a brief nap – my heavy stomach and agita was getting the better of me. We headed back to the hotel, Daniel with his elbows, knees, and wrists scraped raw from broken shells laying on the ocean floor, with 2 shells each in tow, and not a moment too soon.
We should have paid more attention to the clues we were given before we sat down for lunch. We’re both now paying for it big time. I’m afraid to leave the room, even to go to the lobby. It’s too far from the bathroom.
Oh, by the way, I should have checked the Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authority web site, they don’t list Hong Kong House as a recommended place to eat.
O.P.W.