Friday, September 18, 2009

No Food Left ???

On Wednesday, I mentioned that we are in the last week of Ramadan. The actual end date is determined by looking at the moon and for now, they have almost confirmed the day to be this Sunday. Final confirmation is on Saturday night.

Tonight, we had dinner with Iwan (our driver) and his wife. Unfortunately, we were a few minutes late getting to the restaurant and all the other starving patrons were already seated and ordered.

The way many restaurants in Palembang work is they have a variety of dishes already prepared and laid out on all the tables. You eat the dishes you want, leave the rest untouched and they won't charge you. On top of these, you can order the main meals which are the restaurant's specialties. When we got there, we ordered, then waited...and waited. And then, we were told that there would be another 20 minutes of waiting because they were out of the main dish. Their explanation was that tonight was the last night that they would be open before the holidays and as such didn't want to have any food remainder. I don't know where they were going to dig up the 3 servings of fish that we had ordered since they were supposedly out of it but we waited.

Thats when I noticed there were hardly any of the pre-prepared dishes on the table. We have been here before and it was overflowing with choice the last time. I felt so bad for Iwan because he has been waiting since 3am this morning to eat! He must have been starving and they didn't even serve any rice.

Anyway, the food didn't take the full 20 minutes and we were eating before long. It was nothing to brag about but I didn't mind. I liked the company and we got a good laugh out of the name the table was reserved under:



Usually, the misspelling that Richard gets is "Ricat" which has been pretty funny to us for some time but this new one is definitely funnier.

2 comments:

Mike said...

"to dig up the 3 servings of fish"

I think I would have been out of there like a flash. Hope you're feel well.

elizabeth embracing life said...

These are the kind of stories you tell for years to come. Chuckling into the early morning hours.