Sea Cucumber Is Not A Vegetable

I was playing in a volleyball tournament outside Seattle with some guys from my command in Adak back in my Navy days when I had my first experience eating at a really fancy Chinese restaurant. Now I was only 22 years old at the time so try not to judge my ignorance too harshly. Here’s how the story goes:

One of my teammates, Bouf, I did not make that name up, that’s what we used to call him, was from Minnesota. While we were going to be in Seattle, his girlfriend from back home decided to come visit him. She brought her dad. Now I know that sounds bad, but hey, they were from Minnesota and pretty cool people. Bouf asked me if I wanted to go to Seattle for the weekend and hang out with GF and Dad. He needed a wingman and I was willing, so I went. We spent the first day in Seattle and that night, Dad asked us if we wanted to drive up to Vancouver for the night, we could spend the night and do some sightseeing the next day. This sounded like fun so that is what we did. Dad was, let’s say, wealthy. He wanted to stay at a nice hotel, so we drove to downtown Vancouver and found a five star hotel Way out of the price range of a couple of squids, but Dad said he would pay for it. OK.

Dinner time and Dad asks us if we like Chinese food. I say sure even though my only experience with Chinese food generally involved a to go box, sweet and sour pork and cheap chopsticks. They had a Chinese restaurant in the hotel so Dad had the concierge make us a reservation. We were led to our table and the place was beautiful. The waiter spoke broken English at best. We ordered a drink as we looked at the menu. I was not that familiar with all of the items on the menu and had no idea what to order. I finally settled on something they called a seafood soufflé. I figured it was fish and how bad could they screw that up (I actually thought that).

The waiter came to the table and asked us what we wanted and the conversation went something like this:

Dad – “I will have the something beef.”
Waiter - “oh, that is very, very good choice.”
GF – “I will have the something chicken.”
Bouf - “That sounds good, I will have that too.”
Waiter looking puzzled - “Oh no, vegetable plate is very good”
Bouf said, “No, I think I will have what she is having.”
Waiter – “No, No, vegetable plate is very good.”
Me – “Bouf I think he wants you to have the vegetable plate.”
Bouf – “Me too, OK I will have the vegetable plate.”
Waiter – “Very good.”
Me – “I will have the seafood soufflé.”

The waiter had no comment to my order, which should have been a sign. Well, some time later, the waiter appeared with the plate of food that Dad had ordered. He showed it to us all and then took it to a serving table and divvied it up into four portions and gave each of us some. At that moment, it became very clear why he did not want us to order the same dishes. He repeated this for all of the orders, saving mine for last. I must admit the food was fantastic, even the vegetable plate.

It was finally time for them to bring out what I had ordered. It came out in a little clay pot. The waiter put it in the middle of the table and removed the lid. We all looked in and I swear it looked like a bowl of 10W-40 weight oil. I was now a little scared. He took the pot over to the serving table and scooped us all out some. He then put the plates in front of all us. I remember I was kind of picking at the food a little bit trying to figure out what the hell they just put on my plate. I could make out the seaweed, but that was about it. While I was still studying my food trying to figure out how I was going to eat this goop, Bouf, all of a sudden, drops his chopsticks onto his plate making a sharp sound. I looked up at him, startled. He looked at me and said:

Bouf – “I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but there is a duck’s foot on my plate.”

I looked down and he was right, I also had a duck’s foot on my plate. I picked it up with my chopsticks and the toes spread to display the webbing. Right at that moment Dad speaks up,

Dad – “Yeah you are supposed to eat the webbing from between the toes.”

I look up to see him sucking on the duck's foot from his plate. I almost threw up right there. Come to find out that there was very little in the way of fish in the soufflé. Seaweed, duck’s feet, sea cucumber (which is a slug BTW) and a few other disgusting things all in some warm 10W-40 weight oil. None of us ate to much of the soufflé, except Dad who ate everything on his plate.

Bouf and I laughed about this for about a year, until he was transferred. I don’t know what ever became of him, GF or Dad. Since then, I have eaten in many Asian restaurants, including Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese and never had an experience like that one. Any of you ever get a surprise like that in a restaurant?