Chinese food here, Chinese food there

by Tilly

Asia City. Not so much a city as a big, messy, confusing shopping centre. Nevertheless, there we were on a Monday morning (we had the morning off, so no need to tell our boss on us). There’s a shop that sells stickers for a ridiculously low, low price, which makes Tara-Zee very happy (I don’t know, she sticks them in her diary or something), and that makes me happy. Until lunchtime anyway.

“What should we eat, TZ?” I asked her innocently. “Um, I don’t know. Maybe we can find a Chinese restaurant.” She can be so sarcastic sometimes.

Sitting on chairs covered with plastic, we ordered Coke Light and a Sweet and Sour each (pork for TZ, prawn for me). ‘You didn’t share!?’ you might ask with surprise, but we did share spring rolls. They were hot. Temperature hot. Not spicy hot, or hot like Paris Hilton says it. They were very nice.

But, the Sweet and Sour… Why is something so bad for you so good? TZ and I will have to ponder it over a bottle (I mean, a glass) of wine sometime. It was fried, it was sweet, it was sour. It was heavenly. I asked TZ if Asian food in South Africa tasted the same in Asia (her and Mr. TZ have recently been) and she said, yes. This made me feel happy. It’s comforting. Sort of like if you go to a strange country and you don’t know the food, so you order MacDonald’s knowing what to expect. It makes me feel that the world is not so big to know that I can order Sweet and Sour something anywhere and I can sort of know what it should taste like. (I might not order the prawn just anywhere though…)

Anyway, keeping with the ‘fried food is good’ theme, we bought a huge (and ridiculously cheap) bag of prawn chips. Nothing like a bag of fried crisps in a variety of colours. This prompted us to wonder how they make those. As you can tell, it was a day of many questions. Turns out, it’s not as bad as you would imagine. It’s actually just bits of prawn, tumeric, salt and oil. And we decided that since the bag came with no nutritional information on it, that they were in fact calorie-free. Bonus.

Lunch ended with a fortune cookie. My fortune told me that “Anything is possible with a willing heart.” But nothing about heart burn, which was a great pity.

PS. My lottery numbers are: 5-9-12-22-39-24. Use it/don’t use it.
PPS. If you use it and you win, you owe me dinner.

Our first date

We have not always been friends. In fact, there were a good few years (about 22 to be exact) that we did not even know of each other. Then we met and it was, well, it was actually very underwhelming. Skip forward two years and we are what tweenies would call, like, total BFFs. So how did this shift occur? Ah, as it has done for centuries. Over a good meal and copious amounts of alcohol.

Banished to the far reaches of our beautiful country to do some training for work, we two found ourselves on one of those propeller planes that everyone insists are perfectly safe but no one actually likes to fly in. About ten minutes into the flight, the good captain announced that we would have to turn around and land at the airport we’d just taken off from. Turned out there was a slight issue with “an indicator”. No reason to panic, he insisted. Needless to say, we panicked. We dealt with it by giggling hysterically and surreptiously sussing out where the life jackets were kept so we could get to them first. They wouldn’t have helped. Johannesburg is inland. To top a bad flying experience off, our fears were certainly not allayed by the praying air hostess. True story.

To cut a long story short (and believe me, we can turn any story into a long one), we eventually landed and were bustled onto another flight despite insisting while waiting on the tarmac that we would not get onto another prop plane but would rather wait for a bigger runway to be built at our destination to accommodate a 747. Turns out that could take a while and we did not have the luxury of that amount of time. Finally, two and three-quarters of an hour later, we descended through a thick bank of clouds to our destination with two thoughts in our minds.  Thought #1: Food. Thought #2: Alcohol.

And that became our first date. At a gorgeous spot in a tiny coastal town called Chintsa (Google Map it), we sat overlooking the Indian Ocean at a restaurant called Michaela’s. Michaela’s is a grand time. Not only is it a local hangout, it is also a fine dining experience and a noisy bar. But the piece de resistance is the funincular that one must take from the parking lot to get to the restaurant. For those who don’t know what a funincular is:

funincular n. Awesomely wicked elevator-type thing with seats for sitting; it is designed for people who are too lazy (or drunk) to walk up or down steep staircases when ascending or descending to or from dinner and drinks at restaurants built precariously on cliff faces.

On our date, we managed to polish off a beautiful seafood platter (“Can I taste that?” “Of course! May I taste yours?” “Yes. Food is to be shared.” “OMG! I think so too!”) and three (yes, three) bottles of unwooded Chardonnay. Ah, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

And it’s been like that (with varying amounts of bottles of wine) ever since. We wanted to share some of our food experiences and conversations with you. We are super-excited about writing this blog for three reasons. It is, in fact, three-fold (as many things are, we have discovered):

1. We love to write.
2. We love to eat, drink and be merry.
3. We love to share.

From now on, you will hear from us seperately as we relive our food adventures. We hope you enjoy our stories and that you check back regularly.

Love, Tilly and Tara-Zee

PS. You can also follow us on twitter @thattoshare, and email us on thattoshare@gmail.com.