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Bye bye, Beijing
Jul. 21st, 2006 02:33 amFor those of you who haven't heard, Shalom Beijing is no longer going to be kosher as of next Tuesday night. I heard about it earlier today and was very disappointed, for many reasons: (1) We thought the food was much better there than at the newer Chinese place; the food at the other place, in addition to being inconsistent from visit to visit, is much saltier and usually gives me heartburn. (Shalom then-Hunan was the first kosher Chinese restaurant in Boston, and my first-ever experience with Chinese food.) (2) It was the only kosher restaurant in town where you could comfortably have a quiet conversation. This is a major issue for me because I have trouble projecting over crowd noise. The other place is usually so crowded that you feel like you're eating with a stranger's elbow in your neck. (3) They had recently changed ownership and had a new menu with a lot of new dishes on it, and we hadn't had the opportunity yet to try most of them. (4) It's always better to have more choices. In my experience, when there's only one of a particular type of restaurant, and they have an effective lock on the community, they start to take their business for granted and the quality starts to deteriorate. Then people stop coming, and they eventually close... leaving even fewer options.
So, despite the fact that it was a long day (I got out of work about 8:30, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sdavido met me there on his way home from teaching), we decided to go to Shalom Beijing for dinner while we still had the opportunity. Knowing that we may not have another chance to eat there, we took a very long time choosing which things to order. When we did eventually decide, everything was excellent - we both ate a lot more than we'd intended to, and went home with much less left over than we had expected. And considering how much food we got (deliberately planning for leftovers), the price was very reasonable. But there were a bunch of other dishes that we would have liked to try as well... sigh.
I'm really surprised by their decision, I would think they'd get less business by eliminating the Jewish community from their client base. But they must feel they have reasons for it. In the meantime, that leaves us with one less choice on the occasions when we do feel like going out to dinner... Fooey.
So, despite the fact that it was a long day (I got out of work about 8:30, and
sdavido met me there on his way home from teaching), we decided to go to Shalom Beijing for dinner while we still had the opportunity. Knowing that we may not have another chance to eat there, we took a very long time choosing which things to order. When we did eventually decide, everything was excellent - we both ate a lot more than we'd intended to, and went home with much less left over than we had expected. And considering how much food we got (deliberately planning for leftovers), the price was very reasonable. But there were a bunch of other dishes that we would have liked to try as well... sigh.I'm really surprised by their decision, I would think they'd get less business by eliminating the Jewish community from their client base. But they must feel they have reasons for it. In the meantime, that leaves us with one less choice on the occasions when we do feel like going out to dinner... Fooey.
