Jinling misfortune
Three of us chose two dishes each, and shared them generally, which is usually an excellent method. Strangely enough, this time, the dishes we chose were well below normal standard, with only one of us choosing two decent dishes. We were at the Jinling Noodle Bar, near the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. I chose jelly fish, which came with strips of radish, and was alright, but tasteless, except for the radish, with the jellyfish being the long tentacles seen below the dome, which were chewy and transparent. The vegetarian spring rolls were quite good, but again nothing stunning. The best first course dish was deep fried squid.
With the food, we drank an Australian Chardonnay called Coldridge, from 2007 and 12.5%, which comes instead of the French version on the menu, and which I’m sure was better than the other. It was good, easily quaffable, and suitable for almost all the food. Next there was fried beef in black pepper sauce, which came with boiled rice, but the sauce was overly gelatinous. The Shanghai duck which I chose was absolutely full of bones, which made it almost impossible to eat in any sensible way. However, the same luckier person chose king prawn crispy fried noodles, which were pretty good, although for me, the noodles could be crispier. It should once again be pointed out that usually, this place serves great stuff. We were just under misfortune that night.