otherwise 1) In another way, differently; 2) Under other circumstances; 3) In other respects.

Food: dim sum (and distractions) @ Kirin

We cheated on our usual favorite Sun Sui Wah on Main St. and went to another dim sum restaurant on Sunday, relying on this recommendation in Vancouver Magazine:

At Kirin (Gold) traditional dim sum items (such as har gow and siu mai) support more innovative dishes, each prepared with tremendous skill. Standouts include deep-fried salt-and-pepper capelin (smelts) full of luxurious roe, steamed rice-noodle rolls (cheung fan) with scallops and asparagus, deep-fried bean-curd wrap with prawns and pea shoots and lotus-leaf-wrapped sticky rice (nor mai fan). Their famous taro-and-shrimp cakes were our judges’ favourite dim sum item.

It's a brisk 20 minute walk from home, which we enjoyed very much. But I was already in a foul mood by the time we opened the door to enter the restaurant.

A white guy in a hideous windbreaker holds the door open for JC and says, "!#% %(## &*."

What does that mean? Who knows -- it was in Chinese.

I was THIS CLOSE to blurting out, "we're not Chinese, dude," or "speak English, asshole" but that would have been uncalled for, and I was having an otherwise wonderful Sunday morning, so I let it go.

The hostess tries to seat us at a corner table behind a couple of heavy columns, maybe because of the fumes coming out of my nose, so JC and I ask for another table, more centrally located for service and scanning the restaurant.

The waiter who brings tea asks, "Japanese?" No, we're Korean."Oh," he smiles and says, "#$%(# @(#)?"

"Excuse me?"

He repeats it, and it kind of sounds like "hello" in Korean. I smile-grimace, and he walks away happy. And returns with another word.

The whole meal is punctuated with the waiter blurting out random Korean words he must have picked up over the years. Like "hello" and "thank you" and "towel?" Except he says these things 1) out of context, and 2) very poorly. I have to strain to understand what he's saying, and he acts like he's doing us a favor by speaking Korean to us. It's a downtown location with lots of international Asian students, so it's not surprising that the waiter would have learned a little Korean here and there, but my question is this.

Who encourages this behavior?

I mean, what makes people think they're being cute, or smart, or friendly, or whatever by butchering a language in a half-ass mimicry of semi-random phrases? When someone says "ann-nyong-haaaa-ssssse-yow" to me, am I supposed to be flattered? Am I supposed to giggle and compliment them? Come on.

Maybe it's not as annoying as when assholes blurt out "konichiwa!" as you walk by them, but come on!

Seriously, does anybody like being addressed/accosted this way?

Anyway, I have seriously digressed from the intended restaurant review. I was preoccupied with the annoyances of a linguistic kind and JC was preoccupied with the multicolor spiral designs on the carpet (says JC: "It's making me dizzzzy!") that we sort of lost our appetite. Mind you, we're dim sum fiends -- we can chow down 10 orders. At Kirin, we ordered 4.

The deep fried squid with spicy pepper and salt was quite good, and I enjoyed it a lot. That is, until I finished and JC quietly told me that it costs $8.50. At our old fave Daimo in El Cerrito in the Bay Area, we could have had 5 times as much and BETTER for that much. SIGH.

Overall? Ahem, sayonara, Kirin - we're not going back.

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