Clay pots, delivered to your door.

I've been tempted to order delivery ever since I found out Pizza Hut, McDonald's, and KFC all deliver in HK and China, but there were never occasions for it. Yesterday father told us to all go home for dinner, didn't buy any dinner ingredients, and we were completely out of food because father doesn't seem to like stocking up, so we decided to order out.

Clay Pot 1: Bean curd with pork

The Analysis: We ordered from this HK-styled clay pot place that stuck advertising on our door a few days ago. Much to our relief and surprise they serve their clay pot rice along with the clay pot  and not in a plastic bag (real fear, based on Mother's experience) or even a disposable container. It was 9pm, fairly late by mainland Chinese standards, and they said it'd take them about half an hour to deliver.

Clay Pot 3: Preserved pork belly and Chinese sausage

The food ended up arriving twenty minutes early, warm and fairly good-smelling. We ordered three orders of clay pot rice, with braised beef with daikon, bean curd with pork, and preserved meats, respectively.  Surprisingly, for  ¥14-¥18 each, there were plenty of vegetables and meat, not drenched in MSG, wasn't overly oily for clay pots, was of decent portions, and was, overall, pretty above expectations. The rice was cooked in the pot and had crisped bits on the bottom, the beef stew had been stewed for long enough for the flavours to seep into both the daikon and the flavourful beef. The preserved pork belly and and Chinese sausage was a little fatty, but basically not stale. The bean curd was cooked just enough and unexpectedly light on the MSG.

Clay Pot 2: Beef and daikon stew

If I had to be a little pickier, the beef was a little dry, the bean curd had no character nor enough flavour, the preserved pork belly was too dry and the sausage too fatty, the soy sauce didn't have enough soy flavour, and they still added MSG, but see, for ¥50 (~$8) including delivery (delivery was free but we didn't have change), we were pretty happy. Hooray for low expectations!


The Case of the Abandoned Pots: Because they were on the same street as us, we went to see what the store was like after going out for lunch today, and that place looks new. As in, it had a very new sign on the outside, four white walls, an air conditioner, one large table with stools, a cashier's podium, and nothing else.


Last night, the delivery man told us to leave the pots outside the door after we're done so he can come pick them up later, twice. The thing is, no one came back for the pots. They sat outside our door for 20+ hours, untouched. I just brought them back inside the house because the building cleaners might get rid of them, but I kind of hope they come back and ring the doorbell for them, since they are definitely cutting a loss if they don't collect those pots and, well, this is one place that would be a bit of a shame to see closing down.


Because I am not about to show off my Canto-Mandarin on a phone where I cannot gesture to get my point across, I tried to contact them through Taobao (which is highly hilarious since that's the equivalent of ordering take-out through eBay), but I can't get into Mother's account and after I signed up for one myself, they revealed that new accounts cannot be used to send messages to sellers. Welp. Maybe when Mother gets back tonight I can use her account to send them a message. That WOULD me I have to retype the message I so painstakenly pinyin-ed out. We'll see. 


Edit 21:14: They came to pick up the pots approximately 24 hours after they were delivered. No further actions necessary.