Good Luck Restaurant

“Can you recommend a local favorite?” my dad asked the hotel staff that night.

Let me preface this post by saying that I have gotten used to local digs. After a semester here I have only slight trepidation eating at the neighborhood “greasy chopstick” and asking for a side of bowling water to clean my utensils/ bowls. After several stomachaches and six months of eating, breathing and consuming the bacteria of the middle kingdom, I would like to think that I have developed immunity on par with that of a frat boy.

For someone visiting for two weeks, eating street food or dining in at a local hole-in-the-wall comes at your own risk. Even if the food is clean, the quality is not (always) the best. So though I hold the hotel to no fault as we got exactly what we asked for.

‘Good luck restaurant’ was the name of the establishment, although a more apt description might have been good luck finding where it is located. Thanks to my limited Chinese, we were finally able to find the place after wandering around for a while.

A store employee attempts weird marketing tactic

during our search for Good Luck Restaurant.

In short, the restaurant was a place that needs to be seen to be believed. It included:

- non-English speaking waiter (we were in China to be fair)

- meat-filled vegetarian dish

- questionably ‘clean’ plates/tables/entrees

- interesting choice of decorations (see below)

Barack "the riveter" Obama

Being wine enthusiasts, my father and stepmom decided to order a bottle of wine. Similar to the shopkeeper on the night of my Christmas Eve party, our waiter struggled to open the bottle of wine. For several minutes, we uncomfortably watched him dig into the bottle and destroy the cork, not saying anything for fear of causing him to lose face.

Poor cork, we hardly knew ye.

A manager, seeing his struggle yelled at him and sent him back to the kitchen (to get a new bottle presumably) and apologized to us in Chinese. When the wine was finally poured, it turned out to be pretty terrible. We all felt bad for the waiter so we sat and drank our wine. Surprisingly, none of us got food poisoning but GLR is not a place I will be recommending to friends.