Fake Chinese > Real Chinese
Zhou Jie Hot Pot Restaurant
42 Saka Tinubu, Victoria Island, Lagos
FOLLY: One of the bosses at my old job used to call this place "Chinese Chinese" because the restaurant has no signage in English, just some Chinese letters that no one really knows what they mean.
I think we just found a place that serves real Chinese food. Like, what actual Chinese people eat.
— Eat.Drink.Lagos (@EatDrinkLagos) September 13, 2015In fact if you find yourself needing to call those phone numbers above, don't waste your time the lady who manages/owns the place doesn't speak a word of english apart from "this one" and "that one" when she's pointing things out to her staff.
NOSA: I got here before Folly and I swear there was Triad meeting beside me.
I know because nothing is in English and there's no General Tso's Chicken. Authentic.
— Eat.Drink.Lagos (@EatDrinkLagos) September 13, 2015At one point, the waitresses brought dumplings and the main Triad guy gets up and goes, "5 DUMPLINGS FOR EVERYONE!" Proper mob boss stuff.
Following his lead, I got dumplings too.
FOLLY: These dumplings were the only thing I enjoyed out of everything we ordered and I was so terrified when they arrived cause they looked like crap.
NOSA: Ugliest. Dumplings. Ever.
FOLLY: Personally, I'm not a fan of steamed/boiled dumplings because of how fresh they look, sometimes they are also a bit too smooth and slippery so the texture throws me off.
Thankfully, these tasted way better than they looked.
NOSA: Yeah, they weren't bad at all. I think it was chicken...
...or dog.
FOLLY: We ordered Lamb Chops and we got goat meat ribs. I kept asking the different waiters if these were the lamb chops till Nosa told me to stop wasting my time as they probably are just serving what the Chinese man in the back gives them to serve.
NOSA: LOL, we asked the waiter what type of meat it was and dude said it was goat meat. I told the guy we ordered the lamb chops and dude says, "ehn, the same thing na."
FOLLY: The ribs were seasoned with curry and had weird pockets of fat. They looked way better than they tasted.
NOSA: So we decided to be adventurous and not get rice like Nigerians. We ordered the Sweet and Sour Shrimp.
FOLLY: I'm going to call these popcorn sweet and sour shrimp. Hmm these were overly sweet so after a while became sickening, if we hadn't gotten some rice to eat this with, it might have helped to counteract the sweetness.
NOSA: This thing would've given us jedi-jedi if we finished it. Waaaaay more sweet than sour.
Anyway, our inner Nigerian came out and we got Spring Rolls to round up the ting.
FOLLY: These spring rolls are the worst I've ever had. Period. In fact, small chops spring rolls are way better.
NOSA: Fried it all the oil in the world. Oh my God.
POSTSCRIPT
FOLLY: I've actually been to chinese chinese before this time and I really enjoyed it. What was different then was that I didn't even look at the menu, I came with the foreigns from work and they picked everything. I came with Nosa and tried to decipher the menu and this happened, so it could be that we ordered poorly.
NOSA: Maybe we should have just ordered the rice we know.
VERDICT
DAMAGE
Steamed Dumplings - N1500
Lamb Chops - N4500
Sweet and Sour Shrimp - N3500
Spring Rolls - N1800