Where is the chicken in this?

A few days ago, my wife happened to be in Connaught Place for some work.

With rains having cooled down Delhi, it seemed like a good opportunity to have lunch together.

I toyed with the idea of meeting up at Parikrama, a restaurant next to our office. At 240 feet, it claims to be "India's highest and Delhi's solitary revolving restaurant". Having been there twice this year, I can vouch for the breath-taking view that it provides of the city.

We landed up at Tao instead. It is located at a premises long occupied by Bercos, a popular Chinese restaurant and its promoters have "the experience of serving people since four generations".

Familiarity with group restaurants, like Zen and Chungwa, weighed heavily in our decision to visit the restaurant. Both the named restaurants serve nice Indian Chinese cuisine.

The restaurant menu described itself thus:
TAO is something elusive and evasive and yet it contains within itself, a substance.
It is a path or a road that leads you to a goal.
TAO is not the end but the means to the end.
The destination is determined by the path you adopt to reach it yet it.

As my better half looked at the menu, I looked around myself. The place seemed comfortable and spacious, though a bit more light would have helped.

The menu looked delectable and we ordered Sweet & Sour Soup, to followed by Pan Fried Chef's Special Chicken, Stir Fried Bean Curd With Vegetables Hunan Style and Vegetarian Hakka Noodles.

The soup came with a liberal sprinkling of some green leafy substance. On tasting, it turned out to be coriander leaves. I have to admit this is the first Chinese dish (yes, that includes every Indian Chinese meal I have had so far) that had coriander leaves in it.

On enquiring with the waiter, I was told "customers like an Indian taste in their dishes". He smiled when I said coriander leaves don't work with Chinese sauces.

The table next to ours was occupied by a young family. I didn't catch what they ordered, but the man suddenly screamed - "Where is the chicken in this soup? I had ordered a chicken soup? Ask the kitchen staff to get me a bowl of chicken pieces."

Quite different from our gentle query, this reaction attracted instant attention. The waiter rushed to the kitchen to order warm chicken shreds for the soup.

"And yes, make sure the main course has plenty of chicken too," the moment the waiter returned.

This customer was quite clear on what he wanted of the dish - irrespective of how the restaurant imagined it to be.

Unfortunately, it was a bit late to do anything about our order. The Pan Fried Chef's Special Chicken turned out to be spicy chicken in an onion, tomato and coriander gravy. There was nothing pan-fried or Chinese about this dish. The vegetarian dish of Hunanese origin also had to make merry with onion and tomato.

Thankfully, the Hakka noodles were along expected lines and none of the dishes tasted obviously of the flavour enhancer MSG. MSG is hard to miss in most Chinese restaurants in Delhi.

Our neighbour, meanwhile, was ordering the waiters around. "Hey, this doesn't seem to have any chili in it? And where are the vegetables in this dish?"

In the end, he didn't each much of what he ordered and asked for it to be packed. As did we.

The packing reflected the same professionalism and care that the food did. The restaurant didn't seem to have boxes, and put the leftover in cheap-looking white plastic bags.

Wish I had read the preamble a bit more carefully:

TAO is something elusive and evasive and yet it contains within itself, a substance.
It is a path or a road that leads you to a goal.
TAO is not the end but the means to the end.
The destination is determined by the path you adopt to reach it yet it.

I could have at least taken a path that avoided the restaurant completely!!