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Hui-chen and I decided to go out for some Western style food last night.  We like steak and in nearby Jhubei is the Outback.  We’ve blogged on it before and we’re convinced that this will be the last time, unless they seriously upgrade their menu and service.

First, I ordered their “jacked potato” which is a stuff baked potato.  10 minutes later I was told that they were out of all potato items except “chips” (french fries).  He asked me what I wanted.

“I want you to go out and buy some fucking potatoes!” was my literal response.  I was pissed mostly because it wouldn’t occur to the waitstaff to check with the kitchen first so they can rely that information to the customers as they are ordering.  When he asked me what other stuff I wanted instead I told him I didn’t care (in Chinese).  Also, in Taiwan, restaurants are always going out and getting more stuff from the local grocery store.  I guess it was just too much to ask for them to have what I want, get what I want, or tell me when I’m ordering that they don’t have what I want.

The really weird part is that all of their boned steak items are gone.  You cannot get a T-bone or a Porterhouse steak at Outback.  This is stupid!  A butcher told me that Taiwan cannot import steak from the US with bone.  OK, so give me a choice!  I’ll take an Australian T-bone or Porterhouse steak over a NY strip any day of the week. Out of desperation, Hui-chen and I ordered prime rib. OMG, that was an exercise in diplomacy in itself.  You can’t get the grilled prime rib medium rare because the base roasting is medium.  We spent almost 10 minutes in 2 languages to finally figure out what combination of crap we needed to order so we could get a couple of decent medium rare steaks.  I was ready to go to My Home Steak and get some shitty T-bone fried on an iron plate and buried with pepper sauce, like our Monday night market.

What arrived on my plate was a quivering mass of fatty flesh that looked so awful, I shall spare you any photographic evidence.

Next time we’ll blog on Ruth’s Chris in Kaohsiung!