We've done our first overnight backpacking trip, and have made it back home in one piece, sometime around three this morning. But before going into the food situation on the trail, I have to talk about the lunch on the first day. On Thursday, we caught an early flight to Seattle, arrived there at 9:30 and drove to the Olympic National Park via I-5 and 101. Before setting out to the 14-mile hike (round trip) in the rain forest along the Quinault River, we stopped at the town of Aberdeen, Washington, for lunch. I'd come across a favorable review of the Mallard's Bistro on Chowhound, so it was our first aim. We then discovered that the restaurant doesn't open for lunch, and opted for a Chinese restaurant next door.

When we opened the door, I felt like walking into a Veteran's Hall or something of the sort, for it was a large, dimly lit space with the ceiling two-story high and a wrap-around balcony overlooking the dining area. Quite a few number of elaborately carved teak tables were arranged around an open space in the middle, and booth-style seats accompanied the tables. Along the green, tiled wall were a bunch of decorative Chinese furniture, statues and scrolls, some for sale, others not. The wrap-around balcony was supported by faux-Doric columns, which gave an odd sense of lost grandiosity to the space. We should have been dancing in our best 50's-ish clothes, instead of eating Chinese food in hiking outfit, it seemed.

Despite the over-the-top space and decoration, the lunch specials were reasonably priced at $5.95. My broccoli chicken came with fried rice and sweet-and-sour shrimps, while Patrick's Mongolian beef came with the same fried rice and sweet-and-sour chicken. (By the time we got to Aberdeen, I was starving, and I wolfed the food down as soon as it arrived--thus no photograph. Sorry!)

The ingredients were fresh and the seasoning wasn't too bad. The only thing that took me aback was the color. The sweet-and-sour sauce was brilliant vermilion, thickly draped around the battered shrimps. The sauce for the broccoli chicken was less exciting yellow, but quite stunning nonetheless. Fried rice looked more like Spanish rice, in its bright orange tint. The all-natural, deep green of the broccoli added the finishing brush strokes to this Gauguin-esque canvas of colors. All in all, I felt like I was eating Americanized Chinese food from thirty years ago. Here's a photo of the mostly finished, one-plate lunch--behold the Technicolor goodness.

Again, this is not to say that the food was bad. It was a decent, passable Chinese. The sweet-and-sour sauce was a bit on the sweet side, but then again, it's supposed to. So, except for the stunningly vivid colors, there was nothing wrong with the food. (I'm sure it was chock full of MSG, but coming from the additive's country of birth, I don't believe in its harmfulness.) Combined with the odd space in which it was served, the lunch in Aberdeen was quite an experience.

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If you want to know which Chinese restaurant I'm talking about, leave a comment--I don't feel like badmouthing the restaurant in an overly public manner. The people there were very nice. When Patrick asked for direction, all the servers (and the daughter of one of them) milled around our table and discussed it, and when all of them couldn't be certain which way it is, they pulled out a local phonebook to show us the local map.