I ordered this Sunday night Red Dragon to ease my anxiety as the weekend ends and the week begins. Sadly, this aesthetically appeasing meal did not help me achieve that goal, bringing my total number of weekend goals reached to zero.
We all know that there was a change in ownership at Red Dragon over the last year or so. However, I still see the same nice people working there that I saw when I was 10 years old. When I call to place my order they still ask for my phone number, they still say there will be a 10 minute wait, they still include all those sauces that I never use, and they still package everything in the same brown paper bag that fits perfectly into the front section in the center console of a Tahoe, Suburban, or Yukon.
So why does this taste different? Over the last year, I’ve ordered my standard sweet-and-sour chicken, the cashew chicken, the chicken fried rice, and the almond chicken and they all have gone down in quality. The only two things on the menu that have not changed are the white rice and the crab rangoon. I actually have no idea what crab rangoon is, but it tastes like cream cheese inside of a fried little blanket of perfection. The food all looks the same but it doesn’t taste the same and I don’t understand why. Are they using different ingredients? Did they add or take out MSG? I feel like the MSG thing was a fad in the 1990s but I don’t know what it was or what it meant.
I don’t want to take Red Dragon out of the Sunday night anxiety dinner rotation, since that rotation basically just consists of Red Dragon, Capital Creations, and Goodberry’s. I obviously could eat Capital Creations every Sunday for the rest of my life, but every now and then it’s nice to change things up.
I guess I don’t have any answers and I was going to just let this one slide again until I came across this fortune, “Modify your thinking to handle new situations”.
Is this a coincidence or are they aware that we are not as pleased with their product and trying to address those concerns via fortune cookies? Either way I’m not ok with this new situation.
I’m tempted to write a fortune that says, “Please just go back to being how we used to be. I love you.” and dropping it off at the take-out window, but I don’t know how to make a fortune cookie. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, but I’m not really sure what we can do at this point. This isn’t a break up, I just need some time apart. At least more than 10 minute.
That’s a shame. I used to live at 2005 St. Mary’s Street. I remember it was 593 steps from my front door to the take-out window. I always like the food. Sounds like I don’t need to go back
Have you tried the Mongolian Beef – it tastes the same.
I’m just grateful the new owners continue to leave the back “fire exit” open for people to get to the walk-up window.
Same exact experience with hunan shrimp which I’ve been getting for years. So sad, it tasted really old with no kick. They’ve been so good thought it was my imagination until I had leftovers….got to get them back on the right track!
I thought it was just me. Sorry to have the slippage confirmed as reality. (Well, I THINK it’s reality.)