I was called for jury duty again. I find it to be extremely frustrating. Not because I have anything against my civic duty. I’ve actually served on a jury. I was even the foreperson. I found it actually quite interesting. I just find the process of jury selection so terribly time-consuming and inefficient. It should be quick. But instead, you spend most of your time just sitting. Then you sit some more. And then a bit more. Ok, enough yammering. Eventually, after my belly started eating itself, they excused us for lunch. So I walked myself down to Nooddi. It turns out to be a little local chain, with 6 locations in total in the delaware valley. They have a nice lunch special deal so that’s what I went with. For my soup I got the ravioli soup, which included two shrimp and chicken dumplings, mixed veggies, and a light broth. This was pretty decent. The dumplings were tasty and the veggies were nice and fresh. The broth was very light, not greasy, like typical wonton style soups.

For my appetizer, I got the thai salad (som tam), which was supposed to be shredded cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, and peanut tossed with Thai seasoning lime juice. There was definitely cabbage and carrots, but I had one small piece of tomato and no peanuts. And the thai seasoning lime juice was pretty much just fish sauce slightly watered down a bit. I think they could have done a lot better. And that could have started with giving me a bit more tomato and you know, actually having peanuts. And I tasted no lime. But I’m pretty much a big sucker for any type of cabbage salad, so I still enjoyed it.

For my entree, I went with the Pad Se Ew. Chicken, wide jumbo rice noodles, veggies, and egg, in a sweet soy seasoning. This type of noodle dish is my crack. I just love it so. It’s so easy and simple, with such few ingredients, but they just work so well together. I love the soft earthiness of the noodles and the slight crunch of the lightly stir fried veggies. Although, I’m not a big fan of baby corn. They could have totally left that out! Service was ok. It was a little later than typical lunch time so it wasn’t very crowded. And my food came out pretty quick. It’s a nice option for the downtown Media crowd.

While I avoid casual chain restaurants like the plague, sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. When stuck at an airport, your choices are limited. It’s typically a case of “least of all evils”. At DTW, I was given the illustrious choices of tgi friday’s, ruby tuesday, mcdonald’s, champps (where they allow smoking!?!??), cheeburger cheeburger, and a few other sandwich type shops, most of which were starting to close by the time I showed up. While I like cheeburger, cheeburger, the one at the airport was like a stripped down version, and it scared me off a bit. And the sandwich shops, those are always the pre-made ones, where the sandwiches have been sitting there for who knows how long! So really, what was I supposed to do? At that point, it was just a toss up between tgi and ruby, and for whatever reason, tgi mcscratchy’s won out.

I started out with a house salad and a virgin strawberry daiquiri. The salad wasn’t half bad. I haven’t been to a tgi friday’s for at least ten years, and I didn’t remember anything from it. The salad is nothing special, but I did like their vinaigrette dressing. This little fruit slushy was pretty darn tasty and refreshing too.

This is an airport restaurant, so it’s a stripped down version of a regular tgi’s with a limited menu. I got the dragonfire chicken, which is a grilled chicken breast glazed with a kung pao sauce and topped with pineapple pico de gallo,served over stir–fried brown rice, along side mandarin oranges and broccoli. Really, this was pretty good! The chicken was quite good, although the sauce was a bit too much on the gingery side for my liking. I didn’t bite into any ginger hunks, thank goodness, but the ginger flavor was a bit too strong. The sauce and the pico added just enough spice. The rice was pretty good, even though it was on the overcooked and mushy side. The mandarin oranges were from a can, so they couldn’t really go wrong there, and the broccoli was great! They were steamed just right, and not mushy at all. They still had some firmness. All in all, this sure beat a big mac!

I was in a random town about an hour outside of Detroit, where the food choices are between Arby’s, McDonald’s, or Coney Island. I wasn’t feeling that, so I took a short drive to Ann Arbor to check out one of America’s finest college towns. It’s adorable and so studious. Roaming around, I ended up at Mercy’s. It’s brand new, and part of a hotel. It’s a french restaurant, with burmese and other asian influences. Sounds interesting, huh? Ok, so I have to start with this bread. It was like simply amazing. It was just thin slices of some sourdough bread. Super crusty on the outside, super dense and lovely on the inside. They get it from Chicago. Where is this bread from? Because I could eat this all day. Looks like every day ordinary bread, tastes like nirvana.

I started with the Mercy’s Steamed Dumplings. They’re made with ground dumplings, which makes them a bit more healthy. When they come out, they bring out the bamboo steamer and then put them on a plate for you. They’re served with ginger soy and spicy chili dipping sauces. This means they put some dumpling sauce in a bowl and squeeze some sriracha in another bowl. These were pretty good, but the innards also had pieces of water chestnuts in them, which made the insides sometimes crunchy. I actually do not like water chestnuts at all, especially their texture, so that part of the dumplings, I did not care for.

I also added the Asian Slaw as a side to my entree. It was a blend of Napa cabbage, red pepper, green onion, and corn in a sesame ginger vinaigrette. I absolutely loved this. I’m a huge sucker for super crunchy cabbage based salads. I can’t get enough! I could have eaten a giant bowl of this as my main course. They’re really fancy about presentation too. It was served in a little fried wonton skin basket.

My entree was the Coriander Dusted Sea Scallops. Large scallops are served with jasmine confetti rice cake, citrus ginger beurre blanc, orange curry coconut glacé, balsamic paint, and green beans. That’s a lot of fancy words. The scallops were great, but I wasn’t necessarily crazy about the citrus ginger buerre blanc they slathered on top of them. But they were cooked well, seared on the outside, pretty raw in the middle. The rice was not very good. It was heavy on coconut milk and fairly flavorless. The balsamic paint was a dramatic touch to the dish itself, and I loved the green beans.

The service was ok. The food took forever to come out. And there weren’t very many people there, so I don’t know what was up. Maybe they’re just still trying to figure it out, as they’ve only been open for a little while. Or maybe they’re just slow. This place is a fancier and more expensive alternative, in an otherwise college dining scene, where your only options are sandwiches, wings, or burgers.