Dinner at the Rice Bowl

We've lived in the lovely? city of Bakersfield for 10 years now and have never once been downtown to the Rice Bowl restaurant to eat. We've seen the sign a bunch of times but never once have we been inside the place. Partly because it's all the way downtown and partly because I'm not all that big on Chinese food. But, last night we had dinner there. Keith's union was having it's annual holiday party there last night and Keith's schedule worked out just right to where we could actually go.

It's kind of strange inside the place, a very big building with lots of rooms and a bar, we were in the way back in like a conference room but next time we go hopefully we will sit in the much much nicer looking main dining room. They had those big round tables with the lazy susan in the center for the food, first bringing out an appetizer of fried chicken bits, called pepper chicken or something that were pretty tasty. Then came fried rice which I only ate a small amount of, then some kind of noodle dish which is not something I'm supposed to be eating, then some orange chicken which is all fried and breaded, again not supposed to be eating but I did and it was delicious. Then some pork or beef with green beans in it which I didn't like and then some battered and fried honey and walnut shrimp, which sounded good but I didn't like, picky eater that I am. The only way I like shrimp is fried up with cocktail sauce, and really I only like it because of the cocktail sauce.

Keith enjoyed the heck out of all the food, though, and there was so much of it that everyone at the table could take some home, so he'll have more of it for lunch today. I met a few of his co-workers, kind of nice to put a face with some of the names I've heard.

Anyway, it was a nice evening and really nice that I didn't have to come up with dinner last night.

This is their big sign outside which was not lit up last night and I was kind of disappointed about that, but cool sign anyway.

 And this is the gorgeous dining room that we did NOT sit in

And this is the 'Rice Parking Bowl' parking lot down the street that we did park in because everything by the restaurant was already taken.