cooking

We have a guest so we went downtown to the Dubai Museum today instead of doing school. After the museum, everyone was starvingly hungry so we headed across the street to The Silk Route Chinese and Thai at the Arabian Courtyard.
Normally, I avoid hotel restaurants. But our guest had read a review of the restaurant and wanted to check it out and we hardly ever have Chinese food here so we thought we'd go for it. That and the boys were at borderline whining...
The hotel is pretty fantastic for its decor. Really outrageous, lots of atrocious gold fabrics, multi-colored waterfalls, shiny surfaces, etc. The restaurant keeps to this style with red silk wallpaper and bamboo as its main decorating themes. Paper lanterns everywhere complete the kitchy look.
For the boys we ordered the vegetable wonton soup, a plate of lamb satay, some chicken dumplings and some fresh spring rolls. The wontons were stuffed with broccoli, carrot and cabbage; quite nice and enjoyed by all the self described 'meat-arians'. There was some complaining about the lack of pork wontons. Along the lines of "if they can serve alcohol in hotels, why not pork?" Perceptive little munchkins, aren't they?
My only complaint was with the spring rolls which were marked as vegetarian but still contained shrimp.
Husband ordered hot and sour soup which he said was not particularly good, but he thought this might be an American -vs- rest of the world thing as he never has it the way he likes it out of the US.
Both Guest and husband had crispy beef. Guest asked for not-spicy which evidently the restaurant took to mean 'no flavor' so she was fairly disappointed. Husband enjoyed his. I had vegetarian pad thai (no shrimp) which was also pleasant enough with generous chunks of a seasoned tofu and slivers of fresh vegetables.
All in all, an ok meal, I probably wouldn't go there again though...

$$$ **