Fishbowl Mango Daiquiri

Dim Sum is the ancient “B.C.” Chinese food of my mind: ‘Before China’.  Lunch in Hong Kong and it’s time for tea and penciling in selections. This restaurant in Mong Kok has an enormous screen.  It is lush and jarring and irresistible.  Fish dart about and I can’t help but let my eyes drift over to the thirty-foot screen.   Each dish is an Atkins no-no.  I grab at every one of them, consistently, as they spin around. 

Walking about in Hong Kong.  The familiar crawl homeward, back over to SoHo.  Some watering hole made out to be a rococo living room.  We knock and someone let’s us in.  “Shhhh” she says.  We shhh.  This is a living room, rather than bar.  I order a scotch.  They don’t have any.  “Is there, perchance, a wine list?”  “No.  We only serve daiquiris.”  Oh dear. 

I consider the other glasses on the bar.  They are serving Alice in Wonderland drinks from a seventeen year-old’s fantasy bar:  Chocolate strawberry daiquiris in a chocolate smothered goblet.  My hands are sticky, my lips are sticky and the taste is sweet, waxy but subtle so and even though I customarily hate rum, I am reluctantly enjoying this drink. 

The living room is becoming less and less livable as the crowds file in.  The people who know about this place are all twenty-somethings who look determined and well paid.  I have a chocolate conversation with another gent from France who is managing a fishbowl mango daiquiri.  We attempt a serious conversation.