Shining Rainbow Restaurant

Julian and I were searching for a dinner spot in Albany while on our way to Vermont/New Hampshire. We were deciding between Indian and Thai, when an Afghan restaurant jumped out at me. We were trying to find this restaurant when we discovered that it no longer exists and has been replaced by a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. Normally, we would have just shrugged and gone to one of the Thai or Indian restaurants, but this restaurant caught my eye. It looked like it was once a diner, with a bar and booths. It seemed really funny to me to have a Chinese restaurant in a diner. This excited me and I wanted to look at the menu, despite Julian’s groans. When we walked in, I immediately noticed the huge lobster tank, and made sure we weren’t sitting at the table next to it. The first thing that happened was a waitress came over and gave us water and a menu, as usual, but then a waiter came over and took our menus away. I’m not really sure what happened there, but I thought it was pretty funny. We felt overwhelmed by the menu, it was both large and unusual (good), and asked the waitress for recommendations (as I usually do). I didn’t feel like she was really understanding that I wanted something “interesting” and “authentic,” when she told me to get the pan fried noodles. I instead ordered the Salted Egg and Chicken Fried Rice Hot Pot and Julian ordered the other dish I wanted, Curry Egg Fried Rice with Vegetables. I thought it was strange that they would bring Julian’s dish quite a long time before they brought out mine (fine for us since we share everything anyway), but then I realized that perhaps this isn’t so strange since in China all the diners share food from the same dish. We were so happy with the curry fried rice. It was incredibly satisfying and just the perfect dish for such a cold (winterish) night. I definitely want to make this at home now that it’s colder outside. My dish came sizzling, and the chicken was like a brown mush on top of the white rice, with two yellow circles on top (the egg). It was such an interesting dish, and surprisingly good! At the bottom of the rice bowl, the rice was burnt to the kettle pot, which was the best part. We were both so happy with our meals, and I think it’s definitely one of the most interesting, best meals I’ve had!