So bad it's funny. Cleveland.com restaurant review

Another example of what happens when a newspaper fires its real writers. Hunan East is an excellent restaurant in the Cleveland suburbs. But you'd never know it based on this review.

We finally settled on Kong Pao Chicken ($6.25 lunch, $8.50 dinner), which consists of chicken in a brown sauce, with a side assortment of chopped celery, carrots, water chestnuts, mushrooms, green peppers, scallions and peanuts. A huge serving of fried rice accompanies the dish plus an egg roll.

Of the half dozen egg foo young dishes we selected shrimp egg foo young ($6.95 lunch, $7.95 dinner) which we enjoyed. The tender shrimp are cooked with shreds of cabbage, bean sprouts and onion and served with fried rice.

The vegetarian fried rice ($6.75) contains an assortment of broccoli spears, carrots, mushrooms, snow peas, baby corn and water chestnuts. Delicious and great for vegetarians. A shot of soy sauce adds a new flavor dimension.

I think since she mentioned that the shot of soy sauce "adds a new flavor dimension," she must know her stuff. And it was nice for her to talk about the chop suey and chow mein choices as well.

http://www.cleveland.com/sun/scoopdujour/index.ssf/2013/11/hunan_east_a_popular_stop_in_r.html

With so many choices, ordering is an ordeal; chicken, beef, pork, seafood or vegetable

Yeah, not many Chinese restaurants offer such variety!

Check out the article on "Neopolitan" pizza, too, where "Each bite was flavorful and frankly hard to put down."

http://www.cleveland.com/sun/scoopdujou ... serve.html

Ann,

I used to be the wine writer for The Kansas City Star. In an economy move (saving $50/week) they let me go, telling me "we'll just take a column off the wire." Which they did. Exactly twice. Since *none* of the wines mentioned in either column was available in KC, the local wine retailers came down on the editor like a ton of bricks. The paper simply stopped having a wine column.

Better to not do it at all than to do it like the Star or your cleveland.com 'restaurant' writer does.

Geo