I Suck At Gourmet Garden

today, a new member was added to our development team.

the newest team member (vasudha) is an asp developer from florida. she moved up here with her husband, who will be teaching at salem state.

in celebration of our newest team member, our development team went out for lunch. the destination for that lunch: the gourment garden. now, i suck at the gourmet garden. i have never been to the gourmet garden, probably because i've only been in the marblehead area for a little over a month due to work.

the gourment garden is a chinese/japanese restaurant located in the nearby town of swampscott. apparently, the restaurant was voted #1 by the readers choice awards from 2003-2006 for best chinese restaurant (or so the broken english website would have you believe).

although i'm not a big fan of chinese food (or many things chinese in general) my coworkers hyped up the restaurant with the all-you-can-eat buffet that the restaurant offered during lunch. with my penchant for devouring mass quantities, i figured the restaurant couldn't be all that bad. again, i didn't get my current body shape eating just bread and water.

unfortunately, the all-you-can-eat buffet was not being offered today. very sad. instead, the restaurant was trying its hand at having special bento box-typed lunches. i think a lot of my coworkers were disappointed by that fact.

needless to say, we enjoyed our lunch at the gourmet garden. i had chow foon noodles. normally, i would say cue rachael ray's "yum-o" sound... but i was a little disappointed with the dish. the noodles weren't bad or anything. i just think my mom has scarred me for life because every chinese dish i eat simply doesn't compare to my mom's home cooking... which is yet another reason why i'm not a big fan of chinese food. curse you mom! just kidding.

anyway, it was good it get to know our latest team member over lunch. plus, any opportunity i get to see what is around the town of marblehead is always good.