A hairy Blue Ginger story

We enjoy the Blue Ginger restaurant in Wellesley, though only get there about once a year. Wednesday night marked our first visit to the  newish lounge section. We figured we’d write something up about our experience and wouldn’t you know it didn’t turn out to be an ordinary visit.

The lounge is nice, with comfortable booths looking out at a funeral home, just the right lighting with overhead lamps shaped like squished pumpkins and a real buzz in the air at about 6:15pm. We were seated right away without having made reservations and ordered a couple of drinks, including a tasty Blue Ginger Gimlet, and a few items off the Lounge Menu: Shrimp-Avocado Parfait, Crab Rangoons and mushroom, duck and cheeseburger versions of Ming’s Bings (fancy new dumplings that are the lounge’s signature dish). Mrs. Swellesley enjoyed the parfait, served like a typical desert parfait glass but with shrimp on top. I liked the crispy Crab Rangoons. Then came the Bings…

I snagged the cheeseburger one: juicy and tasty. Mrs. Swellesley plucked the mushroom one and I took the duck piece (we would have ordered pork instead, but our server gave us a heads up from the start that they had run out). Anyway, as I go to slice the duck Bing in half I catch my fork on a seemingly endless hair. Determining this was not the latest culinary rage, we called our server’s attention to it. She looked mortified and took our dishes away, leaving us to ponder how the restaurant would handle this situation. After a few minutes a host swung by and apologized, assuring us nothing like this had ever happened during her time at the restaurant. Our server returned shortly thereafter with a round of drinks on the house. Somewhat unfazed, and still hungry, I then ordered shrimp sticks, which were served hairless and tasted creamy and delicious. Blue Ginger knocked the Bings off of our bill, and we went on our way. Though not before casting a suspicious eye on the busy cooking staff in the exposed kitchen.

By the way, we recently mentioned a fresh Boston Globe review of Blue Ginger. The review generated a good dose of comments from readers, who had no shortage of opinions, good and bad, about the restaurant.