Before I begin, let me preface this rant by pointing out that although I have categorized this post under "Hong Kong people", I only refer to roaches here from a societal standpoint.

I read this article today about how two brothers running a Chinese restaurant called the Sea Palace in Somerset (in the UK) were actually fined 20,000 pounds(!) by the authorities. A roach apparently popped out, quite chipper and unhurt, from one unfortunate lady's king prawn dish. Clearly a zero tolerance policy.

Contrast this with the experience of my wife, when on lunch break at Pacific Place in Hong Kong, dining at the ZEN Cantonese restaurant. She has a roach phobia, let me say in advance. So imagine how distressed she must have become when she felt something odd crawling up her pant leg. She put a hand on the offending motion, and discovered to her horror that it felt winged and had six legs and mandibles.

She called sharply for attention from a waitress. She could not do much physically, however, other than trap the offending insect between the material of her pants and her bare skin. A waitress eventually ambled up, advised her to try to 'flush' it out, and when she was able to collect herself enough to do that (with some even more alarming misdirections) the waitress trapped it with a bowl and escorted it away.

Rather than offering her a free meal, however, they just gave an offhand apology and explained that the fumigator had been that day, causing some restlessness in the roaches' ranks.

I thought pesticide did more than that...but perhaps resturanteurs in the city have historically been more inured to pests. I don't normally cross-post, but you'll find a history of small nasties in Hong Kong here. To be fair, the incident I describe was a couple of years ago, so maybe ZEN's gotten that under control...