Sheraton Hotel, Guilin, China

Ordered via room service at the Sheraton Hotel in Guilin, China.

“Beef noodle chicken rice?” the flight attendant asked me on our trip down to Guilin. “Beef noodle” I reluctantly replied and immediately was delivered a steaming tin-foil pan of ground beef slurry over dense, brick like noodles. Yes, I thought, I will wait till we arrive at our western hotel before I eat today.

4 hours later and just about lunch time, we arrived at the Sheraton hotel in beautiful Guilin. I was hungry and ready to attack the room-service menu when I quickly realized that Rachel, my mother and my father had also been left hungry from the dog-food like meal we had been served en route to this lovely city.

And at that, we were out to find some local food.

30 minutes later, we tried our luck on a street vendor selling soup with noodles, hot and spicy. It was a dish the family liked, but as unique and tasty as our $1.50 meal for four was, I was still starving and my sights were still set on the Sheraton’s Club Sandwich.

We wandered back to the hotel to get some work done and relax before evening was upon us. With hotpot on the books for dinner, I knew getting a filler meal in would be a great idea, so I jumped on the room-service menu and ordered the Atrium Club Sandwich.

The menu described this club accurately enough: a classic triple decker filled with egg, crispy bacon, ham, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, and a side of French fries. How could anyone go wrong with that standard combination? Oh, a naïve move to brush over this question; I learned my lesson quickly today.

The Atrium Club Sandwich was deceivingly disgusting. They had the recipe down, no one will disagree with that, however the chefs at the Sheraton chose to use awful ingredients.  Literally. Starting with the bread, they decided to use 2 different types and completely untoasted. Big fail as my mouth was full of different types of doughy bread on the first bite. The bacon was hard as a rock and nearly unedible, as was the paper thin chicken they used. The ham, thickly layered over unripe tomatoes and a seemingly old fried egg, didn’t help at all. Neither did the excessive use of mayonnaise that added an extra 500 calories onto this bad boy.

This day was a first for me: I didn’t even finish half of the club sandwich. Not even close. The French fries were passable but the accompanying salad was laughable. The verdict was in: The Atrium Club Sandwich sucks. I will surely never order this again and I will keep my fingers crossed that the next Sheraton hotel I stay at uses better ingredients.

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