Beijing Boyce

This review is about six weeks late, but I’ll include it anyway: Zing by Doodoo’s is the direct descendent of Zing, where the staff once took my order three times in an hour and never once brought me a drink. I complained to management later by email and they offered free dinner for some of my friends and me. First, they lose revenue for three beverages, and then, they offer to take on the expense of feeding my ravenous buddies (which was nice). How could such a business model survive?

The new Zing by Doodoo’s uses one of its managers in its ad. In the first one, she wears some kind of semi-transparent gold wrapping paper, which provides coverage equivalent to a bikini (for which, if I may make an entirely clinical observation, she has a more than adequate physique). This seems like a takeoff on Centro’s provocative ads and seems strange for a place featuring drinks, food, a swimming pool and occasionally, if rumors are true, Polynesian dancers.

I checked out the new Zing (the one by Doodoo) about six weeks ago, on the most humid night of the summer. The haze was so thick that if you stuck your arm out, your hand couldn’t find its way back [Ed. This is even sillier now than when I wrote it.] I walked the 800 meters there from my office in the belief that ice-cold beverages, served by wait staff wearing gold paper, would await the end of my long march. My pets, prepare for a short review. I walked in and the four fully clothed employees at the bar looked up and then went back to their task, which, from where I was standing, was doing nothing.

I wandered into the middle area, full of empty tables, and did my best “I have disposable income” imitation, but some prankster must have glued the employees to their stools because they were permanently stuck there. I warranted a glance or two, but only that. Is this what the Galapagos Islands is like, with lizards lying in the sunshine, occasionally accumulating the energy to raise a foot or flick out a tongue? Anyway, I waited a minute, then another, and then grabbed my bag and left, with yet another experience at Zing’s sans drink under my belt. On the way out, did I hear the faint sound of a toilet flushing? Bye bye, Doodoo?

(From Beijing Boyce II, first emailed on October 20, 2005)