Happy Anniversery Zapata's

 Zapata's Tex-Mex Restaurant celebrated it's fourth anniversery a couple of weeks ago.  In the U.S., restaurants send out coupons in the Sunday paper for free appetizers or souvenier drink glasses when they have an anniversary.  In Suzhou, for its anniversery, Zapata's threw a party.  A really, really good party.

Zapata's is like no other place I've ever been in.  It's a cross between Sam Malone's bar in Cheers and Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca.  For those who live near Jinji Lake, it's the neighborhood hangout where you can go when you don't feel like cooking.  You walk in the door and everybody knows your name.  You can get a pizza or a burger or fajitas or whatever comfort food you're craving.  And as you take a bite, you close your eyes, and it feels just like you are back at home.  Then, when you open your eyes, you can look around the tables and see (and hear) a clientele that looks like a plenary session of the United Nations - Swedes, Aussies, Brits, Chinese, Russians, Americans, Finnish, Chileans, Germans, French...

 Milton is the managing owner of Zapatas - a Florida boy who knocked around Asia for several years before buying into the Suzhou restaurant business.  He is the gentleman in the DJ's booth in the photo at top.  Milton turned around a struggling, if not failing, operation by following a very simple rule - talking to his customers and working very, very hard to give them what they wanted.  To the point where his patrons actually participate in the business.  For example, every Sunday is a barbeque that is coordinated by an expat from Texas.  Every Thursday is quiz night, organized by quixotic Brit named Duncan. 

 For the anniversary party, Milton invited all the regulars for an hour of free drinks.  He also hired some traditional Chinese Lion Dancers to entertain the crowd.  The photos do not do the Lion Dancers justice.  They snaked their way through the crowd as they danced and performed acrobatics to the beat of their drum corps. 

 The photo below would be the drum corps.

The main bar at Zapata's features retractable railings - railings that can be extended so the bar can be used stage for dancing.   The original owners intended the place to be a dance club....a concept more suited to Shanghai and it's younger crowd than to Suzhou's typically middle-aged expat community.  Normally, the railing stays lowered.  But on anniversary night, the railings were extended and the bar became a stage.  The customers become performers.  The group below is just getting started in a rendition of the YMCA.  That's right...the Village People version of the YMCA from the 1970s.  It may not be "cool", but it was fun.

 Below is a photo of Theresa with two of the key characters in our story.  At right is Milton, the managing owner of Zapata's.  At left is Duncan, the host of the Thursday quiz night and the guy who is always there...part employee and part patron.

The place was rocking until the wee hours of the morning.  We left relatively early at about 1:00am (which is super late for us) with another couple that lives in our apartment building.  At 1:00 am in the morning, it was mostly quiet in Suzhou but not totally quiet.  The welders and steelworkers were still hard at work high up in  the pair-of-pants construction site.  The taxi drivers were washing their taxis with water dipped by the bucket from the fountains outside the apartment complex.  The night watchman for the apartment complex was sleeping peacefully at his chair in the guardhouse.  we were able to sneak through the open gate without waking him.