Man, I love me some Urbanspoon. Just pick a general direction on the map, start poking at flags, and seeing what works.

Therein lies a tale. A Tea House tale.

Last night, we ended up at the new University location of the Tea House, a small set of Chinese restaurants that dot the Twin Cities from the Western suburbs to East St. Paul.

I haven't been to any of the others, but the first thing you notice at the new location is the incredibly striking decor. It's a lavish mix of modern and iconic, that walks right up to tacky, introduces itself, then wanders off in a whole other direction.

Consider this story an addendum to my earlier review of Wakame.

The Lambert family birthday tradition is that whosoever's birthday it is picks the restaurant. And I picked Wakame, because I haven't managed to get back there since the first time, and it'd been far, far too long since I'd had the Annie's Ika squid appetizer.

I never go to Linden Hills.

For those of you who don't live in the Twin Cities, allow me to state outright that this is very odd. The Linden Hills neighborhood is about 15 blocks south and ten blocks east of me, and until tonight, in all the time I've lived where I do now, I'd never gone there. I go to suburbs farther out on a regular basis. I go to city neighborhoods farther away on a regular basis. So tonight, I decided I wanted to go to Linden Hills.

It's funny, the circumstances that send one out to dinner. For example. I had every intention of cooking tonight, but then I went to see G.I. Joe with my brother, which ate up an hour and a half on either side of noon. That left me with enough time in the afternoon to either do the work stuff I needed to do, OR prep a meal in the increasingly deathly humid kitchen.

Do you live in a big city? Or near one? If you don't, here's what it's like to live in a big city.

Let's say you have two major roads. Lake St. and Hennepin Avenue. The area around where they meet is called Uptown. A few blocks east of Hennepin, on Lake St., is a Thai restaurant, Tum Rup Thai. Opened a couple of years ago in a space that for a short time held a Wild Noodles.