Me So Hung Ry...Not

In the food world, it seems like there is a fine line between having a philosophy and taking yourself too seriously, and another between trying something new and deploying a marketing gimmick. I am constantly trying to parse restaurants along these axes, obsessed with divining the ingredients of success and failure.

When it comes to Chinese restaurants, I am especially obsessed. I feel that ours is a cuisine equal to if not greater than France or Japan's, yet in the United States, Chinese food is pitifully relegated to the lowest rung within the already-peripheral bucket of "ethnic food." We are known for inventing delivery and keeping the MSG market afloat; for tacky menus (accumulating on the floor) and unnaturally glistening stock photos; for cockroaches and grease traps; for corn starch and brown sauce; for names containing the words "garden," "palace," and "imperial" in Wonton font.

So, I think constantly about what makes a good Chinese restaurant because I want nothing short of a complete Chinese food renaissance: high-quality, value-oriented, and accessible. Where are our bistros and brasseries, izakayas and trattorias? People - it was really hard to resist saying "comrades" - we can do better than this bullshit:


So, after reading glowing reviews practically everywhere, I was pretty interested in trying Hung Ry, the new hand-pulled noodle shop on Bond St. I convinced a skeptical Eddie Huang to come along...and all I really ate for dinner was crow.

I should have known that buying Chinatown talent and putting it in Limoges china falls squarely on the wrong side of every fine line.

Certainly, the name is already enough to merit a side-eye. When Eddie tries to work that kind of humor, Racialicious writes a whole post unpacking it, and he’s Asian! Then there was the admission that whiteboy couldn’t learn how to make the noodles himself. Ok, maybe that’s a smart move, maybe even humble, but again, if you’re going to move hand-pulled noodles to NoHo and charge me $18 a bowl (and dammit the actual Chinese guy in this operation, the one actually making your noodles - he better be a partner), you should at least pick up your end of the slack!

Because the noodles themselves were great: masterfully chewy, springy, delightful. Apparently in NYC, this and a foodie-baiting menu (OXTAIL! LIVER! MARROW!) are enough to earn accolades from NYM, NYT, Village Voice, and even Lucky Rice. But noodles alone can’t carry a noodle soup. The broth part of this partnership had no smell, no taste, and no body; everything tasted so flat I dumped a ton of house-made chili sauce into my bowl, and then it just tasted flat and spicy. Then again, you have to stink up the air to make a decent bone broth, and that probably doesn’t fly if you’re trying to do the sexy NoHo open-kitchen thing.

Maybe it was an off night. I only went once.

Still, the bigger problem for me was conceptual. Why would anyone float giant gobs of bone marrow in broth? I didn't think I could not love bone marrow, but it turns out I don’t love eating nuggets of slimy, flavorless fat, which is what the product had been reduced to by such uninspired treatment. So I left them floating there, the sad, misguided marshmallows, which of course hurt my Chinese heart.
Aiya, this is so un-Chinese!

I hate thinking that. Like I said, I get excited when people color outside the lines. I don't even believe in authenticity, because all cuisines are dynamic. But I guess I do believe in staying true to the spirit of things, in sound philosophy. Chinese food, like all great cuisines, is about balance. No discordant ingredients, no spiky flavors. This is not so much dogma as plain logic: cooking is synthesis.
In the end, only the New Yorker got it right by my book:

“If you like your macaroni and cheese drizzled with truffle oil, your French fries fried in duck fat, and foie gras in your banh mi, you might make a beeline for Hung Ry"

Hung Ry is a gilded lily that will smell sweet to a certain type of foodie. But it ain't me.

Possibly a Farewell

I thought for a while that I was eventually going to rehabilitate this blog, but I lost most of my desire to eat out once I decided I was eventually going to join the industry - all I want to do is cook! I keep a blog of my thoughts and ideas re: food/life elsewhere, and in writing I've reached certain positions regarding this scene. They can be summed up as such:

1) 95% of food writing, mine certainly included, is profoundly boring. Because you can't yet lick a computer screen, it's inherently the wrong medium.

2) I dislike most foodies, because they also tend to be very boring people. The conversations rarely move beyond "Have you been to so-and-so's new restaurant?" I'm paraphrasing Roger Ebert when I say that food should be ecstatic but still never more interesting than your company.

3) I am not comfortable with the ethics (or lack thereof) of most amateur restaurant blogs. I once was offered a restaurant-review job at a magazine. I wrote two reviews before deciding I was too young and too uninformed to fuck with someone else's livelihood. I don't think I'll ever feel old or informed enough.

4) Most restaurants I see opening in Manhattan feel soulless to me. I am uninterested in trying the vast majority of them, because too often they smell like PR buzzwords and cultural appropriation.

These days, the only places I'm interested in are Chinese places, because someday I'll be part of the young creative force shaping the future of Chinese food in America.

Speaking of which, strangers like me waaaay more when I tell them my next step is cooking school in China - their eyes light up. Most of the people I meet, through this blog and elsewhere, work in finance, and what I've learned is that pretty much everyone in finance loves food, and pretty much everyone in finance has a wildly impractical dream career they're dying to pursue. Obviously, many of us are in this field either because we have to be or feel we have to be, and it can be really hard to leave. I am so grateful that I went to college, grateful that I have a job and health insurance and savings in this economy, and triply grateful that I get to walk away from it and try something else when I so choose. The option to take risks, to invite the possibility of failing spectacularly, is an immense privilege.

As of yet, I have no time frame. I'm not leaving my job anytime soon, which gives me ample time to continue the research and networking I've started. If anybody has any leads on great Chinese cookbooks, let me know. I continue to eat with strangers in New York, so drop me a line. I would especially love to eat with restaurant industry professionals - I'll buy you a drink and pick your brain.

Tang

Half of my receipts from Xi'an Famous Foods and my old, old laptop.

I've become a regular at the St. Marks location of Xi'an Famous Foods since its opening two weeks ago. My dad is from Xi'an, and I was always begging for lamb growing up even though my mom, the cook in the family, hated the smell of it.

I was one of the pilgrims who trekked to Flushing regularly just to get a fix of lamb noodles down in Golden Mall's stuffy basement cafeteria. Liang Pi, the proprietor, was always there - bossy, sweaty, genial. After Anthony Bourdain featured Xi'an Famous on his Outer Boroughs episode of No Reservations, I could be heard loudly bitching about the descending hordes of white foodies, but secretly, I was so proud to see a Chinese immigrant restaurateur make it big.

And I sure as hell was happy to hear they were coming to the East Village. I announced to all my friends that there was pretty much no point in me eating anywhere else, and as you can see from the receipts above, I wasn't kidding.

The first night I went, they were selling an unidentified orange drink in those plastic boba cups sealed with little anime characters. People kept asking what it was, and General Manager Jason Wang, Liang Pi's son, kept saying in this gently exasperated tone, "I don't know, it's something my dad made." I bought one, thinking it was probably some weird/tasty Chinese beverage.

It was Tang.

No doubt about it. The same Tang of those obnoxious orangutan commercials you saw during after-school commercials, Tang of the sweet and chemical tang. I thought I'd been hosed like a roundeye until Gaby sent me this essay by novelist Yiyun Li. She writes,

The year I turned 16, a new product caught my eye. Fruit Treasure, as Tang was named for the Chinese market, instantly won everyone's heart. Imagine real oranges condensed into a fine powder! Equally seductive was the TV commercial, which gave us a glimpse of a life that most families, including mine, could hardly afford...Even though Tang was the most expensive fruit drink available, its sales soared. A simple bottle cost 17 yuan, a month's worth of lunch money. A boxed set of two became a status hostess gift. Even the sturdy glass containers that the powder came in were coveted. People used them as tea mugs, the orange label still on, a sign that you could afford the modern American drink. Even my mother had an empty Tang bottle with a snug orange nylon net over it, a present from one of her fellow schoolteachers. She carried it from the office to the classroom and back again as if our family had also consumed a full bottle.

Yiyun Li was born in 1972, making her younger than Liang Pi, but I want to make this exotic Tang narrative fit. I want it to fit because it's the kind of American Dream story I'm still sentimental for (even though my progressive education says I'm not supposed to be). I picture Liang Pi carefully mixing Tang and sealing each cup, preparing to open his shiny new East Village restaurant over Fourth of July weekend. His son Jason, 22, college-educated, and bilingual like me, is not in the picture. Kids like us don't associate Tang with a better life, we associate it with surfing orangutans.

The truth was, our family had never tasted Tang. Just think of how many oranges we could buy with the money spent on a bottle, my father reasoned. His resistance sent me into a long adolescent melancholy. I was ashamed by our lack of style and our life, with its taste of orange-peel water. I could not wait until I grew up and could have my own Tang-filled life.

The Tangy scenario I've imagined feels like the time I watched my dad lug home a case of red wine from a community center wine-tasting class. "Can you taste the butter?" he asked, frowning and sipping, "They said it tastes a little bit like butter, can you taste it?" Children are selfish when it comes to our parents - I don't think we allow them to have fully realized identities, they're just our parents! But this was a rare moment when I saw Dad's life in context: the Cabernet was an achievement, a hard journey ending in a wine-filled, middle-class, American life. And it killed me that he couldn't taste the fucking butter notes.

I had not thought about the boy much until I moved to America 10 years later and discovered Tang in a grocery store. It was just how I remembered it - fine powder in a sturdy bottle - but its glamour had lost its gloss because, alas, it was neither expensive nor trendy. To think that all the dreams of my youth were once contained in this commercial drink!

I hope Liang Pi never realized Tang was just another cheap powdered beverage occupying shelf space between Country Time and Kool-Aid. I hope when he decided to sell Tang, he thought he was giving his customers the best America had to offer.

There was no Tang in the minifridge when I went to Xi'an Famous tonight.
"Did you guys stop selling Tang?" I asked Jason.
"Yeah, it was just something random my Dad did. Why? Did you like it?"
"Yeah, I did. I really did."
"Well, you're definitely the only one. But I'll tell him you liked it."
"Good."

I have a Pepsi with my lamb face salad.

Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger

I took the winter off due to time and money constraints, and also because it was exhausting and sometimes boring to eat with strangers all the time. Many things have germinated quietly during the cold months, and I've figured out my next steps, career-wise, as well as a few other projects I want to do, food-wise. Strictly Platonic will probably not be the same blog ever again, but I have too many thoughts to suppress, so I guess I'll write other food-related things here until a better platform emerges.

In the Colbert style, I present two things today in the Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger format:

First up, Tip of the Hat to Eddie Huang of Baohaus. Have y'all heard of Baohaus? It's the new gua bao joint that's taken the NYC food scene by storm lately. I haven't been yet, and, being a chink of the uncouth mainlander variety, I've never even had a gua bao in my life. Nevertheless, I've been following Eddie Huang on his blog and I'm digging a lot of what he has to say. Two posts in particular sum up my own feelings on fusion and Chinese immigrant restauranteering.

Every food lover seems to have an opinion of fusion, but when I come across a fusion-y menu item, my question is how they got the idea to put galangal in the beef wellington (not really, that would be gross, but you get the idea). By my reckoning, "fusion" cuisine is the best in the world. Vietnamese cuisine is fusion. Creole is fusion. Pretty much every cuisine in the world is some degree "fusion." The difference in heart (and taste) is that great fusion comes from resourceful people working with what they have in a foreign setting; it comes from diaspora, not some kid out of cooking school with a bag of tricks but no sense of place. Authenticity is not about sticking to a recipe, it's about having a sense of place.

In that way, Eddie Huang and his Baohaus very much "emspiritfy" the type of restaurant I might open someday. I was talking to my friend, the talented Gabriela, about why there's no good Mexican food and very little good Chinese food in Manhattan. In a grander sense, we were also talking about why Mexican food and Chinese food belong in the "cheap ethnic" box rather than "haute ethnic" box (think Japanese food) in the mind of the average white American yuppie foodie.

"The good stuff still lives on in enclaves, serving their own communities," I remarked, "tacos on 116th, Chinese places in Flushing. All places with no real menus, no real ambiance, no English speaking staff, much less any kind of PR strategy. And how many immigrant restauranteurs can afford the overhead in hip Manhattan neighborhoods anyway?"
"Who's going to serve authentic food but make it better, more accessible, then?"
"People like us, I guess. English-speaking, college-educated, social media-savvy."

Eddie seems to be successful because he's done exactly that: kept the authenticity, amped up the quality, and gave it both foodie cred and a dynamic personality. (The words "Niman Ranch" go a long way toward accomplishing two of the above.) So props to him, I'll be interested to see what he does next.

~~~

Next up, Wag of the Finger to Andrea Scotting, who posted this jaw-dropper on The Atlantic today. Here's a test: how many words of that article can you read without rolling your eyes? My eyes met heaven after ten, but let's be honest, the title had me suspicious from the get-go.

Aside from the disturbingly flippant Afghanistan/Haiti allusions, by far the most vapid quote was this one: "But I clearly have a nagging, deep-seated case of something that makes me frame everything in life through food."

Lady, that frame is called privilege, which is clearly something you've never paused to consider very deeply. This is abundantly clear by the lame attempt to claim "equal opportunity" food racism because you also get distracted by New England wasps and their lobster rolls. I agree on one thing: racist is not the right term for you because you can't be racist toward white people. A New England wasp, you see, has never been made to feel Other because of his lobster roll. This is like when Madonna wears a bindi, it's fashion; when an Indian woman wears a bindi, it's foreign.

For you, this must be difficult to understand, because you seem to treat the people of color who provide goods and services in your life like your personal recipe dispensers. I'm sorry, but it's pretty fucking offensive that "dal" lights up in your head every time you see an Indian person. God forbid that person be allowed to exist beyond connoting a foodstuff. Even if it's not true for you, a contributor to The Atlantic who hopefully wrote your article tongue-in-cheek, a lot of people do associate
ChineseAsian people with fried rice/chicken wings/MSG and little else (case in point).

As a person of color, I've come to see food both as a boon and a bane. While it does allow people to connect (and I'm sure that's what you thought you were doing with that call-center employee), boiling people of color down to the bite-sized pieces of their respective cultures happens all too often at the expense of acknowledging the ongoing struggles of the people themselves. Conservatives and liberals alike get to say "look how multicultural we are, all gathered together eating bibimbap," while disenfranchisement and xenophobia remain unchallenged.

And no, cutting a check to the Red Cross does not mean your work is done: if you're going to commoditize, consume, appropriate, "discover," or denounce the commoditizable, consumable, appropriatable, discoverable, and denounceable parts of someone else's culture - most often the foods - at least grapple with the truth that it's because you are white and wealthy that you get to look at the world around you as a smorgasbord.* This is your frame, and you're lucky to have it.

Addendum: Oh good, I'm not the only one who's appalled.
Addendum 2: I read back over some old entries and realized that I've basically said all this before, but in a nicer way.

*You also have to get comfortable with your privilege, because you're not a bad person and at the end of the day, it's ok to keep eating that bibimbap. You can even sing Kumbayaa if you'd like. You just can't write pithy articles about "food racism," because that shit is dumb and pisses me off.

Meatopia!

Thanks to the amazingly generous spirit of Josh Ozersky, I found myself the recipient of an email invite to Meatopia, Ozersky's annual carnivorous fete at Water Taxi Beach thrown in honor of...himself.

In other words, the baddest motherfuckin' birthday party one could have.

My email address, clustered in with the other J's as it was, found CC'd company with big-time industry names like Jefferey Chodorow and Jay Rayner, so I dared hoped the B's contained a Bourdain and a Bruni.

But the first person I recognized was this guy:

"I was rooting for you!" I told him. He looked embarrassed and harried. The man had cooking to do, minions to order around, but he posed for a snap anyways. Call it Asian Love. Here, I am mid-bite in his zingy lamb sausage.

Next person I saw was Floyd Cardoz. "I went to Tabla a month ago and loved my meal!" I told him. This evening was rapidly becoming Zoe's gush-fest. I did not take a picture with him, but I did have a couple of his succulent banana-leaf baby lamb wraps. (Is "baby lamb" redundant?) No pics of that either, because I ate them too fast.

In between sips of sangria and craft bears - my friend Alex graduated straight to Jack Daniels - I roamed, wanting to see everything and everyone.

There were four of five whole lambs being roasted over spits:


Team Philippe Massoud stuffed leg meat from another lamb into grape leaves, and then stuffed the grape leaves into this baby. Served with yogurt sauce, it was tangy and juicy.


Team Michael White (of Alto, Convivio, and Marea) hand-turned their spit the whole time. Respect.

My conversation with Gordon on the right, a sous-chef at Alto, went something like this:

Me: OMGTHISISSOGOODWHATDIDYOURUBITWITH?
Gordon: Sapa.
Me: ?
Gordon: Wine must.
Me: ...

For a second, I thought he said "Grape-Nuts." I am NOT ready to talk shop with the big boys.


Team Fatty Crab's offering was served atop a summer peach salad. ("Fatty Crab is one of my favorite restaurants in New York!" I told Corwin Kove.)


The double-smoker


RUB's amazing lamb stew, served over cheesy grits.

For the ovine-shy, there were Motz burgers:



And an oyster bar...



I think it's a testament to how good the cooking was that the raw bar was kind of an afterthought, tucked away in a corner on the way to the Port-A-Potties.

I didn't get to try even half of the offerings - the lambs were small and each only had about 5lbs of meat. That said, my favorite dish of the night was the lamb by Team Michael White.

Besides the sapa, they encouraged DIY seasoning with Maldon sea salt, chili powder, and an incredible salsa verde that will haunt my dreams forever. Gordon revealed one secret to be anchovies, which "bring out the umami":


Someday I'll get over my fear of talking in videos and actually explain what I'm filming

They also gave me the most perfect piece of crispy wine-whatever rubbed skin:



Around this time, I found the birthday boy to extend my thanks and well wishes. Maybe it was too late then - maybe he'd had too much to drink - but he didn't seem to have a clue who I was. Hardly surprising, given the throngs upon throngs of satellite acquaintances and plus-ones, twos, or even threes that showed up. I'm just the girl who won a silly contest.

But the highlight, by far the best part of my night, was meeting Gail Simmons, who looks so young and fresh in real life. (Of course, she is lovely in celluloid as well, but on Top Chef she seems older because she's all judgy and serious.)



My friends had to drag me over to meet her because I was so intimidated (that judgy and serious thing again), but she was super gracious and sweet - she certainly talked to me longer than she had to. Nevertheless, I was not able to pry any secrets re:Top Chef Las Vegas out of her, nor even get her to pick a favorite season ("They all kind of run together by now.")

The takeaway: I couldn't have had a better time at Meatopia. The lamb was cooked so inventively by each chef that it was never boring, the weather at Water Taxi Beach was perfect, the drinks were cold, the music was relaxed, and the crowd was appreciative. (Ok, maybe if Anthony Bourdain had showed up...)

Three friendly sous-chefs from the coming-soon Abe & Arthur's invited me and Alex to their opening party, sure to be another epic bash with the owners of Tenjune at the helm. Hope they weren't just saying that because they were drunk - I sure hope this party chain continues...

Don't Hate the Player...

The foodieverse is aflame over the announcement of the Vendy Award finalists. More correctly, the foodieverse is aflame over the inclusion of the Rickshaw Dumpling truck in the Vendy Award finalists.

No one is wrong in saying that, at $6 for 5, their dumplings are the most expensive, anemic travesty of a dumpling ever sold, and that they can't be mentioned in the same breath as the most apathetic place in Chinatown or Flushing. In my opinion, they are barely a step above the frozen gyoza from Japanese groceries. (And no offense to the Japanese, but the Chinese jiaozi kicks gyoza ass.)

Hell, I can make better dumplings with these diluted ABC hands tied behind my back.

But I don't have a Warholesque food truck with a chinky-subversive name and puns galore ("Who's your EDAMAME?!"), and neither do any of the authentics in Chinatown or Flushing.



So I am more bemused than outraged by the legions that voted for Rickshaw Dumpling in this popularity contest, 'cuz this is clearly a case of roundeyes getting HOSED. And I kind of have to give props to Kenny Lao for that.

Calling the Tribe with Alex@Congee Village

I met Alex of the eponymous AlexEatsWorld at an open house for an apartment in East Village, where the owner/roommate described the living situation as his "happy dictatorship." The place had a 360-degree terrace, but neither of us took the room.

A month later, I got an email from Alex, who'd come across this blog on The Feedbag during my July 4th shenanigans. "Can't believe food didn't come up with two huge foodies in that room," he said, "let's grab food sometime."

Emails flew, Lists were exchanged, Asianness ensued. Congee Village. I'd never been, but I recognize superior judgment when I see it - the dude has a real domain name and some sweet photos.

A time was set: 7:30 on a Saturday. I got there five minutes earlier than he did, and in those five minutes, my eyes and stomach took in that epic menu and grew bigger and bigger.


Bamboo+Christmas lights=lovely kitsch

"We have a problem," I said when he showed up, "we need more people."

An ex of mine from Montana once spoke of Native American kids at his high school "calling on the tribe" when they needed help. A phone call would be made and like a snow chain, all the other kids with Native American ancestry would show up. Because it was high school, this generally happened when there were honors to defend, vengeance to be enacted.

Well, I'd like a tribe of Asians to show up whenever I need help eating. At Congee Village, ordering for one, or two, or even three people is just sad. Good thing we had time. People were spilling out the doors - Asian families, white teenagers, Hong Kong International School alumni there for a reunion, Asian goths...Asian goths??? The wait was at least 30 minutes, during which Alex proved much more successful at rallying reinforcements than I. Just as we were sat, his two friends, also Asian, male, showed up. Good men.

By this time I had - no joke - gone through a takeout menu and underlined everything I wanted. Alex was at first amused, and then alarmed when it became apparent that I was serious about "but we can just take it home after!"

Some serious editing - crossing out, circling, compromise - later, we settled on six dishes. Sacrificing the 7th, a soup, was really hard.


I broke my rule against ordering chicken for this, the house special chicken. See those fried garlic chips? Mmmm.

Over dinner, we talked about the Motherland. Specifically, foods of. We were birds of a feather - ABC (that's American-born Chinese to you) twenty-somethings with vaguely impressive American educations/careers and love for Asian cuisines. As a mixed group of Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Mainlanders - and Twinkies all - this feast was none of ours and all of ours.

To wit: Alex, who is a Yelp Elite member, mentioned an upcoming event at Water Taxi Beach for other Elites, and we got into a debate over Yelp.

"I hate Yelp," Kevin said, launching into a monologue that could have come from my mouth, "I was at Shanghai Cafe the other day, and this white dude and his son sit down behind me. They order fried rice, and I roll my eyes, and then they order the soup dumplings and I think OK, fine. When they get the dumplings, they don't know how to eat them, so they take their chopsticks and poke holes all over the dumplings to cool them, and all the juice runs out. They're probably going to go home and write a Yelp review being all 'I don't see what the big deal is.' I was like, get the fuck out of my restaurant."

We murmured sympathetically - we all get a little possessive sometimes.


Tofu and many different kinds of mushrooms. A little heavy on the cornstarch for my taste.

I asked Alex where he ended up moving, and he said Murray Hill, because the East Village was just got too small and too dirty for him after living on 4th and 1st for a while.

"But the food," I sighed, "how can you leave the fooooood??"


Sauteed pea shoots - my favorite. I could eat plates and plates of these.

These boys knew my hood, though. It's nice meeting three strangers at the same time - you get to have livelier discussions. When I told them I was doing the East Village ramen thing, they all professed allegiance to Minca. Minca was the first real ramen I ever had, and it was truly unctuous. Japanese has always seemed like the prissy, sanitized Asian brother to me: insanely delicious, sure, but hitting a more refined craving than pho/pad see ew/roast-duck-on-rice. Then I had ramen, and I knew I had been wrong. All the ramen shops tout ramen as Japan's soul food; I don't know if that's true, or even claimable, but it certainly hit a sweet spot with me.

"But what about Ippudo?" I asked, in the interest of fairness.
"I don't know...I just don't like the texture of their noodles," one of the boys said. The other two agreed.
"What's wrong with them? Undercooked?"
"No, I like them al dente. They were just too starchy. The broth is good, but it's a lighter broth than Minca's, and it doesn't come with a lot of crap in it." Clearly, crap is good.
"I like anything with pork belly on it," said Kevin, "they give you three huge slices at Minca." It's hard to argue against pork belly. I, having never been to Ippudo, find myself swayed by their opinions.


Bamboo rice with Chinese sausage

The first time I had this dish, it was on top of the famous "dragon back" rice paddies in Guilin, China. It was cooked and served in real bamboo, longer and thinner than this. The bamboo was simply split down the middle and stuffed with rice. After scooping out what you could, you had to scrape for the bits that stuck crispily to the insides of the bamboo. Needless to say, this version could not compare, and I don't hold that against it. Chinese sausage is magic.


If you've noticed that the pictures suck less this time, it's because Alex did the honors on my little Canon point-n-shoot.

Salt and pepper squid is the standard by which I judge Cantonese restaurants. Congee Village's portion was generous, but I wish it came with the usual mound of jalapenos and shredded lettuce infused with peppery squidy flavor - it makes such an awesome topping for rice.


Feast. The sixth dish was beef in a sizzling pan with onions. I had no interest in it. It seemed very...TGI Friday's

We cleaned. It. Up.

Halfway through our meal, a group of older Chinese people sat down at the table next to ours, and I became obsessed with what they were having. Everything looked incredible. Huge Dungeness crab, a tureen of drunken shrimp. All of a sudden, I felt like the white people who had ordered the fried rice at Shanghai Cafe. Schooled.

"Can we get the crab, pleeeeeasse?" I pleaded the horrified boys, who were leaning back in their chairs and taking deep breaths.
"Uhh, maybe next time."

I hope so. Alex and I made indefinite plans to hit up Mara's Homemade for Cajun food. I hope he winds up calling the tribe again.