ricpic said...
Every Chinese restaurant I've ever been in either had this horrible red lacquer look or had zero, I mean absolutely no interior decoration. And there's nothing about a Chinese restaurant's appearance that gives a clue to the quality of the food. But they all used to have those little black and white hexagonal tiled floors. That was nice. I guess it's a culture of you came for the food here's the food, no waste money for decoration on you, long nosed people.
For years, I mean years, my family went to the same Chinese restaurant on Pitkin Avenue. This was before "the great change." It was one of those 2nd floor joints, though I shouldn't call it a joint, by Chinese restaurant standards it was pretty ample. Anyhow, we'd always have the same meal: Won Ton soup; egg rolls; spare ribs; then for the main course both Moo Goo Gai Pan and Lobster (I can't remember what they called it, maybe Lobster Cantonese, but it was lobster in a gloppy white sauce; and dessert was always chocolate or vanilla ice cream. About a million Jewish families did the same and by doing so - it was practically a Sunday ritual - kept the wolf from the Chink door for decades.
Hey, I left out fortune cookies. Who could forget fortune cookies with their strange hint of oranges taste? God knows what those things were made of, closest thing to plastic in the food world
What ricpic is talking about is the big change over when Chinese Restuarants started serving Szehuan and Hunan style dishes instead of the straight Cantonese stuff that was traditional Chinese food. The restuarants are exactly as he described since they got all of their fixtures and supplies from the same place in Chinatown. They also got their provisions from the same places as I found out when I did the books for different joints all over the city. They are very insular and stick with their own kind for the most part.
Those old school dishes like chop suey, shrimp egg rolls and wonton soup are still around but I very seldom order them. Only one of the joints I used to do the taxes for stayed with the Cantonese food: Yee's Cafe on Ann St until they were attacked by a battalion of rats.
And you are so right about those fortune cookies. Man they taste like cardboard.
45 comments:
You should do a post on asian lawyers for Shouting Thomas and Seven machos to haggle over.
Only Shouting Thomas has ever posted here. Seven has never come by.
Have they been fighting or something?
I intend to do a few more Chinese Restuarant posts. I have a lot of stories. Fist fights. Murders. Babies peeing on me.
Trooper: Roger J here--just wanted to convey my thanks to you for your veterans day series--You managed to capture what veterans have done since the inception of the republic.
Veterans day is always a tough one for me--lots of personal memories which your film clips embodied.
If I may, I would like to memorialize First Lt Joseph Mark Launinger and SSG Willard Croy--the two troopers I lost on January the 8th, 1970.
I appreciate you diligence in putting together some film clips that capture what it was like.
Gary Owen, sir.
Thanks Roger.
I wanted to run the gamut but honoring our vets but having a chuckle or two along the way. I think our vets would enjoy a laugh.
And thanks to Michael H and Allie for two wonderful posts about what veterans day meant to them.
Highlighting great comments like that makes blogging a treasure.
I love Chinese food. I've become very fond of the many different dumplings. They're like Eyetalian ravioli or Pollack pierogi's..both of which I also love.
Shouting Thomas went wacko on me the last few days. He has some SERIOUS issues w/ being an apologist for pedophiles. I have zero tolerance and gave him some shit..he went batshit. He also had a pissing match w/ someone else and got censored a bunch by AA. He's wound pretty fucking tight.
In answer to the question, 50 years ago and more, before everybody was broken up into petty bickering camps by the Lefties, you'd very often find Jewish people on Christmas taking a Christian co-worker's place if the co-worker had to work a shift so they could spend the day with their families.
Some jobs need a quota on Christmas - hospitals, physical plants, etc. No biggie, it was just the done thing.
The Good Old Days really were.
Sorry Ed. The correct answer is they are going to the movies and later going out to eat Chinese food. Just sayn'
Shouting Thomas is a good guy but he likes to be contrarain sometimes (if that's a word Sixty). He will take a position and defend it like it is the Alamo. Just like Ritmo from the other side of the spectrum. They never go back and examine the original premise but fight hammer and nails about the nuances getting hotter by the minute.
Shouting doesn't like to be part of the crowd so he will stake out an extreme position now and again. Just like Ritmo sometimes.
But if you give him a chance you will find that in general he is a pretty good guy. Just sayn'
I agree with your no tolerance view nd and you can be sure if Shouting walked into that locker room he would have taken the same actions that you and I would have. I have no doubt.
Shouting (damn, I wrote that "Shitting") has very strong opinions. He actually thinks George Harrison had talent. I KNOW!!!
As for Chinese restaurants, I found some good ones in Chinatown in SF and in Singapore. Used to go to Chinatown in Manhattan back in the late 60s and early 70s, and your stories mesh with my memories of what passes for Chinese food in NYC.
As with Japanese food, the closer you get to the source, the better the food. Good Japanese food in Tokyo, not so good in Munich. Good Mexican food in California, elsewhere, not so much.
Trooper York said...
Sorry Ed. The correct answer is they are going to the movies and later going out to eat Chinese food. Just sayn'
That's the last 20 years.
Just sayn'.
Back when I was a kid, 40 years ago roughly--we were the only family I knew that had even tried Chinese food and we went every week.
My dad, as I have mentioned before, was an Air Force pilot and had spent a lot of time in Vietnam. While he was there, he tried the food and liked it a lot. Now Chinese food is pretty different from Vietnamese, but Spokane (still the 2nd largest city in Washington) had only a couple of Chinese restaurants and certainly no Viet ones. Even the few Chinese places were all the way in the center of town--in a seedy part of the center, since back then pretty much only weirdos went to ethnic places. I don't think Jews were much of a factor in Spokane. I think I only met my first member of the tribe when I went to college.
What ricpic said about "the change" was totally true in Spokane, WA. The food was bland Cantonese style only broken up by the fried prawns and sweet & Sour spare ribs. Once places started with the tasty stuff, Chinese restaurants sprang up like mushrooms. It all happened in the 1970's: In the early part of the decade, there were just a couple of bland Cantonese places, but by the late 1970's, the tasty places were everywhere.
It was good for us; less of a drive and more interesting food.
It's hard finding good chinese restaurants and easy finding lousy ones.
Clouds.
Why do Chinese tend to have smaller than average hogs?
Well, Trooper I'll have to take your word on him being a good guy. And, if he has an Alamo mentality, well...that didn't turn out too good now did it! He's got issues, as we all do to varying degrees. But there's something more than the usual idiosyncracies w/ him. The dude is a powder keg.
You don't want big hogs if you're making moo shu pork. You want small, tender hogs.
My fav Chinese place is run by a kind of Chinese version of Trooper whom we all call "Johnny".
On Christmas the place is packed with a strong Atheist-Jew ratio....and Johnny drags in all his relatives to help. One of these old relatives would up waiting on tables with large Jewish families talking at her a mile a minute...she couldn't keep up! Johnny saw me there and yelled "Hey Ron, you speak Jew?" I knew what he meant. I gave her a hand just getting the orders down.
And that's how I got free Christmas Hunan Chicken and Hot and Sour Soup!
I've had my run-ins with Shouting in the past but now agree that he is a good guy. Yes, his opinions are strong - usually when they're most eccentric - but somehow we've reached some sort of accord where we can talk sense to each other. The detente was reached when the gang over at Lefarkins' site was talking smack about him, but that wasn't hard given his foray into, as you might say, "enemy territory".
We took that argument back over to EBL's and eventually it somehow got into a discussion of his late wife - his devotion to whom I think everyone respects. Apparently, it became evident to him that he was losing sight of one of the lessons or advice that she would have been more than willing to teach him, and we both apologized.
We've been cool with each other ever since and I respect that he now asks questions in intelligent ways (at least, to me he does), instead of assuming that I'm out to pounce on him for expressing an eccentric view.
I guess it goes without saying that the more eccentric the view, the more willing you might become to defend it to the death. I mean after all, if something seems obvious to you and the only reason that others seem to follow the opposite path is out of laziness, inertia or worse, then yes, you're going to want to make a strong case.
Just look at EBL.
I've been challenged before on my views and don't mind it depending on how it's done. The problem is when you view something in an eccentric way you open yourself up to being criticized in a very personal manner, and that makes it all too easy to want to respond with ad hominens in return.
Not that I didn't get a kick out of what you said, nd Spinelli - and of course, agreeing with your outrage over the Penn State fiasco sure helped. And I even got a kick out of what 7 was saying. Hey - it was great performance art. And it also gives me the needed perspective for accepting that if I'm going to harbor a strange (or even unpopular) view, I should expect that people may get uncomfortable about it and act that out in ways that would otherwise seem inappropriate.
Black men tend to have larger hogs than average.
Ricans larger.
Mexicans smaller uncut chimichangas.
Jews average bagel.
thank you.
Chop suey and fortune cookies are as American as apple pie. But while fortune cookies are a good original thing, cnop suey was Cantonese food for Protestant northern European tastes. Good nurishment but pretty bland. Real Cantonese food is quite excellent.
Try the night market in Hong Kong.
But I like the spicier food from the interior of China.
I think you are exactly right Ritmo. Shouting Thomas can get off on a tangent and back into a corner defending his views. Like you and me he likes to mix it up. But in the joy of Internet combat you can lose some perspective. You can forget about the other persons humanity. It seems that you both had a chance to realize that and could talk across the partisan divide.
That would never happen at the evil blogger lady's place. It is not in her interest. Her interest is in keeping the shit stirred so people will start flinging it at each other and get those page views up and comments being posted at higher and higher numbers.
Beware of the evil blogger lady. She will stab you in the back. Just sayn'
Saigon used to have a big Chinatown but while Cholon is still there the Chinese are mostly gone.
But after the war, when those Vietnamese boat people didn't have a home, they came to the states and brought the gift of soup. Vietnamese pho is damn fine soup.
Nd you should know that you me and Shouting Thomas could belly up to the bar and have a few shots and beers and solve all the problems of the world. We would agree to disagree. We all have blind spots. Some of us have ridiculus immoral opinions. But it is just one aspect of our persona. So you can pass on that. After all you hate the Yankees.
I can't think of a more immoral opinion than that.
Vietnamese hate Chinese. There was lots of ethnic cleansing after the war.
Who doesn't hate Y*nkees? Oh, you meant the baseball team.
I saw the Giants play in Candlestick Park 20 years ago. It was a cold night in July. I was reminded of that while listening to today's game.
When I was in San Fransico this freakin waiter kept telling me how great Frisco is. He asked me if I had seen all the sights. I told him the only thing I wanted to see was San Fransico in my rear view mirror.
He said "What about Chinatown?"
I said "Hey shithead....New York has five fuckin Chinatowns....You can't swing a dead cat and not hit a Chinatown....and everyone of them is better than the shithole you call Chinatown."
He flounced away. We didn't get desert because I didn't want him to spit in it.
I don't hate the Yankees...after the Tigers (of course!) they're my team.
There's another Chinese place here that seems to be training Chinese insurance salesman at night...projector, pull-down screen...
oddball!
Boston has a large Chinatown.
It used to be a part of a long gone place called The Combat Zone, which was porno city. Ton's of strip clubs and porn houses all gone. Kind of sad.
Now it is still Chinatown but The Combat Zone is high priced condos and fancy "lounges".
Princess Cheyenne, who was engaged to Cat Stevens, performed around The Combat Zone.
So did Chesty Morgan.
You're right about the big change over. Thank goodness it happened because I hated that "Choy Suey" crap. A lot of that stuff wasn't Cantonese- it was Americanized Cantonese, like a lot of Italian food was really Italian American.
I just saw this episode the other day and thought of you....now why is that?
It must be because you are no longer master of your domain.
hdhouse is not even master of his own Depends.
Trooper, I know you're a good man and I trust you implicitly. But, like I said, at least right now, I'll have to take your word on Shouting Thomas. I have offered an olive branch to the dude..but it has been ignored. I now do not engage him because I saw just how tedious it is for myself and others. He just keeps coming @ me. Trooper..he thinks I'm J for chrissake. How do you deal w/ that?
Ritmo, I appreciate your post. Getting history and perspective helps me understand. Your problems w/ ST are similar to mine. But, as I've said..I offered an olive branch and he just keeps coming @ me. I'm not engaging him and I'm even trying to avoid some topics that get him manic.
ST ain't right.
The ultimate insult,"you're J"! I got the scoop guys, J is Byro.
ndspinelli, you accused someone you don't know of being a pedophile, simply because they disagreed with you in a blog discussion.
You made this baseless accusation against him repeatedly in a public forum.
And now you're here crying at Trooper's that you just don't understand why the guy you repeatedly accused of being a pedophile is mad at you.
You're a worthless, dishonest little shitstain excuse for a man.
(And Trooper, you're a fool for vouching for him.)
Yay! This place is becoming EBL Jr.!
rcocean, spot on.
There was a chinese restaurant across the street from a lake near where I grew up. Rumor had it the cooks would leave a trail of crispy noodles to feed the ducks. I am sure they were wildlife lovers.
The food there did suck, but we loved the pupu platter. Some lame snacks with a sterno can in the center you could roast the stuff over. Who cooks directly on sterno? It is like cooking your food in napalm.
Fred4pres - I love the smell of pupus in the morning.
Oops, too much titus there.
"I am the walrus."
But I use my real name and I am easily identifiable..unlike people who hurl invectives @ me anonymously.
Nd see the new post.
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