Chinatown

For the sake of expediency last night I picked up Chinese food, trying the new takeout place across from the state police barracks, Chinatown, for the second time.  The other time was Sadie’s birthday, when she said no to pizza and seemed excited about Chinese, despite having had it exactly once ever.  That first time it was chicken pad thai, plus a combo of mass quantities of pork fried rice plus some boneless ribs and chicken wings.  Best pad thai ever, and the kids just loved it.  The rest was good too.  And it went far for the money, though of course we can make “real food” for much less.

Last night was bad for that, though, between my being late and wanting to avoid dirtying pans and having less in the house to make than we could.  The landlord is coming today to fix the tub drain (for the oven he said call the Town gas department to arrange an appointment, and they’ll probably be able to fix it easy and bill him; otherwise he’ll buy a new stove, though I told him it’s in decent shape and if it were me I wouldn’t), so we had a cleaning party last night after the kids were in bed.  Hey, it’s like that sometimes.

Anyway, Deb isn’t a big Chinese food person, though I sense a change developing.  Her one big thing she loves is orange chicken.  That’s one of their featured dishes, along with General Gao’s and sesame chicken.  Were it just for me, I’d try General Gao’s, and then maybe pork egg foo yong (which I still need to try making myself sometime), but orange chicken is along the same lines.  Plus we’d had eggs for lunch.

Best orange chicken ever.

Best she has had.  Better than the couple times I’ve had it, and easily comparable to or better than the best General Gao’s I’ve ever had.  Once we’ve tried more of the menu, no doubt we’ll circle back to that as a particularly usual choice, but we’re even more intrigued to try other things.

The combo plate, which is an efficient way of getting essentially a full container worth of rice and a smapling of other stuff, was this time chicken fingers and boneless ribs.  For some reason I thought chicken fingers were another Chinese thing she liked, and I thought it would be easier to feed the kids and better liked all around than chicken wings.  In fact, Deb had never tried chicken fingers, but was crazy about them.  They were decent exampls of the genre, so the place hasn’t let us down yet on any specific item.

The kids loved the stuff.  And for less money than pizza, there’s almost as much mileage in the leftovers.

The funniest thing is Sadie learning what “Chinese” was, food-wise, after having had it once, and being soooo excited at the prospect.

Speaking of Chinese food, when I was a kid I got hooked on the stuff at some point.  My father would take us out to dinner for my birthday and that is what I would want.  He doesn’t eat anything spiced or flavored to speak of, and unless a Chinese place crossed over enough to throw burgers and fries on their menu, there was really nothing at all for him to eat.  I didn’t fully appreciate the couple of times he relented until I was much older.  Mostly he just got good at diverting my attention to some new place he had tried, where maybe they had good scallops or a yummy, oversized seafood plate, and I developed favorites among traditional restaurants.  Especially the Tamarack, in Lakeville, not far from where we live, except now there’s a park there instead of a building.  Best. Scallops. Ever. Period.  I have no idea what they did to them, but I don’t think even Jennifer’s, in Island Pond, Vermont, quite matched them.  In my old age I’ve become more fond of shrimp, but I still enjoy good fried scallops.

1. From what I’ve seen of their claws, chicken fingers look to be all skin and bone. Strictly for use in soup.

   My dad had no trouble taking us out for Chinese, he was a fairly adventuresome eater, but he always gave me a hard time for using chopsticks. He claimed that the fork constituted a technological advance the abandonment of which was Luddite. For me, chopsticks were and are part of the total aesthetic experience.

   Posted by triticale  on  10/17  at  05:13 AM  from  the you know house
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