LENGTHENING SHADOWS

It's Autumn in the Bay Area. Yesterday was cooler than I expected, and I might have needed a sweater while enjoying my post-lunch smoke wandering around near Pacific Avenue. The chachanteng where I went for a late lunch is on Broadway, and the milk tea there in the middle of the afternoon is bracing. It's a timing issue; sometimes you hit it just right.

[While smoking a pipe in Chinatown I tend to wander, as I do not want anyone to start bellyaching about the smell.]

They also have Sriracha. They real stuff again. Joy.

In the past I would go to a place at the other end of the neighborhood after hitting my bank or coming out of a medical appointment, but I get better treatment here. So, henceforth.

I think they're more comfortable with old fossils.
We few, we grouchy, we terminally unhip.
People who actually read the news.
Instead of our cellphones.


Some of the dishes on the menu they do very well indeed, but it's a crapshoot, because a few are wild misfires or not quite what you expected. Most of their offerings are standard stuff, decently done, not out of place in a densely packed neighborhood in Kowloon north of Tsim. I like their ambiance, but it won't appeal to someone expecting a Chinesey-pū décor as is standard in Kansas or Brooklyn, and the cuisine would likely not satisfy them either. And, as I understand it, both HK Milk Tea and bottles of decent hot sauce are rare in the Mid-West and New York. Quite possibly considered frightening, too.

HK French Toast with butter and golden syrup, however, is a distinctly wilder option. If you're not diabetic, go for it. I've never gone there during the lunch rush, as kwailo during crowded hours are not liked in more Chinese enviroments; even if we can order in Cantonese and do actually know what we're going to get, it's rather hard to overlook that we're a discordant and quite possibly Karen-like element, unpredictable and disruptive. We're known for that.
Our sheer whititude makes us stand out like kittens in a haystack.
I suspect they'd be okay, but I don't feel like risking it.
Don't want to discombobulate anyone.
Unnecessarily.


Some folks aren't too soundly bobulated to begin with.



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