What with the recent closures and transformations in Chinatown, there is only one place nearby for Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice that I know of, and I cannot go there. It's not the fault of that restaurant, but the very nice waitress there three years ago wanted to introduce me to her single friend.
[dot dot dot ... ]
Though I speak passable Cantonese, the concept of a date with someone who thinks in Chinese rather than English frightens the bejayzus out of me.
I am a middle-aged crackpot with a fondness for Monty Python's Flying Circus, Vladimir Nabokov's prose, odd study subjects like Talmud-Torah, Mediaeval History, the Dutch colonial world, and food (about which I know a lot).
A Chinese-speaking immigrant from Hong Kong or the Mainland would find me rather queer, once she got to know more about me.
And we would have little in common other than food.
Besides, I smoke a pipe. Smoking is no longer socially acceptable.
Also, no career. No chance of owning my own home.
So I responded nicely to her suggestion at the time, and never went there again. Unfortunately there are far fewer chachanteng style eateries in Chinatown now.
[Chachanteng (茶餐廳) are restaurants that have strong milk tea. Not boba joints, and not American Chinese restaurants. The food selection is Hong Kong western. Chops, casseroles, French toast, fried noodles, stew (市都 'si dou'), spaghetti, and borscht (羅宋湯 'lo sung tong'; Russian soup). Which isn't Russian, by the way.]
The one I went to with Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice has revamped.
Upgraded the menu, and reduced it to one printed sheet.
But as regards one of my favourite dishes, I am out of luck. Their curry porkchops with rice suit me nicely, and they still have a good selection of rice porridge, plus some quite interesting looking new items, so I will continue to patronize them as often as before.
No Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice.
Guk pou gwok gai faan.
焗葡國雞飯
It's a simple dish. A layer of egg-fried rice is put in a casserole, chicken chunks, cubed potato and maybe bell-pepper spread on top, mild slightly coconutty curry sauce poured over. A sprinkle of cheese, and bung it in the oven for ten or fifteen minutes, till the chicken is cooked and the cheese bubbly. It can also be done by simply glopping some mild Chinese restaurant style chicken curry over the foundation of fried rice, and sticking it under the broiler. The approach is flexible, the result is what counts. Rice, egg fragments, chicken, potato, mild curry sauce. With a slightly cheesy golden layer on top.
Ideally one or two chunks of chouriço or linguiça are in it also, for a porky fatty flavour -- at home I'll make it with smoky bacon -- and it should be stressed that it is not, in fact, Portuguese at all, but a typical Hong Kong crossover dish. Nor is it intended for high dining or healthy eating.
Have it with one of two cups of strong milk tea, then head out into the typhoon and scramble up the bamboo scaffolding for another full shift on the highrise, twenty floors up. Energy. Filling. Not high fallutin'.
Formica table food.
Just add hotsauce.
Or sambal.
AFTER WORD
What used to be the New Honolulu (新檀島咖啡餅店 'san taan tou ka fei bing dim') on Stockton Street is now 新品味 ('san pan mei'), but has not yet opened for business. It looks nice inside. And I am curious as to what foods they will serve. Naturally I am hoping that it will be chachanteng food, which is what the Honolulu had -- they were a pleasant and reliable stand-by and fall-back -- and at the very least they should offer Hong Kong Milk Tea (港式奶茶 'gong sik naai chaa'), and club sandwiches (公司三明治 'gung si saam ming ji'). Which are great with a little hotsauce. Or sambal.
==========================================================================
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LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Showing posts with label 唐人街 Chinatown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 唐人街 Chinatown. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
VERY HONG KONG CANTO
Last year the ABC (ABC大餐廳) on Jackson Street closed down, and while it was never one of my top ten eateries, I had quite enjoyed eating there at least once or twice a month for many years, for a variety of reasons.
Not all of it was the food. Indeed, they did have Sriracha hotsauce, but HK chachanteng menus are not know for excellence and Michelin-quality. Rather, speed, comfort, and convenience. Chachanteng cater to an audience that wants to be fed, and not bothered. The style of food is heavily weighed toward familiar uncomplicated stuff, washed down with strong milk tea, so that you can go out and climb the twenty story bamboo scaffolding again, pick up the kids from violin lessons, and play mahjong all night.
Or, in my case, read the newspaper and then go out to smoke my pipe.
Actually I rarely read real newspapers any more, the last one I bought at the newsracks near my house was the edition that carried the article about a conflagration at an oil refinery recently (煉油廠爆炸起火). The headline had suggested that a chili oil factory exploded, but it turned out what they meant was a disastrous pipeline rupture in an industrial park.
Which did not interest me nearly as much.
The ABC had been around for years, and they still are. They have other locations elsewhere, which it would take an expedition to get to because one does not live out in the avenues or suburbia.
My area is downtown, in the North Eastern part of the city.
Tongyanfau is the closest Chinese neighborhood.
Those other Chinatowns are not.
And they are far.
唔好方便。
Their Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice was very decent, likewise the Black Pepper Sauce Porkchop, Singapore Noodle, and Salt Fish Chicken Rice. And, though I had it rarely because of a tendency to gout, I also fondly remember the Baked Curry Seafood Rice, which is a purely Hong Kong dish that most people will not think of as even remotely Chinese.
咖喱海鮮芝士焗飯
['gaa lei hoi sin ji si guk faan']
Mild mixed creamy seafood curry on top of rice, liberally sprinkled with shredded cheese and baked under the broiler. Superior with hot sauce.
It's so easy to make you do not need an exact recipe. Per serving, enough cooked rice for one person. On top of which you place slightly precooked seafood, your choice. Shrimp, scallops, crab, cod fillets, surimi, oysters, mussels, etcetera. Add enough curry sauce to cover, sprinkle the cheese over, and shove in the oven for eight to ten minutes till bubbly.
The curry sauce is very English, and almost unrecognizable to a Punjabi. Small cubed carrots and potato, sauteed in butter till starting to gild. Add milk or cream to cover, and enough curry substance to colour but not overwhelm. Cook gently for a few minutes, then add chopped onion and maybe a pepper or two (which is non-standard). Simmer a bit longer.
Instead of carrots, celery and green bell pepper are also an option.
And I prefer browned potato chunks instead of small cubes.
Heavenly with a cup of milk tea at one of the back booths, when the place was crowded and filled with people snarfing down goodies. Even if some of them were Northerners who didn't understand any of this Southern muck, or tourists limiting themselves to everything sweet and sour over fried rice.
The number of chachanteng in this part of the city has diminished, and Chinatown is changing. It's shrinking, becoming more white, and more acceptable to whites.
Immigrants are going elsewhere, we have tech bros now.
AFTERWORD
Someone recently mentioned the Dragon Ball Bakery (龍珠餅店), Kowloon branch, on Shanghai Street in Yaumatei. That may have been pursuant my flip comment that in most of HK you are never far from a Seven Eleven. There is, in fact, one right next door from the bakery, and another around the corner on Portland Street. Plus one on Dundas Street, one on Reclamation Street, and on Hamilton, and Pitt.
See, that actually proves that Chinatown is nothing like Hong Kong. There are no Seven Elevens here. The nearest ones are in the Financial District, so that the suburbanites won't panic.
In Hong Kong, Seven Elevens are as familiar as submachine guns in Honduras. Hector would know.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Not all of it was the food. Indeed, they did have Sriracha hotsauce, but HK chachanteng menus are not know for excellence and Michelin-quality. Rather, speed, comfort, and convenience. Chachanteng cater to an audience that wants to be fed, and not bothered. The style of food is heavily weighed toward familiar uncomplicated stuff, washed down with strong milk tea, so that you can go out and climb the twenty story bamboo scaffolding again, pick up the kids from violin lessons, and play mahjong all night.
Or, in my case, read the newspaper and then go out to smoke my pipe.
Actually I rarely read real newspapers any more, the last one I bought at the newsracks near my house was the edition that carried the article about a conflagration at an oil refinery recently (煉油廠爆炸起火). The headline had suggested that a chili oil factory exploded, but it turned out what they meant was a disastrous pipeline rupture in an industrial park.
Which did not interest me nearly as much.
The ABC had been around for years, and they still are. They have other locations elsewhere, which it would take an expedition to get to because one does not live out in the avenues or suburbia.
My area is downtown, in the North Eastern part of the city.
Tongyanfau is the closest Chinese neighborhood.
Those other Chinatowns are not.
And they are far.
唔好方便。
Their Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice was very decent, likewise the Black Pepper Sauce Porkchop, Singapore Noodle, and Salt Fish Chicken Rice. And, though I had it rarely because of a tendency to gout, I also fondly remember the Baked Curry Seafood Rice, which is a purely Hong Kong dish that most people will not think of as even remotely Chinese.
咖喱海鮮芝士焗飯
['gaa lei hoi sin ji si guk faan']
Mild mixed creamy seafood curry on top of rice, liberally sprinkled with shredded cheese and baked under the broiler. Superior with hot sauce.
It's so easy to make you do not need an exact recipe. Per serving, enough cooked rice for one person. On top of which you place slightly precooked seafood, your choice. Shrimp, scallops, crab, cod fillets, surimi, oysters, mussels, etcetera. Add enough curry sauce to cover, sprinkle the cheese over, and shove in the oven for eight to ten minutes till bubbly.
The curry sauce is very English, and almost unrecognizable to a Punjabi. Small cubed carrots and potato, sauteed in butter till starting to gild. Add milk or cream to cover, and enough curry substance to colour but not overwhelm. Cook gently for a few minutes, then add chopped onion and maybe a pepper or two (which is non-standard). Simmer a bit longer.
Instead of carrots, celery and green bell pepper are also an option.
And I prefer browned potato chunks instead of small cubes.
Heavenly with a cup of milk tea at one of the back booths, when the place was crowded and filled with people snarfing down goodies. Even if some of them were Northerners who didn't understand any of this Southern muck, or tourists limiting themselves to everything sweet and sour over fried rice.
The number of chachanteng in this part of the city has diminished, and Chinatown is changing. It's shrinking, becoming more white, and more acceptable to whites.
Immigrants are going elsewhere, we have tech bros now.
AFTERWORD
Someone recently mentioned the Dragon Ball Bakery (龍珠餅店), Kowloon branch, on Shanghai Street in Yaumatei. That may have been pursuant my flip comment that in most of HK you are never far from a Seven Eleven. There is, in fact, one right next door from the bakery, and another around the corner on Portland Street. Plus one on Dundas Street, one on Reclamation Street, and on Hamilton, and Pitt.
See, that actually proves that Chinatown is nothing like Hong Kong. There are no Seven Elevens here. The nearest ones are in the Financial District, so that the suburbanites won't panic.
In Hong Kong, Seven Elevens are as familiar as submachine guns in Honduras. Hector would know.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, December 28, 2017
DO YOU REMEMBER?
This morning during conversation someone mentioned Sun Wah Kue (新華僑餐廳), which was a longtime favourite of many people in the area. At the corner of Ross Alley (舊呂宋巷) on Washington Street (華盛頓街) between Grant Avenue and Stockton Street (市德頓街). They were known for their apple pie, orange pie, ox tail, pork chops, rib-eye, tongue, and fried chicken. Oh, and other things. It was the kind of restaurant that used to be common in Chinatown, serving Chinese and American dishes to Americanized Chinese and the locally born, who up until the seventies felt more at home and comfortable there than at the white folks joints outside the neighborhood.
Up to the early Seventies in much of the city they were distinctly unwelcome; the Irish and Italians didn't want their business.
If Sun Wah Kue was crowded, you simply went down Waverly (天后廟街) to Uncle's Cafe and sat at the counter. Also American standards, plus coffee and apple pie. For many years Rose Pak (白蘭大姐) would be there, swilling cup after cup and holding court. No, that famous picture of her with a cigar was not taken there.
[In the last few years that it existed, Uncle's was 鶯咕餐廳 ('ang ku chan teng').
But I think the name before may have been 金麒麟 ('kam kei luen'), before they ripped out the counter. There was also another name ... ]
He also remembered Yong Kee (容記糕粉), the Dollar Store, the "movie theatre with all the fleas", Woolworth's, and Ping Yuen Bakery (平園餅家). All of which no longer exist.
Sun Wah Kue was sold in the late eighties, I think, and changed hands again in the nineties before finally closing. Uncle's changed hands at least twice before become a Szechuan joint with a goofy name catering to rich young Mandarin speakers and white folks, the Dollar Store, the theatre, and Woolworth's were all gone by the end of the eighties or before, and Ping Yuen closed sometime in the nineties. Ping Yuen's cream pies were delicious, and if you sat at the counter you risked serious caffeine intoxication because of the free refills.
I kind of wonder if he remembered The Rickshaw.
What alleyway was that nightclub on?
Allan Gin would know.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Two surnames to remember from today: 劉 ('lau') and 車 ('che').
The place of origin for one of them: Longdu (隆都 'lung dau').
A dialect group: Zhongshan Min (中山閩 'jung saan man').
Sek Kei Wa (石岐話) may have a Hakka influence.
Fewest tones among the Yue (粵) dialects.
廣東話 is more important, though.
Standard city speech.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Up to the early Seventies in much of the city they were distinctly unwelcome; the Irish and Italians didn't want their business.
If Sun Wah Kue was crowded, you simply went down Waverly (天后廟街) to Uncle's Cafe and sat at the counter. Also American standards, plus coffee and apple pie. For many years Rose Pak (白蘭大姐) would be there, swilling cup after cup and holding court. No, that famous picture of her with a cigar was not taken there.
[In the last few years that it existed, Uncle's was 鶯咕餐廳 ('ang ku chan teng').
But I think the name before may have been 金麒麟 ('kam kei luen'), before they ripped out the counter. There was also another name ... ]
He also remembered Yong Kee (容記糕粉), the Dollar Store, the "movie theatre with all the fleas", Woolworth's, and Ping Yuen Bakery (平園餅家). All of which no longer exist.
Sun Wah Kue was sold in the late eighties, I think, and changed hands again in the nineties before finally closing. Uncle's changed hands at least twice before become a Szechuan joint with a goofy name catering to rich young Mandarin speakers and white folks, the Dollar Store, the theatre, and Woolworth's were all gone by the end of the eighties or before, and Ping Yuen closed sometime in the nineties. Ping Yuen's cream pies were delicious, and if you sat at the counter you risked serious caffeine intoxication because of the free refills.
I kind of wonder if he remembered The Rickshaw.
What alleyway was that nightclub on?
Allan Gin would know.
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Two surnames to remember from today: 劉 ('lau') and 車 ('che').
The place of origin for one of them: Longdu (隆都 'lung dau').
A dialect group: Zhongshan Min (中山閩 'jung saan man').
Sek Kei Wa (石岐話) may have a Hakka influence.
Fewest tones among the Yue (粵) dialects.
廣東話 is more important, though.
Standard city speech.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, December 03, 2017
THEY'RE PROBABLY NICE PEOPLE, BUT I'M NOT
It's been a long time since my ex and I broke up. After it happened, rather than blaming her or getting bent out of shape, I did the mature thing and moped. Which, naturally, one should do; it's healthy and therapeutic or something. I was also bitter that she had always been scared to be seen around Chinatown with me -- she's Cantonese, I'm white, and you already knew that -- for fear that some home-town nosey parker would report back to her elderly mother that the daughter was seeing a kwailo.
As the "foreign" element, I was the non-person.
Chinese can be frightful racists that way.
But you know something?
I'm over it.
We went out for dimsum just ONCE during our relationship of several years. Since then I've had dimsum far more often by myself than during my entire previous life. Dimsum in the Chinese context is often a group thing, several people go out and share eaties and tea. But I'm white, stubborn, and a bit of a loner, and I'm fine doing that by myself.
I can smoke my pipe afterwards while wandering around.
Really, I'm not a very social person.
I don't like groups.
Dimsum tastes better as a snack than as a sustained assault with several friends or relatives on all the goodies being wheeled out of the kitchen in a loud crowded environment. The hustle and bustle of a popular tea restaurant can be bothersome, irritating even. Lunch should be enjoyed, rather than becoming an endurance test or competitive event.
I don't like buffets for the same reason.
Hunger games.
Bah.
I never ate with her relatives, never even met them. If we had gone out for dimsum, I probably would've dropped my chopsticks, and later said that it had been fun, and please let us never do that again.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
As the "foreign" element, I was the non-person.
Chinese can be frightful racists that way.
But you know something?
I'm over it.
We went out for dimsum just ONCE during our relationship of several years. Since then I've had dimsum far more often by myself than during my entire previous life. Dimsum in the Chinese context is often a group thing, several people go out and share eaties and tea. But I'm white, stubborn, and a bit of a loner, and I'm fine doing that by myself.
I can smoke my pipe afterwards while wandering around.
Really, I'm not a very social person.
I don't like groups.
Dimsum tastes better as a snack than as a sustained assault with several friends or relatives on all the goodies being wheeled out of the kitchen in a loud crowded environment. The hustle and bustle of a popular tea restaurant can be bothersome, irritating even. Lunch should be enjoyed, rather than becoming an endurance test or competitive event.
I don't like buffets for the same reason.
Hunger games.
Bah.
I never ate with her relatives, never even met them. If we had gone out for dimsum, I probably would've dropped my chopsticks, and later said that it had been fun, and please let us never do that again.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
GLOOP AND FRIED DOUGH FOR LUNCH
Recently there was too much roast duck. "How can there possibly be too much roast duck", I hear you say, "How can that even be?" That's a good question. Especially if you know my penchant.
But trust me, there can indeed be.
She bought a whole duck.
She attended to my birthday happiness. Because she values birthdays (her own is coming up in two months), and I believe she rather likes living with a grumpy old troll who more than tolerates stuffed animals, most of whom act rambunctious, demand snacks of unknowable provenance, and will steal my wallet when I'm in the bathroom tending to my personal cleanity.
Often when I return freshly showered and shaved, I find a cluster of the little criminals tussling over my bills, or sometimes poncing around with one of my briars, saying "hubba hubba hubba lookit me I am the famous philosopher Bertrand Arthur William Russell!"
They never pretend to be Tolkien.
Tolkien was a dildo.
Hobbits, feh! The Ewoks of an Oxford linguist's brainfart.
Anyhow. Too much duck. And charsiu. Every day since Friday. Wherefore my constitution feels a bit stressed. Something simple and easy on the stomach may be required. Such as, for instance, rice porridge.
But where, and what kind?
鮑魚粥 ('baau yü juk'): abalone rice porridge.
鮑魚滑雞粥 ('baau yü kwat kai juk'): abalone and chicken rice porridge.
柴魚花生粥 ('chai-yü faa-sang juk'): dried fish and fried peanuts rice porridge.
猪肝粥 ('chyu gon juk'): pork liver rice porridge.
猪骨滚生粥 ('chyu gwat gwan saang juk'): pork bone poached rice porridge; a selection of fresh and dried mushrooms with ham cooked in a rice porridge made on a basis of pork broth.
豬紅粥 ('chyu hong juk'): rice porridge with cubes of gelled pig's blood.
豬肚肉片粥 ('chyu tou yiuk pin juk'): pork liver, tripe, and fresh pork slices rice porridge.
豬潤粥 ('chyu yeun juk'): pig gloss jook, an alternative name for rice porridge with pork liver.
豬什粥 ('chyu sap juk'): pig whatevers jook; miscellaneous pork oddments rice porridge.
帶子粥 ('daai-ji juk'): scallops porridge.
火鴨粥 ('fo ngaap juk'): rice porridge with roast duck.
滑雞粥 ( 'gwat kai juk'): chicken chunks rice porridge.
虾粥 ('haa juk'): fresh shrimp rice porridge.
香菇肉鬆粥 ('heung gu ngau song juk'): black mushrooms and pork floss rice porridge.
蠔豉瘦肉粥 ('ho si sau yiuk juk'): dried oysters and lean pork rice porridge.
海產粥 ('hoi chaan juk'): mixed seafoods rice porridge; shrimp, clams or mussels, and squid.
海参粥 ('hoi saam juk'): sea cucumber rice porridge.
海鮮粥 ('hoi sin juk'): mixed fresh seafood rice porridge.
雞球粥 ('kai kau juk'): chicken rice porridge.
羅漢粥 ('lo hon juk'): Arhat ("Luo Han") rice porridge; a luxurious vegetarian preparation made with carrots, bamboo shoots, dried mushrooms, wood ear, straw mushrooms, and white fungus.
牡蠣粥 ('maau lai juk'): fresh oysters rice porridge with pork and garlic.
銀耳粥 ('ngan yi juk'): white fungus rice porridge, mildly tonifying.
北菇雞球粥 ('pak gu kai kau juk'): black mushroom and chicken porridge.
皮蛋牛肉粥 ('pei dan ngau yiuk juk'):preserved egg and beef porridge.
皮蛋瘦肉粥 ('pei dan sau yiuk juk'): preserved egg and lean pork rice porridge.
三黄粥 ('saam wong juk'): three yellows porridge; soy bean, sweet potato, and millet gruel, served with a little golden sugar. It's healthy.
生滾蝦球粥 ('sang gwan ha kau juk'): jook with fresh shrimp cooked by the heat of the porridge.
生滾牛肉粥 ('sang gwan ngau yiuk juk'): rice porridge with sliced beef poached in the hot gloop.
生滾肉片粥 ('sang gwan yiuk pin juk'): jook with sliced pork cooked by the heat of the porridge.
蝦球帶子粥 ('sin haa daai-ji juk'): fresh shrimp and scallop porridge.
爽滑肉丸粥 ('song gwat yiuk yuen juk'): rice porridge with pork meat balls.
碎牛粥 ('sui ngau juk'): rice porridge with minced beef.
田雞粥 ('tin kai juk'): fresh frog rice porridge.
窩蛋免治牛粥 ('wo dan min ji ngau juk'): nested egg floating freely cow jook; minced beef and egg porridge.
魚片粥 ('yü pin juk'): fish curls rice porridge.
魚片豬紅粥 ('yü pin chyu hong juk'): sliced fish and pork blood porridge.
魚片皮蛋粥 ('yü pin pei dan juk'): preserved egg and sliced fish porridge.
魚片瘦肉粥 ('yü pin sau yiuk juk'): sliced fish and pork porridge.
Rice porridge ("jook" in Cantonese) is greatly good, and just the ticket. But because it is so simple, though requiring attentiveness and brilliance to do well, most places will have less than half a dozen choices, and sometimes it becomes the afterthought on an extensive menu.
I know every jookery in Chinatown.
It is a quandary.
One of the key things is the fried oil stick. If that is lacking or a failure, the experience is lessened. The fried oil stick is crucial.
There are limitations to Chinatown.
No, I seldom go to the Chinese restaurants in the avenues, be real! There are no honest Chinese folks there, they all speak Mandarin and cook for bollocky no-taste Midwesterners!
油條
There is one "restaurant" on Stockton Street which does a fried dough stick that is very nasty. The place is incredibly popular, because they are cheap. They also sell dim sum and various prepared dishes, the customers are total pillocks, and the service is haphazard, and sometimes downright irritating when they didn't understand my Cantonese.
I will probably not go there.
The little bistro on Waverly which had superior jook and truly lovely fried dough sticks (Utopia Cafe, 蔘滿意粥, near the intersection with Washington) no longer exists.
[蔘滿意粥: 'saam mun yi juk'. The restaurant there now is still called Utopia in English, but something else in Chinese (牛麵王 'ngau min wong': "beef noodle king").
I haven't tried them yet.]
One place where the women who work there know me and always treat me with home town consideration does not appeal today, because their dough stick is a bit leaden, and leaves me feeling bloated.
That isn't what I aim for this time.
I will probably end up at the cheap lunchcounter run by decent hardworking Toishanese. Though there are only three jook choices, their fried oil stick is good (as is their cheung fan), and it is a great place for people-watching.
Gotta leave the house soon.
Before it is all gone.
Pipe after.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
But trust me, there can indeed be.
She bought a whole duck.
She attended to my birthday happiness. Because she values birthdays (her own is coming up in two months), and I believe she rather likes living with a grumpy old troll who more than tolerates stuffed animals, most of whom act rambunctious, demand snacks of unknowable provenance, and will steal my wallet when I'm in the bathroom tending to my personal cleanity.
Often when I return freshly showered and shaved, I find a cluster of the little criminals tussling over my bills, or sometimes poncing around with one of my briars, saying "hubba hubba hubba lookit me I am the famous philosopher Bertrand Arthur William Russell!"
They never pretend to be Tolkien.
Tolkien was a dildo.
Hobbits, feh! The Ewoks of an Oxford linguist's brainfart.
Anyhow. Too much duck. And charsiu. Every day since Friday. Wherefore my constitution feels a bit stressed. Something simple and easy on the stomach may be required. Such as, for instance, rice porridge.
But where, and what kind?
鮑魚粥 ('baau yü juk'): abalone rice porridge.
鮑魚滑雞粥 ('baau yü kwat kai juk'): abalone and chicken rice porridge.
柴魚花生粥 ('chai-yü faa-sang juk'): dried fish and fried peanuts rice porridge.
猪肝粥 ('chyu gon juk'): pork liver rice porridge.
猪骨滚生粥 ('chyu gwat gwan saang juk'): pork bone poached rice porridge; a selection of fresh and dried mushrooms with ham cooked in a rice porridge made on a basis of pork broth.
豬紅粥 ('chyu hong juk'): rice porridge with cubes of gelled pig's blood.
豬肚肉片粥 ('chyu tou yiuk pin juk'): pork liver, tripe, and fresh pork slices rice porridge.
豬潤粥 ('chyu yeun juk'): pig gloss jook, an alternative name for rice porridge with pork liver.
豬什粥 ('chyu sap juk'): pig whatevers jook; miscellaneous pork oddments rice porridge.
帶子粥 ('daai-ji juk'): scallops porridge.
火鴨粥 ('fo ngaap juk'): rice porridge with roast duck.
滑雞粥 ( 'gwat kai juk'): chicken chunks rice porridge.
虾粥 ('haa juk'): fresh shrimp rice porridge.
香菇肉鬆粥 ('heung gu ngau song juk'): black mushrooms and pork floss rice porridge.
蠔豉瘦肉粥 ('ho si sau yiuk juk'): dried oysters and lean pork rice porridge.
海產粥 ('hoi chaan juk'): mixed seafoods rice porridge; shrimp, clams or mussels, and squid.
海参粥 ('hoi saam juk'): sea cucumber rice porridge.
海鮮粥 ('hoi sin juk'): mixed fresh seafood rice porridge.
雞球粥 ('kai kau juk'): chicken rice porridge.
羅漢粥 ('lo hon juk'): Arhat ("Luo Han") rice porridge; a luxurious vegetarian preparation made with carrots, bamboo shoots, dried mushrooms, wood ear, straw mushrooms, and white fungus.
牡蠣粥 ('maau lai juk'): fresh oysters rice porridge with pork and garlic.
銀耳粥 ('ngan yi juk'): white fungus rice porridge, mildly tonifying.
北菇雞球粥 ('pak gu kai kau juk'): black mushroom and chicken porridge.
皮蛋牛肉粥 ('pei dan ngau yiuk juk'):preserved egg and beef porridge.
皮蛋瘦肉粥 ('pei dan sau yiuk juk'): preserved egg and lean pork rice porridge.
三黄粥 ('saam wong juk'): three yellows porridge; soy bean, sweet potato, and millet gruel, served with a little golden sugar. It's healthy.
生滾蝦球粥 ('sang gwan ha kau juk'): jook with fresh shrimp cooked by the heat of the porridge.
生滾牛肉粥 ('sang gwan ngau yiuk juk'): rice porridge with sliced beef poached in the hot gloop.
生滾肉片粥 ('sang gwan yiuk pin juk'): jook with sliced pork cooked by the heat of the porridge.
蝦球帶子粥 ('sin haa daai-ji juk'): fresh shrimp and scallop porridge.
爽滑肉丸粥 ('song gwat yiuk yuen juk'): rice porridge with pork meat balls.
碎牛粥 ('sui ngau juk'): rice porridge with minced beef.
田雞粥 ('tin kai juk'): fresh frog rice porridge.
窩蛋免治牛粥 ('wo dan min ji ngau juk'): nested egg floating freely cow jook; minced beef and egg porridge.
魚片粥 ('yü pin juk'): fish curls rice porridge.
魚片豬紅粥 ('yü pin chyu hong juk'): sliced fish and pork blood porridge.
魚片皮蛋粥 ('yü pin pei dan juk'): preserved egg and sliced fish porridge.
魚片瘦肉粥 ('yü pin sau yiuk juk'): sliced fish and pork porridge.
Rice porridge ("jook" in Cantonese) is greatly good, and just the ticket. But because it is so simple, though requiring attentiveness and brilliance to do well, most places will have less than half a dozen choices, and sometimes it becomes the afterthought on an extensive menu.
I know every jookery in Chinatown.
It is a quandary.
One of the key things is the fried oil stick. If that is lacking or a failure, the experience is lessened. The fried oil stick is crucial.
There are limitations to Chinatown.
No, I seldom go to the Chinese restaurants in the avenues, be real! There are no honest Chinese folks there, they all speak Mandarin and cook for bollocky no-taste Midwesterners!
油條
There is one "restaurant" on Stockton Street which does a fried dough stick that is very nasty. The place is incredibly popular, because they are cheap. They also sell dim sum and various prepared dishes, the customers are total pillocks, and the service is haphazard, and sometimes downright irritating when they didn't understand my Cantonese.
I will probably not go there.
The little bistro on Waverly which had superior jook and truly lovely fried dough sticks (Utopia Cafe, 蔘滿意粥, near the intersection with Washington) no longer exists.
[蔘滿意粥: 'saam mun yi juk'. The restaurant there now is still called Utopia in English, but something else in Chinese (牛麵王 'ngau min wong': "beef noodle king").
I haven't tried them yet.]
One place where the women who work there know me and always treat me with home town consideration does not appeal today, because their dough stick is a bit leaden, and leaves me feeling bloated.
That isn't what I aim for this time.
I will probably end up at the cheap lunchcounter run by decent hardworking Toishanese. Though there are only three jook choices, their fried oil stick is good (as is their cheung fan), and it is a great place for people-watching.
Gotta leave the house soon.
Before it is all gone.
Pipe after.
==========================================================================
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==========================================================================
Wednesday, September 06, 2017
THEY WON'T GIVE THAT TO WHITE PEOPLE
It's a common belief among some folks that Chinese restaurants hide the best food among the daily specials posted on the wall, which are written in characters that Caucasians cannot read. "Totally delicious, but they don't want us to have any!"
And there are so many things that the desperate white gourmand would like to eat but cannot.
He's utterly despondent.
餐蛋公仔麵
The astute wall specials reader will instantly recognize that what is offered in those five characters is a flash in the pan, as it were. Something quick for the person on the go. And let's see if it proves popular among the target audience (neighborhood people), before we bother translating it. Two slices Spam browned in a skillet, with a fried egg, over a bowl of instant noodles, and perhaps a vegetable of some sort added. Sorry, I cannot imagine most Anglos lining up for that, and there are not enough Hawaiians in this city to make it one of their best sellers to a "foreign" audience either. Here's the google search that shows you exactly what to expect: 餐蛋公仔麵 -- Images. It's a typical Hong Kong lunch concept.
Good with a cup of milk tea.
The same place that offers the Spam & egg noodles also had freshly pressed soy bean milk, soft fresh tofu with syrup, all kinds of bubble tea, Ovaltine, orange juice, carrot juice, and various ice creams.
All of which is on the wall in Chinese.
阿華田 ('ah waa tin').
The macaroni (通粉) dishes are also advertised in Chinese. Ham and egg macaroni, chicken chunk macaroni, luncheon meat macaroni, shrimp macaroni, chicken soup and chopped ham macaroni .....
It's not that they're hiding all the good stuff from Whitey, but that Whitey is a very hard customer to deal with, barking all kinds of difficult questions, pointing and exclaiming, and then usually asks for the restroom key.
Often without buying anything .......
Except for a nice elderly couple yesterday, who looked at everything, asked what it was, bought a few of each to sample later without understanding all of the explanation, and happily spent about twenty or thirty bucks on Chinese baked goods without any fuss and bother.
And then didn't need the key at all.
[The key is hidden in the slot between the register and the display case with pandan Swiss roll cakes (班蘭瑞士蛋糕卷 'baan-laan seui-si daan-gou kuen'), if you must know.]
The two greatest advantages of being able to read Chinese yesterday were recognizing the wall special as an old familiar that didn't need any clarifying despite the dense abbreviation ("dine egg doll noodle"), and knowing what the foot and half tall person with the floppity hair that made her round head look bigger in proportion was excitedly singing about.
"Ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou!"
A sponge or chiffon (紙包蛋糕), single serving, light and fluffy.
Described by Wikipedia: Paper wrapped cake.
Lots of Google images.
She was a very nice little girl, and her dad buying her ji baau dan gou really did make the world sunny and bright.
Unless 紙包蛋糕 or a nice cup of 港式奶茶 can make your world sunny and bright, you do not need to know what it is.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
He's utterly despondent.
餐蛋公仔麵
The astute wall specials reader will instantly recognize that what is offered in those five characters is a flash in the pan, as it were. Something quick for the person on the go. And let's see if it proves popular among the target audience (neighborhood people), before we bother translating it. Two slices Spam browned in a skillet, with a fried egg, over a bowl of instant noodles, and perhaps a vegetable of some sort added. Sorry, I cannot imagine most Anglos lining up for that, and there are not enough Hawaiians in this city to make it one of their best sellers to a "foreign" audience either. Here's the google search that shows you exactly what to expect: 餐蛋公仔麵 -- Images. It's a typical Hong Kong lunch concept.
Good with a cup of milk tea.
The same place that offers the Spam & egg noodles also had freshly pressed soy bean milk, soft fresh tofu with syrup, all kinds of bubble tea, Ovaltine, orange juice, carrot juice, and various ice creams.
All of which is on the wall in Chinese.
阿華田 ('ah waa tin').
The macaroni (通粉) dishes are also advertised in Chinese. Ham and egg macaroni, chicken chunk macaroni, luncheon meat macaroni, shrimp macaroni, chicken soup and chopped ham macaroni .....
It's not that they're hiding all the good stuff from Whitey, but that Whitey is a very hard customer to deal with, barking all kinds of difficult questions, pointing and exclaiming, and then usually asks for the restroom key.
Often without buying anything .......
Except for a nice elderly couple yesterday, who looked at everything, asked what it was, bought a few of each to sample later without understanding all of the explanation, and happily spent about twenty or thirty bucks on Chinese baked goods without any fuss and bother.
And then didn't need the key at all.
[The key is hidden in the slot between the register and the display case with pandan Swiss roll cakes (班蘭瑞士蛋糕卷 'baan-laan seui-si daan-gou kuen'), if you must know.]
The two greatest advantages of being able to read Chinese yesterday were recognizing the wall special as an old familiar that didn't need any clarifying despite the dense abbreviation ("dine egg doll noodle"), and knowing what the foot and half tall person with the floppity hair that made her round head look bigger in proportion was excitedly singing about.
"Ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou, ji baau dan gou!"
A sponge or chiffon (紙包蛋糕), single serving, light and fluffy.
Described by Wikipedia: Paper wrapped cake.
Lots of Google images.
She was a very nice little girl, and her dad buying her ji baau dan gou really did make the world sunny and bright.
Unless 紙包蛋糕 or a nice cup of 港式奶茶 can make your world sunny and bright, you do not need to know what it is.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
SMALL BITS AND PIECES
Yesterday's delicious lunch is not something that wins friends afterwards, so it is just as well that wandering around smoking my pipe was part of the programme.
That, also, does not favourably influence people.
Given that San Francisco hates tobacco.
Conflating two specific television advertisements yields "When people ask where I get my healthy glow from, I tell them I just microwaved some fish".
Which, to the uneducated palate, describes the food.
蒜香蝦醬肉粒炒飯
[Suàn xiāng xiā jiàng ròu lì chǎofàn: 'suen heung haa-jeung yiuk nap chaau faan']
Fried rice with little pork bits, shrimp paste, and garlic. Looked like crap, smelled "good", and tasted like heaven. It gave me a stomach ache because I ate too much, along with hot sauce.
Like baked Portuguese chicken rice (焗葡國雞飯 'guk pou gwok gai faan'), which is also available there, this is not food to impress the suburban white people, it's just stuff we eat.
At this time of year Chinatown is filled with foreigners -- there were well over a dozen of them up at the cashier's desk trying to pay for something with a credit card -- but none in the actual dining hall.
Push past, carefully but loud enough over the gibberant din enunciating 'entschuldigen sie bitte', 'excusez moi', 'scusi', 'izvinite pozhalusta', and 'atsiprasau' -- because you do not know where these pimply pink freaks are from -- and take a seat at the back table, which will give you a great view of the place while making it possible to listen in on the two middle aged ladies animatedly discussing a relative who bought a car.
Their conversation was strangely fascinating.
I got distracted by my food, oh boy yes.
When I looked up they were gone.
Sometimes the place seems rather understaffed. Not so when I got there, but when I left both Ah Ping and Anna had their hands full. Twice or three times as many Cantonese, at least five Mandarin speakers, and two ladies (one adult, one minor) who may have been speaking Russian and played with each others hair.
The word 粒 ('naap'; lì in Mandarin) is a very useful word. It is the classifier for rice, granules, grains, seeds, pills, hailstones, pebbles, and things of that general ilk, along with metres, some fruits.
Basically, a fragment or a small piece.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
That, also, does not favourably influence people.
Given that San Francisco hates tobacco.
Conflating two specific television advertisements yields "When people ask where I get my healthy glow from, I tell them I just microwaved some fish".
Which, to the uneducated palate, describes the food.
蒜香蝦醬肉粒炒飯
[Suàn xiāng xiā jiàng ròu lì chǎofàn: 'suen heung haa-jeung yiuk nap chaau faan']
Fried rice with little pork bits, shrimp paste, and garlic. Looked like crap, smelled "good", and tasted like heaven. It gave me a stomach ache because I ate too much, along with hot sauce.
Like baked Portuguese chicken rice (焗葡國雞飯 'guk pou gwok gai faan'), which is also available there, this is not food to impress the suburban white people, it's just stuff we eat.
At this time of year Chinatown is filled with foreigners -- there were well over a dozen of them up at the cashier's desk trying to pay for something with a credit card -- but none in the actual dining hall.
Push past, carefully but loud enough over the gibberant din enunciating 'entschuldigen sie bitte', 'excusez moi', 'scusi', 'izvinite pozhalusta', and 'atsiprasau' -- because you do not know where these pimply pink freaks are from -- and take a seat at the back table, which will give you a great view of the place while making it possible to listen in on the two middle aged ladies animatedly discussing a relative who bought a car.
Their conversation was strangely fascinating.
I got distracted by my food, oh boy yes.
When I looked up they were gone.
Sometimes the place seems rather understaffed. Not so when I got there, but when I left both Ah Ping and Anna had their hands full. Twice or three times as many Cantonese, at least five Mandarin speakers, and two ladies (one adult, one minor) who may have been speaking Russian and played with each others hair.
The word 粒 ('naap'; lì in Mandarin) is a very useful word. It is the classifier for rice, granules, grains, seeds, pills, hailstones, pebbles, and things of that general ilk, along with metres, some fruits.
Basically, a fragment or a small piece.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
A FADING FRAGRANCE
Late teatime at the AA Bakery (永興餅家茶餐廳) on Stockton Street (市德頓街). Then, pipe filled with Sam Gawith's St. James Flake, down to my bank on Grant. After withdrawing some cash I went around the corner and strolled up Becket Street (白話轉街), greeting an elderly gentleman resting there, and on to Jackson (昃臣街).
Noticed that the American Chinese woman who finds my pronunciation difficult to understand was serving at the chop house (新蘭亭) on the corner. Further down Jackson the transformation of the old ABC restaurant (ABC大餐廳) to something expensive and not meant for the local Cantonese was almost complete.
The neighborhood is changing, alas.
The pipe gave me intense pleasure at this point, the smooth slightly spicy tobacco having reached perfect cruising level. Around forty five minutes after lighting up I was tapping out the ashes at Sue Bierman Park, while the wild parrots flitted about and racketed. After enjoying their cheerful noise for a while, I boarded a bus and headed home. An enjoyable tea time.
NOTES
AA Bakery: excellent cakes and pastries, particularly the egg tart and the flaky charsiu turnovers, What I had was a ham and pork floss bun. St. James Flake: an excellent mostly blonde compound of Virginias with a modicum of Perique; too much for Perique haters probably.
St. James Flake is a good summer tobacco.
My Bank: same bank for several years, three different names during that time due to mergers.
The American Chinese Woman who ... : her first language is English with that slight Chinatown twang, her second is Toishanese. She believes that what I speak must, logically, be Mandarin. Which it isn't.
Though I can understand Toisan a little, I can't speak it.
The ABC Restaurant: the new owners are dolling the interior up all fancy, the new menu betrays a Szechuanese influence in buckets. Local people will be apathetic, but obviously it isn't for them. There are a number of other glossy Szechy-style restaurants in C'town now, with dishes that appeal to white folks, tourists, and snooty Mandarin-only mainlanders.
Their attitudes (and prices) are rather off-putting.
I do not go to those places.
ADDENDUM: DISAPPEARING CHINATOWN
Uncle's on Waverly and Clay, in their final iteration closed three years ago. For a long time it had been a lunch counter and bakery with good pies, and endless coffee. It's now a Szechuan something-or-other.
Sun Wah Kue Restaurant, on the corner of Washington Street and Ross Alley, had an orange chiffon pie which no one else does and many people fondly remember, as well as chops, ox tail, and the best waffles. Many old timers fondly remember the waffles. Booth seating, and a side door. Baked goods, daily lunch specials. A great place to dawdle over coffee and pastry on a rainy afternoon. The interior was formica, and plain white paint over wood, yellowed a bit and softened by the years.
New King Tin further down closed after a run of half a century, the restaurant that went in was a chachanteng which is now also gone.
Golden Dragon Barbecue on the upper corner of Washington Street and Waverly became a shop selling tacky souvenirs, and is now a discounter of large porcelain whatchamacallits.
Sun Hung Heung below Grant Avenue became a restaurant which in big bold characters (川味) tells the local people that they should not go there, Szechuan Taste! It caters entirely to gullible tourists and visiting provincials, and from what I hear the food and service are frighteningly awful.
Once upon a time there was delicious suckling pig.
Silver Restaurant changed hands and name, the food is decent, nice people work there, and they are open till ten.
Nam Yuen has been an empty building for over two decades.
Tao Tao Restaurant (陶陶茶樓), named after a famous dining spot in Hangchow (杭州), had existed since the very early thirties; the exterior recalled an elegant multistoried mansion in the Chinese style. It shut down a generation ago, and the paint-peeling building housed a bookstore and pop-music emporium for a while. It is now a general services centre, offering translation, tax prep, marriage introduction, job placement, immigration help, official forms, etcetera, while Woey Loy Goey (會來居) next door in the basement changed ownership and Chinese name, and hasn't served prime rib or beefsteak for an exceedingly long time.
New Moon Restaurant: changed hands at the beginning of the year, the Chinese name is different now, the roast ducks, barbecued pork, and hanging chickens are a glorious memory. The duck was that good.
It was delicious. I should have gone more often.
I wonder what happened to the people.
Empress of China Restaurant: closed in 2014.
New Lotus Garden: long time gone.
That place where I got a monumental MSG headache is also past tense.
Ping Yuen Bakery on Jackson closed very many years ago, and is sorely missed. Endless coffee, open til nine, a very long counter at which a single man could sit after work doing crossword puzzles before going to the Great Star Theater a few doors down for a gangster movie. The Shanghainese noodle place is gone. The DPD is gone. You can't get those lovely pastries and dumplings at Yong Kee Rice Noodle Co. up the street anymore, they finally quit after three generations. Preserved egg in a flaky puff-crust, chicken buns, and Toishan daai bau.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the place which served 'rice paddy chicken'. They brought them out for us to choose, and one them hopped out of the basket, then sat staring at us with big placid eyes.
Ribbit.
All of the movie theatres are gone, of course.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Noticed that the American Chinese woman who finds my pronunciation difficult to understand was serving at the chop house (新蘭亭) on the corner. Further down Jackson the transformation of the old ABC restaurant (ABC大餐廳) to something expensive and not meant for the local Cantonese was almost complete.
The neighborhood is changing, alas.
The pipe gave me intense pleasure at this point, the smooth slightly spicy tobacco having reached perfect cruising level. Around forty five minutes after lighting up I was tapping out the ashes at Sue Bierman Park, while the wild parrots flitted about and racketed. After enjoying their cheerful noise for a while, I boarded a bus and headed home. An enjoyable tea time.
NOTES
AA Bakery: excellent cakes and pastries, particularly the egg tart and the flaky charsiu turnovers, What I had was a ham and pork floss bun. St. James Flake: an excellent mostly blonde compound of Virginias with a modicum of Perique; too much for Perique haters probably.
St. James Flake is a good summer tobacco.
My Bank: same bank for several years, three different names during that time due to mergers.
The American Chinese Woman who ... : her first language is English with that slight Chinatown twang, her second is Toishanese. She believes that what I speak must, logically, be Mandarin. Which it isn't.
Though I can understand Toisan a little, I can't speak it.
The ABC Restaurant: the new owners are dolling the interior up all fancy, the new menu betrays a Szechuanese influence in buckets. Local people will be apathetic, but obviously it isn't for them. There are a number of other glossy Szechy-style restaurants in C'town now, with dishes that appeal to white folks, tourists, and snooty Mandarin-only mainlanders.
Their attitudes (and prices) are rather off-putting.
I do not go to those places.
ADDENDUM: DISAPPEARING CHINATOWN
Uncle's on Waverly and Clay, in their final iteration closed three years ago. For a long time it had been a lunch counter and bakery with good pies, and endless coffee. It's now a Szechuan something-or-other.
Sun Wah Kue Restaurant, on the corner of Washington Street and Ross Alley, had an orange chiffon pie which no one else does and many people fondly remember, as well as chops, ox tail, and the best waffles. Many old timers fondly remember the waffles. Booth seating, and a side door. Baked goods, daily lunch specials. A great place to dawdle over coffee and pastry on a rainy afternoon. The interior was formica, and plain white paint over wood, yellowed a bit and softened by the years.
New King Tin further down closed after a run of half a century, the restaurant that went in was a chachanteng which is now also gone.
Golden Dragon Barbecue on the upper corner of Washington Street and Waverly became a shop selling tacky souvenirs, and is now a discounter of large porcelain whatchamacallits.
Sun Hung Heung below Grant Avenue became a restaurant which in big bold characters (川味) tells the local people that they should not go there, Szechuan Taste! It caters entirely to gullible tourists and visiting provincials, and from what I hear the food and service are frighteningly awful.
Once upon a time there was delicious suckling pig.
Silver Restaurant changed hands and name, the food is decent, nice people work there, and they are open till ten.
Nam Yuen has been an empty building for over two decades.
Tao Tao Restaurant (陶陶茶樓), named after a famous dining spot in Hangchow (杭州), had existed since the very early thirties; the exterior recalled an elegant multistoried mansion in the Chinese style. It shut down a generation ago, and the paint-peeling building housed a bookstore and pop-music emporium for a while. It is now a general services centre, offering translation, tax prep, marriage introduction, job placement, immigration help, official forms, etcetera, while Woey Loy Goey (會來居) next door in the basement changed ownership and Chinese name, and hasn't served prime rib or beefsteak for an exceedingly long time.
New Moon Restaurant: changed hands at the beginning of the year, the Chinese name is different now, the roast ducks, barbecued pork, and hanging chickens are a glorious memory. The duck was that good.
It was delicious. I should have gone more often.
I wonder what happened to the people.
Empress of China Restaurant: closed in 2014.
New Lotus Garden: long time gone.
That place where I got a monumental MSG headache is also past tense.
Ping Yuen Bakery on Jackson closed very many years ago, and is sorely missed. Endless coffee, open til nine, a very long counter at which a single man could sit after work doing crossword puzzles before going to the Great Star Theater a few doors down for a gangster movie. The Shanghainese noodle place is gone. The DPD is gone. You can't get those lovely pastries and dumplings at Yong Kee Rice Noodle Co. up the street anymore, they finally quit after three generations. Preserved egg in a flaky puff-crust, chicken buns, and Toishan daai bau.
Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the place which served 'rice paddy chicken'. They brought them out for us to choose, and one them hopped out of the basket, then sat staring at us with big placid eyes.
Ribbit.
All of the movie theatres are gone, of course.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
SHEER PORKCHOPPY MAGNETISM!
Gracious that was delicious! Tender meat smothered in tomato and onion with a pile of rice. Which was not what I set out to get, but after visiting my bank I needed lunch, and decided to head over to a familiar chachanteng, where normally I just have Hong Kong milk tea and a pastry or two.
The pork chop rice plate fair jumped out at me.
It was something I never had before.
A grievous omission.
That lunch definitely bears repeating.
番茄豬扒飯
['faan-ke chyu-baa faan']
Two thin chops, with cooked fresh sweet tomato, and a little onion. Rice fluffy. No need for hot sauce. Delicious. Possibly they salted and peppered the meat before pan-frying. The heat must have been immense but brief, terminating in fresh chopped tomato, onion, and a splash of liquid.
Probably one of the best meals I've eaten.
Soup and a roll included.
I should also mention that I must have been radiating something yesterday, as six women in Chinatown reacted with pleasure upon seeing me. Maybe it's my faint perfume of tobacco, or more likely they recognized me, and for a non-threatening middle-aged goofus I'm kinda likeable.
Or something like that.
It can't be my sex appeal, because three men did the same.
Besides, if I actually had sex appeal, it would probably frighten people. "The were-wolf came up the stairs, and a horde of people panicked and fled." "A dark cloud of dread preceded the old coot where ever he went, causing pedestrians to quail, and tender females to avert their eyes."
Let us assume that I am a known quantity.
A familiar landmark.
AFTER WORD
Upon finishing my lunch I ponced around a bit with pipe and tobacco for a while, revisiting several alleyways, terminating at the edge of Portsmouth Square, where I observed the loonies near the end of my bowl.
Still baffled at the man wearing only dirty shorts.
If I had that torso, I should hide it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The pork chop rice plate fair jumped out at me.
It was something I never had before.
A grievous omission.
That lunch definitely bears repeating.
番茄豬扒飯
['faan-ke chyu-baa faan']
Two thin chops, with cooked fresh sweet tomato, and a little onion. Rice fluffy. No need for hot sauce. Delicious. Possibly they salted and peppered the meat before pan-frying. The heat must have been immense but brief, terminating in fresh chopped tomato, onion, and a splash of liquid.
Probably one of the best meals I've eaten.
Soup and a roll included.
I should also mention that I must have been radiating something yesterday, as six women in Chinatown reacted with pleasure upon seeing me. Maybe it's my faint perfume of tobacco, or more likely they recognized me, and for a non-threatening middle-aged goofus I'm kinda likeable.
Or something like that.
It can't be my sex appeal, because three men did the same.
Besides, if I actually had sex appeal, it would probably frighten people. "The were-wolf came up the stairs, and a horde of people panicked and fled." "A dark cloud of dread preceded the old coot where ever he went, causing pedestrians to quail, and tender females to avert their eyes."
Let us assume that I am a known quantity.
A familiar landmark.
AFTER WORD
Upon finishing my lunch I ponced around a bit with pipe and tobacco for a while, revisiting several alleyways, terminating at the edge of Portsmouth Square, where I observed the loonies near the end of my bowl.
Still baffled at the man wearing only dirty shorts.
If I had that torso, I should hide it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
THE YAM WHAT YAM
Sometimes dinner includes a whole range of sure-fire hits in the target zone. Stirfried noodles with bitter melon, chicken bits, and fermented blackbeans, with hotsauce and a cup of milk-tea. In the company of elderly women, moms with children after school, and middle-aged delinquents.
What with being white, I am anonymous and well-nigh invisible, so nobody at the other tables actually noticed me. That's a benefit of not dining with a Chinese person. A dubious blessing, perhaps.
涼瓜鷄炒麵 & 港式奶茶
['LEUNG GWA GAI CHAAU MIN, GONG SIK NAAI CHA']
It wasn't that I was planning to have chow mein, despite gibbering about the subject in a number of recent essays. It's just that despite my resolve to get out of the house early yesterday I didn't. Instead I found myself rushing out after tea-time for breakfast (first meal of the day), and consequently I was somewhat limited for options.
Bakeries, coffee shops, and dimsummeries tend to close at six. There are a few chachanteng that stay open. The one where I ended up has interesting foods and excellent milk tea, but they had run out of ho fan.
The waitress suggested a noodly substitute.
Hence wheat instead of rivers.
[麵 versus 河粉]
For some reason which I haven't figured out they appeal particularly to old fossils, single men, and rough around the edges Toishanese peasant types. And the occasional lost white person who cannot grasp the menu, which obviously does not include me. I'm not lost, and I can read the menu.
As well as the specials on the wall.
It takes only a little construing to recognize that when they write 菌 they don't mean microbes or bacteria but mushrooms, especially when these are stirfried with long yam (淮山).
淮山
['WAAI SAAN']
Dioscorea polystachya, commonly conflated with dioscorea opposita or oppositifolia, is extremely popular in Chinatown, widely available most of the year, and almost never found in restaurants.
I should have ordered it, but I didn't look at the wall until after the waitress had written down the bitter melon.
淮山 ('waai saan') is the common name in Cantonese, but it is also called 山藥 ("mountain medicine"; 'saan yeuk' or 'saan yek').
There are a number of superior pairings: 蘭豆木耳炒淮山 (snap peas and wood ear stirfried dioscorea; 'laan dau muk yi chaau waai saan'), 菇菌炒雜菜 (mixed mushrooms chop suey; 'gu kwan chaau jaap choi'), 菠菜淮山炒牛肉 (spinach and dioscorea stirfried beef; 'bo choi waai saan chaau nagau yiuk'), 百合木耳炒淮山 (lily and wood ear stirfried dioscorea; 'baak hap muk yi chaau waai saan'), 淮山木耳炒西芹 (dioscorea and wood ear stirfried celery; 'waai saan muk yi chaau sai kan'), 青瓜淮山炒木耳 (sliced cucumber and dioscorea stirfried with wood ear; 'ching gwaa waai saan chaau muk yi'), 海參炒淮山 (sea cucumber stirfried with dioscorea; 'hoi sam chaau waai saan'), 鮮淮山蒸排骨 (fresh dioscorea steamed short ribs; 'sin waai saan jeng paai gwat'), 山藥香菇雞湯(dioscorea and mushrooms in chicken soup; 'saan yeuk heung gu gai tong'), 淮山南瓜 (pumpkin and dioscorea; 'waai saan naam gwaa'), 西芹淮山炒雲耳 (celery and cloud ears stirfried dioscorea; 'sai kan waai saan chaau wan yi'), etcetera.
Stirfrying it with wood ear fungus (木耳 'muk yi' or 雲耳 'wun yi') is usual, as well as with celery or zucchini. It is good with meats, provided no strong sauces are used to drown the subtle crispy flavour.
It can also be put in soups.
Simply stirfrying it with some sliced black mushroom and a very discreet addition of abalone sauce ( 鮑魚汁 'baau yiu jap') is excellent. Some shredded roast chicken can be added to good effect.
Or pair this with a simple meat dish.
Allegedly it can be eaten raw, but I have never done that; to me all yams must be cooked. Because of traces of oxalate in the skin it is best to peel and rinse with a weak vinegar solution before slicing them for the pan.
This was the first time I saw it on a wall.
I hope it's there the next time.
Perhaps very soon.
It was still light when I left. I lit up my pipe and wandered down to Sue Bierman Park, where the parrots had discovered the prunus blossoms, and engaged in a riotous orgy of flower-eating, to the delight of many passers-by. Snapchats and twitters will be filled with close-ups of the cheeky birds.
They were determined to feast, and suppressed their flight instinct.
Very attractive likable creatures.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
What with being white, I am anonymous and well-nigh invisible, so nobody at the other tables actually noticed me. That's a benefit of not dining with a Chinese person. A dubious blessing, perhaps.
涼瓜鷄炒麵 & 港式奶茶
['LEUNG GWA GAI CHAAU MIN, GONG SIK NAAI CHA']
It wasn't that I was planning to have chow mein, despite gibbering about the subject in a number of recent essays. It's just that despite my resolve to get out of the house early yesterday I didn't. Instead I found myself rushing out after tea-time for breakfast (first meal of the day), and consequently I was somewhat limited for options.
Bakeries, coffee shops, and dimsummeries tend to close at six. There are a few chachanteng that stay open. The one where I ended up has interesting foods and excellent milk tea, but they had run out of ho fan.
The waitress suggested a noodly substitute.
Hence wheat instead of rivers.
[麵 versus 河粉]
For some reason which I haven't figured out they appeal particularly to old fossils, single men, and rough around the edges Toishanese peasant types. And the occasional lost white person who cannot grasp the menu, which obviously does not include me. I'm not lost, and I can read the menu.
As well as the specials on the wall.
It takes only a little construing to recognize that when they write 菌 they don't mean microbes or bacteria but mushrooms, especially when these are stirfried with long yam (淮山).
淮山
['WAAI SAAN']
Dioscorea polystachya, commonly conflated with dioscorea opposita or oppositifolia, is extremely popular in Chinatown, widely available most of the year, and almost never found in restaurants.
I should have ordered it, but I didn't look at the wall until after the waitress had written down the bitter melon.
淮山 ('waai saan') is the common name in Cantonese, but it is also called 山藥 ("mountain medicine"; 'saan yeuk' or 'saan yek').
There are a number of superior pairings: 蘭豆木耳炒淮山 (snap peas and wood ear stirfried dioscorea; 'laan dau muk yi chaau waai saan'), 菇菌炒雜菜 (mixed mushrooms chop suey; 'gu kwan chaau jaap choi'), 菠菜淮山炒牛肉 (spinach and dioscorea stirfried beef; 'bo choi waai saan chaau nagau yiuk'), 百合木耳炒淮山 (lily and wood ear stirfried dioscorea; 'baak hap muk yi chaau waai saan'), 淮山木耳炒西芹 (dioscorea and wood ear stirfried celery; 'waai saan muk yi chaau sai kan'), 青瓜淮山炒木耳 (sliced cucumber and dioscorea stirfried with wood ear; 'ching gwaa waai saan chaau muk yi'), 海參炒淮山 (sea cucumber stirfried with dioscorea; 'hoi sam chaau waai saan'), 鮮淮山蒸排骨 (fresh dioscorea steamed short ribs; 'sin waai saan jeng paai gwat'), 山藥香菇雞湯(dioscorea and mushrooms in chicken soup; 'saan yeuk heung gu gai tong'), 淮山南瓜 (pumpkin and dioscorea; 'waai saan naam gwaa'), 西芹淮山炒雲耳 (celery and cloud ears stirfried dioscorea; 'sai kan waai saan chaau wan yi'), etcetera.
Stirfrying it with wood ear fungus (木耳 'muk yi' or 雲耳 'wun yi') is usual, as well as with celery or zucchini. It is good with meats, provided no strong sauces are used to drown the subtle crispy flavour.
It can also be put in soups.
Simply stirfrying it with some sliced black mushroom and a very discreet addition of abalone sauce ( 鮑魚汁 'baau yiu jap') is excellent. Some shredded roast chicken can be added to good effect.
Or pair this with a simple meat dish.
Allegedly it can be eaten raw, but I have never done that; to me all yams must be cooked. Because of traces of oxalate in the skin it is best to peel and rinse with a weak vinegar solution before slicing them for the pan.
This was the first time I saw it on a wall.
I hope it's there the next time.
Perhaps very soon.
It was still light when I left. I lit up my pipe and wandered down to Sue Bierman Park, where the parrots had discovered the prunus blossoms, and engaged in a riotous orgy of flower-eating, to the delight of many passers-by. Snapchats and twitters will be filled with close-ups of the cheeky birds.
They were determined to feast, and suppressed their flight instinct.
Very attractive likable creatures.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, March 24, 2017
FRIED NOODLE HERESY
There appears to be a misapprehension about chow mein in the United States. Many people seem to believe that it is composed of deep-fried noodles with a glop of saucy muck on top. This is a travesty.
Chow mein should be wheat noodles barely boiled, added to a roomy fry pan after sliced scallion and ginger have been gilded and another ingredient has been added. High heat, frazzle, splash of liquid, with or without stock and sauce-type additions. Served glistening, NOT crisp.
A minor inclusion of vegetables -- tiny bokchoy, gailan, celery, or even carrots if you are peculiar -- is also acceptable. Even welcome.
Think of it as a noodle dish that is lightly dressed.
Not bollixed up to a fare-thee-well.
Nor browned.
素炒麵，肉絲炒麵，豉油皇炒面，同其他。
If you cannot even smell the scallion and ginger, that isn't chow mein. It is something, I shan't try to guess what, but it may not be quite edible.
If you are a New Yorker, from New England or the Midwest, or Indian (subcontinental), you probably do not know this.
The "other ingredient" mentioned above is usually pork, sometimes beef (mostly in America), rarely shrimp. Small pieces, so that they cook fast.
A total exception being made, of course, for a pork chop. Liquid additions to reduce and slightly glaze the amalgam being water, stock, sherry or rice wine, and soy sauce in a minute quantity. Yes, I know that everybody outside of Chinatown wants to add enough soy sauce to float a battleship, but mahogany-hued noodles are not chow mein. That's crap that you serve in a school cafeteria or at a church supper in Minnefriggingsota.
Chili paste can also be added during the cooking process, but is better thought of afterwards, when the waitress brings a steaming plate of goodness to your table, and you ask for the bottle of Sriracha.
Serve me something else and I may scream.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Chow mein should be wheat noodles barely boiled, added to a roomy fry pan after sliced scallion and ginger have been gilded and another ingredient has been added. High heat, frazzle, splash of liquid, with or without stock and sauce-type additions. Served glistening, NOT crisp.
A minor inclusion of vegetables -- tiny bokchoy, gailan, celery, or even carrots if you are peculiar -- is also acceptable. Even welcome.
Think of it as a noodle dish that is lightly dressed.
Not bollixed up to a fare-thee-well.
Nor browned.
素炒麵，肉絲炒麵，豉油皇炒面，同其他。
If you cannot even smell the scallion and ginger, that isn't chow mein. It is something, I shan't try to guess what, but it may not be quite edible.
If you are a New Yorker, from New England or the Midwest, or Indian (subcontinental), you probably do not know this.
The "other ingredient" mentioned above is usually pork, sometimes beef (mostly in America), rarely shrimp. Small pieces, so that they cook fast.
A total exception being made, of course, for a pork chop. Liquid additions to reduce and slightly glaze the amalgam being water, stock, sherry or rice wine, and soy sauce in a minute quantity. Yes, I know that everybody outside of Chinatown wants to add enough soy sauce to float a battleship, but mahogany-hued noodles are not chow mein. That's crap that you serve in a school cafeteria or at a church supper in Minnefriggingsota.
Chili paste can also be added during the cooking process, but is better thought of afterwards, when the waitress brings a steaming plate of goodness to your table, and you ask for the bottle of Sriracha.
Serve me something else and I may scream.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, March 23, 2017
WHITE FOLKS CHOW MEIN
Just had a long discussion on the internet about the term "gender fluidity". Which, given that I am "gender settled" or whatever it's presently called, is a term I had heretofore never heard. Gender is like glass; technically it's a liquid. Or something. And there are several terms I must not ever use.
Including the useful phrase "fo shizzle"
Because I am not Snoop Dog.
Not even close.
In that I am white, middle aged, darn foxy looking, don't wear shades, and have a small neatly trimmed beard, I must grudgingly concede the point.
But in many other respects I am very much like him.
Honest.
And "fo shizzle" is off colour only if you think it is. Other than that, it's perfectly clean. You could even say it in church.
Fo shizzle.
Now, having been distracted by the long conversation about pourable sex identities, which also included mention of breast enlargements, it is far too late to go find a plate of something for which I have a real taivah.
Which was already throbbing when I got home.
It's gotten worse in the interval.
Chow mein.
Almost everywhere in Chinatown is closed already.
The only Chinese places still open at this hour serve chow for white folks and drunkards. And who the heck wants to eat that?!?
Fo shizzle.
Yeah, I could make it myself.
But someone else is using the kitchen right now.
She's cooking up bulbes and stuff for her boyfriend Wheelie Boy, and apparently my presence would cramp her style or put a curse on the fellow's delicate digestive system, or something.
My shadow over his food is bad juju.
I cannot go in there.
Fo shizzle.
Nothing for it but to eat some low fat Greek yoghurt.
I'll cook up a plate of chowmein later.
Probably after midnight.
Maybe a slice of pizza somewhere?
Probably can't use the term "white folks chow mein" either. It's undoubtedly racist, whitesplanatory, cultural appropriationist, narrow-minded, hurtfull, and triggering. Fo 你嘅 shizzle.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Including the useful phrase "fo shizzle"
Because I am not Snoop Dog.
Not even close.
In that I am white, middle aged, darn foxy looking, don't wear shades, and have a small neatly trimmed beard, I must grudgingly concede the point.
But in many other respects I am very much like him.
Honest.
And "fo shizzle" is off colour only if you think it is. Other than that, it's perfectly clean. You could even say it in church.
Fo shizzle.
Now, having been distracted by the long conversation about pourable sex identities, which also included mention of breast enlargements, it is far too late to go find a plate of something for which I have a real taivah.
Which was already throbbing when I got home.
It's gotten worse in the interval.
Chow mein.
Almost everywhere in Chinatown is closed already.
The only Chinese places still open at this hour serve chow for white folks and drunkards. And who the heck wants to eat that?!?
Fo shizzle.
Yeah, I could make it myself.
But someone else is using the kitchen right now.
She's cooking up bulbes and stuff for her boyfriend Wheelie Boy, and apparently my presence would cramp her style or put a curse on the fellow's delicate digestive system, or something.
My shadow over his food is bad juju.
I cannot go in there.
Fo shizzle.
Nothing for it but to eat some low fat Greek yoghurt.
I'll cook up a plate of chowmein later.
Probably after midnight.
Maybe a slice of pizza somewhere?
Probably can't use the term "white folks chow mein" either. It's undoubtedly racist, whitesplanatory, cultural appropriationist, narrow-minded, hurtfull, and triggering. Fo 你嘅 shizzle.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
PORKCHOP OVER RICE AND OTHER THINGS
The entire angry debate over "cultural appropriation" and authentic food versus inauthentic food went right by me, and I didn't even notice.
I was too busy eating, you see.
Two recent conversations however deserve note.
A friend remarked that he went to a familiar restaurant for lunch, and it was packed because of the rain. They turned four tables while he was hurriedly gasakking his food. He didn't say what he ate. Knowing him, it probably contained pork, chilies, and preserved vegetables.
A couple of tourists in Chinatown asked me for a recommendation. I am white. No, that wasn't "so racist" of them, it was understanding that a white man casually hanging about (smoking a pipe) would be much more likely to have a moment than the rushing Chinese pedestrians passing by, probably spoke English (I do!), and might not have a pony in the race.
And knew what they meant.
And yes, if you were to ask a native or a Mexican in Chinatown for advice you would not get what you want. A white local person, eh, perhaps.
GO THAT PLACE, THERE!
Hypothetical Chinatown Cantonese response: "Oh I don't know, nothing here really, there's a Szechuan restaurant on Jackson Street which is very popular, or maybe you like noodles? Cross the street (points).
Restaurant on Washington has dim sum all day."
That Chinatown person may be holding a bubble tea at the time, and had a baked pork chop with tomato sauce over spaghetti at a strictly Canto-style place a few hours ago. Heck, they ate yesterday and the day before too. But they presumed, based on your appearance, that you probably would not like what they like, it would take too much explanation to make the concept intelligible to you, and in any case the boba lounge where they bought the drink has popcorn shrimp (yum!) but you aren't a casual eater.
You are probably looking for something special.
Aren't you?
[Maybe you do like noodles? Word of advice: a plate of noodles should not cost more than ten dollars.]
You want Hunanese? Peking? Dongbei? Um. No. This is Chinatown. We've got Hong Kong. Cantonese. Hong Kong Western. Dim sum. Chachanteng. Deepfried, stewed, steamed, or simmered. Crypto-Viet with noodles. Bakeries. Ho Mong Lei on Jackson. Shanghai Bund one block down. Pork chops with gravy over rice in between. Two or three extremely expensive restaurants that nobody ever goes to, but outsiders like them.
Chicken wings, family style, live fish, rice porridge.
Crispy crap, baked stuff, bad coffee.
Plastic forks.
Many sit down places have a version of general Tso, and sweet'n sour pork. Plus the vegetarian option. Because it is truly authentic to want your business, and hope that you leave happy and come again.
Ho Mong Lei on Jackson does a big steamed bun filled with chicken and stuff. Double A and the Washington Bakery Restaurant have a selection of hot dishes, and excellent milk tea. The steamed Northern dumplings at the Shanghai place are lovely. There are at least four places where you can get baked porkchop over rice or spaghetti, and try the Little Paris on Stockton for a sandwich plus Vietnamese coffee. The folks at the Viet restaurant on Walter Lum will put a fried egg on almost anything, if you want. If you see jung (conical leaf-wrapped rice and meat parcels, called "dooo'oong" by Toishanese speakers), buy a few to take home; they're a great quick breakfast, lunch, or late night snack.
There are a number of places that do claypot rice.
Versions with preserved meat are very nice.
Or the salt fish chicken kind.
For your information, Cantonese people do indeed eat egg rolls, broccoli beef, and sweet and sour dishes. And almost everything else, from several different "cuisines". They see no reason to limit themselves (unlike know-it-all food writers and Chinese Americans with chips on their shoulders), and even the most painfully monolingual person has been exposed to hamburgers, pizza, and French fries.
Now, as regards those snooty Northerners .....
They cook for white people.
AFTER WORD
In a short while I'm going out for lunch and a pipe. Still don't know what to eat. It might be fried noodles, it might be jook, or maybe a steamed Toishan bao. Something simple. And a cup or two of milk tea (not from a boba place). It's a total crap shoot.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
I was too busy eating, you see.
Two recent conversations however deserve note.
A friend remarked that he went to a familiar restaurant for lunch, and it was packed because of the rain. They turned four tables while he was hurriedly gasakking his food. He didn't say what he ate. Knowing him, it probably contained pork, chilies, and preserved vegetables.
A couple of tourists in Chinatown asked me for a recommendation. I am white. No, that wasn't "so racist" of them, it was understanding that a white man casually hanging about (smoking a pipe) would be much more likely to have a moment than the rushing Chinese pedestrians passing by, probably spoke English (I do!), and might not have a pony in the race.
And knew what they meant.
And yes, if you were to ask a native or a Mexican in Chinatown for advice you would not get what you want. A white local person, eh, perhaps.
GO THAT PLACE, THERE!
Hypothetical Chinatown Cantonese response: "Oh I don't know, nothing here really, there's a Szechuan restaurant on Jackson Street which is very popular, or maybe you like noodles? Cross the street (points).
Restaurant on Washington has dim sum all day."
That Chinatown person may be holding a bubble tea at the time, and had a baked pork chop with tomato sauce over spaghetti at a strictly Canto-style place a few hours ago. Heck, they ate yesterday and the day before too. But they presumed, based on your appearance, that you probably would not like what they like, it would take too much explanation to make the concept intelligible to you, and in any case the boba lounge where they bought the drink has popcorn shrimp (yum!) but you aren't a casual eater.
You are probably looking for something special.
Aren't you?
[Maybe you do like noodles? Word of advice: a plate of noodles should not cost more than ten dollars.]
You want Hunanese? Peking? Dongbei? Um. No. This is Chinatown. We've got Hong Kong. Cantonese. Hong Kong Western. Dim sum. Chachanteng. Deepfried, stewed, steamed, or simmered. Crypto-Viet with noodles. Bakeries. Ho Mong Lei on Jackson. Shanghai Bund one block down. Pork chops with gravy over rice in between. Two or three extremely expensive restaurants that nobody ever goes to, but outsiders like them.
Chicken wings, family style, live fish, rice porridge.
Crispy crap, baked stuff, bad coffee.
Plastic forks.
Many sit down places have a version of general Tso, and sweet'n sour pork. Plus the vegetarian option. Because it is truly authentic to want your business, and hope that you leave happy and come again.
Ho Mong Lei on Jackson does a big steamed bun filled with chicken and stuff. Double A and the Washington Bakery Restaurant have a selection of hot dishes, and excellent milk tea. The steamed Northern dumplings at the Shanghai place are lovely. There are at least four places where you can get baked porkchop over rice or spaghetti, and try the Little Paris on Stockton for a sandwich plus Vietnamese coffee. The folks at the Viet restaurant on Walter Lum will put a fried egg on almost anything, if you want. If you see jung (conical leaf-wrapped rice and meat parcels, called "dooo'oong" by Toishanese speakers), buy a few to take home; they're a great quick breakfast, lunch, or late night snack.
There are a number of places that do claypot rice.
Versions with preserved meat are very nice.
Or the salt fish chicken kind.
For your information, Cantonese people do indeed eat egg rolls, broccoli beef, and sweet and sour dishes. And almost everything else, from several different "cuisines". They see no reason to limit themselves (unlike know-it-all food writers and Chinese Americans with chips on their shoulders), and even the most painfully monolingual person has been exposed to hamburgers, pizza, and French fries.
Now, as regards those snooty Northerners .....
They cook for white people.
AFTER WORD
In a short while I'm going out for lunch and a pipe. Still don't know what to eat. It might be fried noodles, it might be jook, or maybe a steamed Toishan bao. Something simple. And a cup or two of milk tea (not from a boba place). It's a total crap shoot.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, January 03, 2017
THIS IS WHAT IT IS, YO
Braised pork belly with plum vegetable, black bean bitter melon, and stewed tomato. Rice, soup, coffee. In the anonymous company of codgers and country-types. If you can read this, there is a chance that you would not like it. The pipes I smoked afterward would not please you either.
Dark Virginia flake, fully rubbed.
Sweet, fragrant, perfumy.
Incense-like.
Welcome to my world.
Or not.
It was cheap, it was good. It was cash contante, because if you need to charge a six dollar meal on a card you are out of your mind, yuppie.
Which was something four people, separately, wished to do.
I have to seriously wonder what's wrong with them.
One of them totaled no more than three.
Dollars, not bit coins.
Dummies.
It's a Chinatown lunch counter, NOT a Starbucks or Blue Bottle. These people understand cash very well, and though they also grasp the fine nuances of plastic, that's one service that they will not pay their bank any extra money for facilitating. Why don't you have cash?
Three measly dollars? There's ATMs darn well everywhere, there's even one only two doors down. And around the corner. And down the street.
You do know that Chinatown folk love their banks, right?
There are banks in nearly every block.
Sometimes cheek by jowl.
I went to my bank today. They greeted me by name in Cantonese, we did business in Cantonese, and bid adieu in Cantonese. There were precisely two words in English: "receipt" (收據 'sau geui'), and "balance" (餘額 'jue ngaak').
There is NO reason to utilize your credit card in Chinatown.
Unless you're eating somewhere the locals seldom go.
One other thing: the locals do not make loud gagging sounds or give voice to a shitty attitude when passing someone smoking. Some of them may even look at my pipe enviously, and quite recently a waitress praised one of my briars as a beautiful object.
Why can't you yuppies be so tolerant? Or you gawking tourists?
Four hours in Chinatown, mostly out in the weather, because one cannot smoke indoors anymore, and I was letting the apartment air out before the apartment mate returned home. See, I am considerate of non-smokers.
In return for which some of you yoga practicing gluten-intolerant new-age spiritual types can jolly well shut up, and make a wide birth around me when you encounter me on the sidewalk. Next to two to six lanes of busy traffic (oh, those exhaust fumes!), between the sewer grates wafting pong at the corners of every block, and near the mentally unstable homeless person who hasn't had a bath since Christ kicked it.
In the bitter wind, cold, and rain.
Please go play in traffic.
On a more positive note, I now have a new umbrella.
I've already worn out two this season.
We need the rain.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Dark Virginia flake, fully rubbed.
Sweet, fragrant, perfumy.
Incense-like.
Welcome to my world.
Or not.
It was cheap, it was good. It was cash contante, because if you need to charge a six dollar meal on a card you are out of your mind, yuppie.
Which was something four people, separately, wished to do.
I have to seriously wonder what's wrong with them.
One of them totaled no more than three.
Dollars, not bit coins.
Dummies.
It's a Chinatown lunch counter, NOT a Starbucks or Blue Bottle. These people understand cash very well, and though they also grasp the fine nuances of plastic, that's one service that they will not pay their bank any extra money for facilitating. Why don't you have cash?
Three measly dollars? There's ATMs darn well everywhere, there's even one only two doors down. And around the corner. And down the street.
You do know that Chinatown folk love their banks, right?
There are banks in nearly every block.
Sometimes cheek by jowl.
I went to my bank today. They greeted me by name in Cantonese, we did business in Cantonese, and bid adieu in Cantonese. There were precisely two words in English: "receipt" (收據 'sau geui'), and "balance" (餘額 'jue ngaak').
There is NO reason to utilize your credit card in Chinatown.
Unless you're eating somewhere the locals seldom go.
One other thing: the locals do not make loud gagging sounds or give voice to a shitty attitude when passing someone smoking. Some of them may even look at my pipe enviously, and quite recently a waitress praised one of my briars as a beautiful object.
Why can't you yuppies be so tolerant? Or you gawking tourists?
Four hours in Chinatown, mostly out in the weather, because one cannot smoke indoors anymore, and I was letting the apartment air out before the apartment mate returned home. See, I am considerate of non-smokers.
In return for which some of you yoga practicing gluten-intolerant new-age spiritual types can jolly well shut up, and make a wide birth around me when you encounter me on the sidewalk. Next to two to six lanes of busy traffic (oh, those exhaust fumes!), between the sewer grates wafting pong at the corners of every block, and near the mentally unstable homeless person who hasn't had a bath since Christ kicked it.
In the bitter wind, cold, and rain.
Please go play in traffic.
On a more positive note, I now have a new umbrella.
I've already worn out two this season.
We need the rain.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
FEEDING THE RARE CRESTED COOT
There are two dishes that say "comfort food" to the male Dutch American middle-aged pipe-smoking bachelor like nothing else. And by "male Dutch American middle-aged pipe-smoking bachelor" is meant a specific subset; an ethnic minority of monumentally small proportion, dammit we need protected status, AND we're a work of art.
The problem is that, like male spiders, the male Dutch American middle-aged pipe-smoking bachelor has risky and even suicidal tendencies.
My grandfather got married in his fifties after heading to France as a pilot during World War One. He died over eighty years ago. My own father joined up with the Royal Canadian Airforce and spent nearly three years bombing Europe during World War Two, got married in his early thirties, moved to Holland and promptly passed away forty years later.
So you see. There are limitations on the tribe.
Marriage and military aircraft.
One of those two.
HOT AND SOOTHING SCRUMPTY!
Anyhow, the two dishes are Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice (焗葡國雞飯 'guk pou-gwok gai faan') and Penang-style Hokkien Mee (檳城福建蝦麵 'ban-seng fuk-gin haa min').
加葡汁！
Alas, the last time I ate Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice it was utterly disappointing. Ideally it consists of egg-fried rice topped with chicken and potato chunks, optionally with an inclusion of either bellpepper or perhaps jalapeño, doused in Portuguese sauce (a mild coconut curry slurry), grated cheddar cheese and coconut shreds sprinkled over, and shoved under the broiler for ten minutes to brown a bit on top and get hot all the way through.
Add salt and pepper to taste, and have some hot chilipaste on the side to zap up every other bite or so. Delicious.
One place in Chinatown which does Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice adds large chunks of onion plus canned mushrooms to the mix, which is horrible anathema, and another chachanteng seems to have recently replaced the mild coconut curry slurry with an entirely uninspired bland whitish starchy liquid ("white sauce"), which indicates that instead of a decent chef of Hong Kong provenance, they've hired a farmer.
It was that second version I had the last time.
I dare not go to the place where they probably still do an excellent version, because the last time I was there the waitress was mighty keen to introduce me to a single friend of hers, why the two of us would make a lovely couple, that woman would be ideal for me!
It's been about ten months.
I am still scared.
I do not think I am ideal. And I could just imagine the disappointment all around. It would have been excruciating for three people.
See, that's one of my 'talents'. I can provide enough excruciation for a plurality. It's quite remarkable.
蝦湯麵
The other dish is an intense noodle soup that utilizes a huge quantity of shrimp heads (蝦頭 'haa tau') for the broth, simmered for hours until deeply and passionately prawny.
It is strained, augmented with a dollop of garlicky chili paste and a little sugar, then dished up with thin noodles (I usually use typical Chinese egg noodles), fresh prawns, and a little vegetable matter for crunch and colour, plus cooked sliced lean pork, or short ribs (quite of course I use fatty pork instead). This marvelous concoction is NOT available in Chinatown; as the name ("Hokkien Mee" 福建麵 'fuk gin min') shows; it isn't Cantonese but Fujianese, specifically from Amoy (厦門 'haa mun', Xiamen), and most particularly the version made in Penang (檳榔嶼 'pan long yiu').
Chinatown folks are mostly Cantonese .....
"Prawn concentrate?!?"
"Cooked chilipaste?!?"
"Added to the soup?!?"
"How utterly FOREIGN, it sounds inedible!"
I cannot say that the Cantonese would be repulsed by it, but this just isn't a concept that they would naturally come up with, nor would conceive of as being a treat.
They've got their own comfort zone.
It's different.
AFTERWORD
Triggerwarning: a few sentences in this post may not be meant entirely at face value. If you cannot read with tongue at least partially in cheek, please come back some other time.
I realize I have to say this; some people are sensitive.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The problem is that, like male spiders, the male Dutch American middle-aged pipe-smoking bachelor has risky and even suicidal tendencies.
My grandfather got married in his fifties after heading to France as a pilot during World War One. He died over eighty years ago. My own father joined up with the Royal Canadian Airforce and spent nearly three years bombing Europe during World War Two, got married in his early thirties, moved to Holland and promptly passed away forty years later.
So you see. There are limitations on the tribe.
Marriage and military aircraft.
One of those two.
HOT AND SOOTHING SCRUMPTY!
Anyhow, the two dishes are Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice (焗葡國雞飯 'guk pou-gwok gai faan') and Penang-style Hokkien Mee (檳城福建蝦麵 'ban-seng fuk-gin haa min').
加葡汁！
Alas, the last time I ate Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice it was utterly disappointing. Ideally it consists of egg-fried rice topped with chicken and potato chunks, optionally with an inclusion of either bellpepper or perhaps jalapeño, doused in Portuguese sauce (a mild coconut curry slurry), grated cheddar cheese and coconut shreds sprinkled over, and shoved under the broiler for ten minutes to brown a bit on top and get hot all the way through.
Add salt and pepper to taste, and have some hot chilipaste on the side to zap up every other bite or so. Delicious.
One place in Chinatown which does Baked Portuguese Chicken Rice adds large chunks of onion plus canned mushrooms to the mix, which is horrible anathema, and another chachanteng seems to have recently replaced the mild coconut curry slurry with an entirely uninspired bland whitish starchy liquid ("white sauce"), which indicates that instead of a decent chef of Hong Kong provenance, they've hired a farmer.
It was that second version I had the last time.
I dare not go to the place where they probably still do an excellent version, because the last time I was there the waitress was mighty keen to introduce me to a single friend of hers, why the two of us would make a lovely couple, that woman would be ideal for me!
It's been about ten months.
I am still scared.
I do not think I am ideal. And I could just imagine the disappointment all around. It would have been excruciating for three people.
See, that's one of my 'talents'. I can provide enough excruciation for a plurality. It's quite remarkable.
蝦湯麵
The other dish is an intense noodle soup that utilizes a huge quantity of shrimp heads (蝦頭 'haa tau') for the broth, simmered for hours until deeply and passionately prawny.
It is strained, augmented with a dollop of garlicky chili paste and a little sugar, then dished up with thin noodles (I usually use typical Chinese egg noodles), fresh prawns, and a little vegetable matter for crunch and colour, plus cooked sliced lean pork, or short ribs (quite of course I use fatty pork instead). This marvelous concoction is NOT available in Chinatown; as the name ("Hokkien Mee" 福建麵 'fuk gin min') shows; it isn't Cantonese but Fujianese, specifically from Amoy (厦門 'haa mun', Xiamen), and most particularly the version made in Penang (檳榔嶼 'pan long yiu').
Chinatown folks are mostly Cantonese .....
"Prawn concentrate?!?"
"Cooked chilipaste?!?"
"Added to the soup?!?"
"How utterly FOREIGN, it sounds inedible!"
I cannot say that the Cantonese would be repulsed by it, but this just isn't a concept that they would naturally come up with, nor would conceive of as being a treat.
They've got their own comfort zone.
It's different.
AFTERWORD
Triggerwarning: a few sentences in this post may not be meant entirely at face value. If you cannot read with tongue at least partially in cheek, please come back some other time.
I realize I have to say this; some people are sensitive.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, November 26, 2016
HOT BAKED CHINESE
Upon returning from Marin the first order of business is making a strong cup of coffee, so that I don't waste my precious few hours at home by falling asleep before it is necessary. Years ago I would head to Ping Yuen bakery in Chinatown after work, but that fondly remembered place no longer exists, and pies are no longer a popular item anymore.
The Chinatown bakeries have gone all Chinese-y.
Sun Wah Kue was famous for their apple pies, and their orange pies were legendary. But Ping Yuen Bakery stayed open till nine, and I was addicted to their offerings.
So just plain strong coffee it is.
[Remarkably, there was a pastry waiting when I got home.]
The other great thing about old-school Chinatown bakeries was that unlike most of the places in North Beach, there were no artistic intellectuals and bohemians infesting them. Yeah, the coffee was only okay, but the ambiance was stellar.
Eastern Bakery tore out the lunch counter years ago, Uncle's changed hands several times and finally disappeared, Sun Wah Kue closed a long time back, and Ping Yuen is now a foot rubbery.
[Eastern's lunch counter was staffed by a very sweet petite old lady, spry and lively minded. She's retired now, and has visited Europe, New Orleans, and Alaska ... Uncle's was where Rose Pak hung out. Their pie was decent. Sun Wah Kue was a great place on an inclement day, rain clattering in the alleyway, warm pie and hot coffee in front of you, and a cheerful racket from the front. Ping Yuen, ah, well. Set dinners, lovely cream pies, and bold capable waitresses. A long counter, and booths along one side. I spent hours there, often heading to the Taai Ming Sing afterwards for a Hong Kong gangster movie.]
Contrariwise, in this day and age there are some wonderful freaky baked goods, and you can get Hong Kong style milk tea.
Plus at least one shop does a very lovely cheese cake, my heavens.
There is also 意大利蛋糕 ('yi daai lei daan-gou').
So it does have an up-side.
Today's Chinatown bakeries, like their ancestors, also are not popular among infestatious artistic intellectuals and bohemians, and still don't do fancy coffee concoctions. In fact, only rarely does one even encounter a Caucasian there, and after they have asked all there is to ask about the baked charsiu buns and egg tarts they always promptly leave.
You do not need to worry about them drinking all the milk tea.
It isn't something they've heard about.
A hot cup of yuen yeung (鴛鴦) and a fresh heung chong yiuk sung min baau kuen (香蔥肉鬆麵包捲); sheer bliss.
It ain't Starbucks.
It's better.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The Chinatown bakeries have gone all Chinese-y.
Sun Wah Kue was famous for their apple pies, and their orange pies were legendary. But Ping Yuen Bakery stayed open till nine, and I was addicted to their offerings.
So just plain strong coffee it is.
[Remarkably, there was a pastry waiting when I got home.]
The other great thing about old-school Chinatown bakeries was that unlike most of the places in North Beach, there were no artistic intellectuals and bohemians infesting them. Yeah, the coffee was only okay, but the ambiance was stellar.
Eastern Bakery tore out the lunch counter years ago, Uncle's changed hands several times and finally disappeared, Sun Wah Kue closed a long time back, and Ping Yuen is now a foot rubbery.
[Eastern's lunch counter was staffed by a very sweet petite old lady, spry and lively minded. She's retired now, and has visited Europe, New Orleans, and Alaska ... Uncle's was where Rose Pak hung out. Their pie was decent. Sun Wah Kue was a great place on an inclement day, rain clattering in the alleyway, warm pie and hot coffee in front of you, and a cheerful racket from the front. Ping Yuen, ah, well. Set dinners, lovely cream pies, and bold capable waitresses. A long counter, and booths along one side. I spent hours there, often heading to the Taai Ming Sing afterwards for a Hong Kong gangster movie.]
Contrariwise, in this day and age there are some wonderful freaky baked goods, and you can get Hong Kong style milk tea.
Plus at least one shop does a very lovely cheese cake, my heavens.
There is also 意大利蛋糕 ('yi daai lei daan-gou').
So it does have an up-side.
Today's Chinatown bakeries, like their ancestors, also are not popular among infestatious artistic intellectuals and bohemians, and still don't do fancy coffee concoctions. In fact, only rarely does one even encounter a Caucasian there, and after they have asked all there is to ask about the baked charsiu buns and egg tarts they always promptly leave.
You do not need to worry about them drinking all the milk tea.
It isn't something they've heard about.
A hot cup of yuen yeung (鴛鴦) and a fresh heung chong yiuk sung min baau kuen (香蔥肉鬆麵包捲); sheer bliss.
It ain't Starbucks.
It's better.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, November 12, 2016
MAN MAN: DO IT LEISURELY, WHATEVER IT IS
There are several people in Chinatown who always warmly welcome me whenever I enter their place of business. They are very glad to see me, speak to me in Cantonese, and genuinely wish me to leisurely enjoy whatever food and drink I purchase.
It's not just normal customer relations; they are used to me, and we exchange pleasantries.
It took me a while to figure out what was going on.
There is nothing quite so safe as a reasonably clean and courteous middle-aged white dude who is not a screaming loony.
Reassuring, too.
This is San Francisco. We are just about chock-full of screaming loonies here. Likewise tattooed freaks, artistic eccentrics, and downright filthy people who are immensely self-impressed.
Finally discovering a grown-up white person who has not developed into a remarkably weird and cocksure extrovert, totally unpredictable except for the disturbance factor, tells them they did not make a mistake in coming to this country, sanity is indeed possible if and when you finally decide to become white.
One of the ladies seems to believe my parents were Chinese people whose child or children for some misfortunate reason ended up Caucasian. She's from Terrace Mountain, and may not have heard of Gregor Mendel. The Cultural Revolution was going on when she would have taken highschool science classes, and genetics is NOT as revolutionarily correct as vigorous Marxist-Leninist dialectic. Either that or the school was burned down.
Because, naturally, it was a bastion of bourgeoisity.
Some kids act white, some are white.
It happens.
On the one hand, I have spent my whole life being a reasonably clean and courteous middle-aged white dude who is not a screaming loony. And on the other, they never see me outside of Chinatown, so my secret is safe.
When not constrained by calm Chinatown Cantonese social norms, I will usually grub-like molt and shed my human skin, like Edgar the Bug in Men In Black, and dance on tables wearing a lampshade.
My disguise is perfect.
Chinatown is where I go to calm down. It is very restful to have a snackie somewhere there, and then go watch the sportive types at Woo Woo or the elderly gamblers in Portsmouth Square while smoking a pipe.
I like to pretend I'm human when I do that.
The six-limbed hopping terror comes afterwards.
Fangs and slime.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It's not just normal customer relations; they are used to me, and we exchange pleasantries.
It took me a while to figure out what was going on.
There is nothing quite so safe as a reasonably clean and courteous middle-aged white dude who is not a screaming loony.
Reassuring, too.
This is San Francisco. We are just about chock-full of screaming loonies here. Likewise tattooed freaks, artistic eccentrics, and downright filthy people who are immensely self-impressed.
Finally discovering a grown-up white person who has not developed into a remarkably weird and cocksure extrovert, totally unpredictable except for the disturbance factor, tells them they did not make a mistake in coming to this country, sanity is indeed possible if and when you finally decide to become white.
One of the ladies seems to believe my parents were Chinese people whose child or children for some misfortunate reason ended up Caucasian. She's from Terrace Mountain, and may not have heard of Gregor Mendel. The Cultural Revolution was going on when she would have taken highschool science classes, and genetics is NOT as revolutionarily correct as vigorous Marxist-Leninist dialectic. Either that or the school was burned down.
Because, naturally, it was a bastion of bourgeoisity.
Some kids act white, some are white.
It happens.
On the one hand, I have spent my whole life being a reasonably clean and courteous middle-aged white dude who is not a screaming loony. And on the other, they never see me outside of Chinatown, so my secret is safe.
When not constrained by calm Chinatown Cantonese social norms, I will usually grub-like molt and shed my human skin, like Edgar the Bug in Men In Black, and dance on tables wearing a lampshade.
[SOURCE: http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Edgar_the_Bug.]
My disguise is perfect.
Chinatown is where I go to calm down. It is very restful to have a snackie somewhere there, and then go watch the sportive types at Woo Woo or the elderly gamblers in Portsmouth Square while smoking a pipe.
I like to pretend I'm human when I do that.
The six-limbed hopping terror comes afterwards.
Fangs and slime.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, November 02, 2016
YOU HAVE TO SPEAK ENGLISH TO READ THIS
A few years ago, after Savage Kitten and I broke up, I would spend my weekends at the office doing my own thing in the peace and quiet of the thirteenth floor. Mostly reading, sometimes going out for smoke and a walk around the financial district, heading over to Chinatown for lunch or dinner, and delaying the return home till night time.
Savage Kitten and I still lived together. The break-up had been rough -- though by no means mean or hate-filled -- and neither one of us wanted to find another place to live.
Especially not in San Francisco, where if you don't have an apartment mate you can trust, you are very likely living with a drugged-out dingbat or a psycho. Who may actually be blood kin, but far more often than not is some stranger who shares your economic niche and nothing else.
Besides, we're both a bit Aspy. Which means not perfectly socialized, and likely to put off dealing with friends and contacting people who are dear to us for indefinite periods.
Unless work or a bus-accident forces us to interact, we might not do so.
Or do it in imperfect ways.
Living together prevents non-contact.
On my days off nowadays I will often wander around North Beach, Nob Hill, and Chinatown, and enjoy pastries and a cup of milk-tea while people watching, before a solitary and extended smoke break.
Chinatown Chinese don't pry, and the closest most people I know there have ever come is wondering at my tobacco and praising my minor ability to speak their language.
Or asking me whether I want another cup of tea.
Which, when you think about it, is enough.
I deal with people all day long.
At work. They're there.
The reason I bring this up is because of seal script. I mentioned seal script in a conversation with an old friend yesterday (not actually face-to-face, but message contra message), and showed some examples.
With which I shall now illustrate this essay.
Like my ability to speak Cantonese, my skill with a brush is very minor.
Still, I flatter myself that it is better than average, and not altogether miserable.
The Chinese written language three millenia ago derived from symbols and pictures carved into hard surfaces; by the time a kind of felt-tipped pen was used there were already a few thousand characters.
A few hundred of these are straightforward representation, showing the item or concept. They are mnemonically sharp. The next group consists of borrowings, where there wasn't a script symbol, but there was a word with the same or a similar pronunciation that could be used. The majority of the dictionary will consist of compounds, with one element being a phonetic, the other showing to which category the world belongs.
There are around two thousand phonetics, of which a few hundred are very common.
All characters beyond the basic 214 consist of simpler parts, which by themselves always have a meaning, but which are not all still part of the regular vocabulary. It is by these that words are arranged in a dictionary, from simplest character through stroke count in that section, by stroke order, to the most complex.
Most characters you will ever need to know are fewer than fifteen strokes. Some characters almost entirely without function but easy to remember, because they show the same part three times arranged in a pyramid.
For example:
鑫、龘、麤 。
Trust me, these three characters (鑫、龘、麤) are pretty much useless. Don't bother looking them up, but simply recognize the construction.
Gold, a mine schematically illustrated, or metal (金 'kam') stacked up; a dragon (龍 'lung') triplicated; and three deer (鹿 'luk') possibly running.
Even they had a common use, they are too complicated to write in normal script size, being 24 strokes, 48 strokes, and 33 strokes respectively.
In a word, they are ink blobs.
One character should be mentioned here, because it is overwhelmingly complicated but will not show up in the majority of dictionaries, being well-nigh ridiculous, and simply a restaurateur's conceit:
This character is absurd. In Shaanxi, it is a type of noodle, and shows up on signboards. Sometimes with sixty four strokes, as in this illustration, sometimes only as few as fifty eight.
Chinese is often easier to learn how to write, as an outsider, than speak. And context counts for a lot. But without at least a few hundred words, most menus become opaque, and daily specials might not be for you.
The reason for that is that English is not very much more simple, and has as absurd a vocabulary and set of rules, and you will kindly note that context, likewise, makes much clear.
There are, in each language, expressions and colloquialisms that make no sense if taken literally. Darn tooting.
Biáng. Good grief.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Especially not in San Francisco, where if you don't have an apartment mate you can trust, you are very likely living with a drugged-out dingbat or a psycho. Who may actually be blood kin, but far more often than not is some stranger who shares your economic niche and nothing else.
Besides, we're both a bit Aspy. Which means not perfectly socialized, and likely to put off dealing with friends and contacting people who are dear to us for indefinite periods.
Unless work or a bus-accident forces us to interact, we might not do so.
Or do it in imperfect ways.
Living together prevents non-contact.
On my days off nowadays I will often wander around North Beach, Nob Hill, and Chinatown, and enjoy pastries and a cup of milk-tea while people watching, before a solitary and extended smoke break.
Chinatown Chinese don't pry, and the closest most people I know there have ever come is wondering at my tobacco and praising my minor ability to speak their language.
Or asking me whether I want another cup of tea.
Which, when you think about it, is enough.
I deal with people all day long.
At work. They're there.
The reason I bring this up is because of seal script. I mentioned seal script in a conversation with an old friend yesterday (not actually face-to-face, but message contra message), and showed some examples.
With which I shall now illustrate this essay.
卷 'guen', 'kuen': scroll, roll up, curl; return.
篆書 'suen syu': seal script.
書 'syu': book, missive, writing; to write, to document.
Like my ability to speak Cantonese, my skill with a brush is very minor.
Still, I flatter myself that it is better than average, and not altogether miserable.
The Chinese written language three millenia ago derived from symbols and pictures carved into hard surfaces; by the time a kind of felt-tipped pen was used there were already a few thousand characters.
A few hundred of these are straightforward representation, showing the item or concept. They are mnemonically sharp. The next group consists of borrowings, where there wasn't a script symbol, but there was a word with the same or a similar pronunciation that could be used. The majority of the dictionary will consist of compounds, with one element being a phonetic, the other showing to which category the world belongs.
There are around two thousand phonetics, of which a few hundred are very common.
All characters beyond the basic 214 consist of simpler parts, which by themselves always have a meaning, but which are not all still part of the regular vocabulary. It is by these that words are arranged in a dictionary, from simplest character through stroke count in that section, by stroke order, to the most complex.
Most characters you will ever need to know are fewer than fifteen strokes. Some characters almost entirely without function but easy to remember, because they show the same part three times arranged in a pyramid.
For example:
鑫、龘、麤 。
Trust me, these three characters (鑫、龘、麤) are pretty much useless. Don't bother looking them up, but simply recognize the construction.
Gold, a mine schematically illustrated, or metal (金 'kam') stacked up; a dragon (龍 'lung') triplicated; and three deer (鹿 'luk') possibly running.
Even they had a common use, they are too complicated to write in normal script size, being 24 strokes, 48 strokes, and 33 strokes respectively.
In a word, they are ink blobs.
One character should be mentioned here, because it is overwhelmingly complicated but will not show up in the majority of dictionaries, being well-nigh ridiculous, and simply a restaurateur's conceit:
Biáng
This character is absurd. In Shaanxi, it is a type of noodle, and shows up on signboards. Sometimes with sixty four strokes, as in this illustration, sometimes only as few as fifty eight.
Chinese is often easier to learn how to write, as an outsider, than speak. And context counts for a lot. But without at least a few hundred words, most menus become opaque, and daily specials might not be for you.
The reason for that is that English is not very much more simple, and has as absurd a vocabulary and set of rules, and you will kindly note that context, likewise, makes much clear.
There are, in each language, expressions and colloquialisms that make no sense if taken literally. Darn tooting.
Biáng. Good grief.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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My apartment mate, as she sees it, has two objectives this evening. The first is to avoid getting bit by the mosquito, to which end she is n...
