The menu fell open at a very pretty picture, showing a bowl of fish balls and fried pork rind in satay sauce noodle soup. Perfunctorily I browsed through the rest of the offerings, but that first impression stuck with me.
Turns out it's just like a hamburger.
Tomato, lettuce, onion.....
Sliced cucumber, chili flakes, scallion.
In chicken broth enriched with Chinese Satay Sauce.
With chewy lai fun noodles providing the starchy component.
Okay, you might not think that's like a hamburger.
But consider that a hamburger consists of animal-based substances with all the usual bun inclusions. Protein, condiments, salt and spices, starch.
Perhaps it did not have the ketchup, horrid pickle chips,and nasty yellow mustard that would be traditional, but the peanutty shrimpy tangy satay sauce more than makes up for that. Add a squirt of Tương Ớt Sriracha and some pickled chilies, and you have perfection.
Fish balls.
Fried pork skin.
Exactly like a hamburger!
Hamburgers just aren't exact science, that's all.
Please imagine the sound of a satisfied belch right now. Not that it would happen, as I do not belch audibly. More like one of those silent but deadly belches.
If there were such a thing.
There is.
You've probably seen those reptilian old geezers on park benches with the waistbands of their pants pulled up to their sternum, slumped legs apart, with grouchy expressions on their faces?
Thick-rimmed glasses and little Frank Sinatra hats?
You know the people I'm talking about, the ones you don't want either ahead of you or behind you on the freeway, especially not in the fast lane.
You've walked past them when they made those froggy sounds.
They ate Limburger popsicles for lunch.
Or tuna salad on rye.
Dead rat.
You don't want them ahead or behind you in life either.
It's those sneaky and too informative silent belches.
Lord knows, you wish you hadn't walked past.
Instead, what I do is discrete and bland.
An unnoticeable gentlemanly 'ribbit'.
BTW, when I say "grumpy middle-aged guy", as in the title of this post, it counts as poetic exaggeration. Please do not consider me bad-tempered OR too old for you to have a charming schoolgirl crush on. Think instead young but not quite that young, cheerful but not insanely so, and remarkably lean and springy especially when compared to almost all beer drinkers and sports fans.
Especially after they got married and moved out to the suburbs.
I'm actually quite decent and good natured.
Poetic exaggeration.
Think 'spry'.
AFTERWORD
My favourite alleyway for a post-prandial smoke in the Financial District, one and a half blocks east of Kearny Street and C'town, is still pleasantly quiet, however it was much colder today than I expected. The pipe filled with Old Gowrie was delicious, but I wished I had brought a sweater.
Or perhaps my voluminous dirty old man overcoat large enough to hide a second person in.
Both tobacco and cuddling are nicer in cold weather.
I would love to try them both at the same time.
Need to find a perverse companion.
Spicy noodle soup for two.
Chop stick battle.
Eructation.
TOBACCO INDEX
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