Rachel G.

Eating Chinese For Christmas

Due to scheduling issues we are just us for Christmas this year. The kids aren’t arriving until the day after and we’re celebrating the day after that. Not an unusual occurrence for our family. Most of their growing up years our girls had to write letters to Santa asking him to arrive either early or late to accommodate their dad’s work schedule. This year he managed to get Christmas and the days after as holiday, the kids did not.

With no holiday festivities pushing the schedule we’ve had a very lazy morning. Somewhere around mid-morning he realized there was an opportunity, an experience that we’ve been missing, going out for Chinese food on Christmas Day. I’m Jewish (he’s not) and the cultural joke is that it’s tradition to do so.

Thank goodness for the internet. We do a search on Chinese restaurants, pick the two with the highest ratings, call them, and both are open. Flipping a coin we pick one and decide that’s where we’ll have lunch.

Walking in to the restaurant we’re greeted by a friendly server. The décor is cute with a wall display of bamboo and other plants. Tucked into the plants are toy pandas on one side and toy flamingos on the other. As we’re seated at our table I notice there are elegant chopsticks at our place setting, not the usual cheap wooden ones in a paper sleeve. Sadly that’s the last nice thing I’ll notice about the restaurant.

Our server comes over to enquire if we’d like a beverage. I choose hot green tea, he asks for iced tea. My green tea arrives in a mug with a tea bag hanging out of it. I’m disappointed. One of my favorite things at Chinese restaurants is the pot of tea and the lovely cha bei, the handle-less tea cups. We’re not off to a good start here.

After perusing the menu and discovering there are no egg rolls we choose our meal. this is another strike, eggrolls are one of our benchmark foods for deciding if it’s a good Chinese restaurant. Feeling hopeful for the main meal I order a standard dish that I tend to use as a determining factor, beef with broccoli. He chooses a noodle dish with shrimp, chicken and vegetables. We decide to share a plate of baby bok choy with fungus.

Eventually our food arrives. It looks delicious and we dive in. My first reach with my chopsticks is for a beautiful portobello mushroom cap from the top of the pile in the center of the verdant and tender looking bok choy. He stabs one with his fork. As we both pop the mushroom caps into our mouth our eyes widen in surprise. There is an overwhelming amount of clove in the sauce and the mushrooms have clearly soaked it all up. I reach for a piece of bok choy. It’s nicely cooked with a bit of texture, not too wilted, and it clearly has not soaked up as much sauce as the mushrooms, but there’s an undertone of clove standing at attention in this dish.

Turning to our main dishes, I cannot eat his due to a true food allergy to seafood but it looks delicious. Mine looks fairly standard. He says his tastes okay. I start on my beef with broccoli and am immediately disappointed. It’s ovesalted and the beef isn’t as tender as I prefer.

As we eat our meal I’m grateful for the best part of this meal, the good company and interesting conversation.

Eventually we finish, leaving behind most of the baby bok choy and mushrooms. After two mushrooms I just cannot take anymore clove and neither can he. In the interim the bok choy seems to have soaked up more of the sauce and it’s distinctly unpleasant.

As our server approaches the table with the check I ask for fortune cookies. “We don’t have fortune cookies here.” He nonchalantly replies. What?!?! No fortune cookies? How is that possible? Last time I checked they could be bought wholesale for as little as $0.04 each. The restaurant can’t afford $0.08 cents?

I’m not happy. Not because I love the taste of fortune cookies, actually I don’t know if anyone does, but because I want my fortune. And if I’m lucky my winning lotto number too. I smile at the server and decide we’re never going back to this restaurant.

Now I’m waiting for Christmas Day next year to try a different Chinese restaurant. Maybe I should check in advance to make sure they have fortune cookies.