Chop Suey

Tonight I decided that I needed to go out to eat. All by myself, like a big girl. I just didn't feel like sitting at home all by my lonesome, so I might as well take my lonesome out on the town.

So I headed to a nearby pub. But when I got there, it was fairly full, with a crowd much older than I, and it just wasn't the atmosphere I was looking for. Plus, I had realized by that time that what I really wanted was fish & chips, so I headed to the bus stop so that I could relocate to my fish & chips shop a few blocks away.

I got there at 8:05.

They closed at 8.

D'OH!

Okay, so moving on to Plan C: catch another bus back home, and finally try the Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood that I have heard is actually quite good. The "Chinese Beef Lamb House" always looks and smells quite tasty whenever I walk by, and I've been wanting to try it, but am always hesitant to try Chinese places without the buffer provided by one of my Chinese friends. And tonight I was reminded why.

Once I was seated, they brought me a plate...napkin...

...and a fork.

They didn't even give me the OPTION of chopsticks. And yeah, I could have asked, but I figured it wasn't worth flagging down the waitress again.

Now, I'm no hero. I am not very good with chopsticks, because they are not standard issue in most of the Asian restaurants in the Virginia and Indiana towns in which I have lived. (The glaring exception being sushi restaurants, which I find funny because sushi is actually supposed to be eaten with the fingers as far as I know.) But I am a firm believer in the whole "when in Rome..." attitude, and I like to eat my Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese/etc. food with the proper utensils. It is, quite frankly, part of the reason I go out for that sort of thing, because I can make Asian foods at home, but I don't have chopsticks (yet), and it's just more fun to eat the food the way it's meant to be eaten. And the only way I will ever get good at using them is to ACTUALLY USE THEM. It may take me a while to eat my bowl of pho, but dammit, I do it, and I've improved a lot in the last year. I wouldn't have been offended had they brought me a fork WITH my chopsticks, but they never even gave me a chance. C'mon, throw the white girl a bone!

So anyway, I eat my dinner with my stupid fork, and it's very, very tasty. But I find myself wondering if it's the real thing. Chinese restaurants are notorious for having two versions of everything - the real one, and the one they serve the white people.

I lived in Indiana for seven years. I've had enough greasy, bland, Westernized Chinese food to last me many lifetimes. Toronto is known for having fantastic Chinese food, and when I go to a Chinese restaurant, I want the same food that the Chinese patrons eat. If I'm smart enough to eat at a restaurant in which I am the sole white person, I don't want to be treated like someone who doesn't really want authentic food. Even my Canadian-born Chinese friends tend to be surprised when I like things that are very traditionally Chinese and very different from Western food.

Dude, I like food. I ain't fussy.

So I guess I'll never know if my cumin lamb was the real thing unless I take one of my Chinese friends with me and have them order it. But oooh, even if it was toned down, it was fabulous.

I almost asked for the check in Chinese, just to salvage a little pride, but I only know how to say it in Cantonese, and I'm pretty sure this is a Mandarin-speaking joint, so I would have just looked even more hopelessly Anglo. And if there's anything I hate more than being subtly patronized, it's the blatant patronization you get for doing things like that.

And dammit, I still want some fish & chips.