Back
in the pick of the litter jia chang cai Shanghai,
family style restaurant I found on my last extended stay down here. It’s clean. This is certainly something in its favor. Walking down to enter the roof is low
for an attitudinally challenged gent like myself. Sitting down, it doesn’t matter. The patroness is off behind the bar, cum counter. The interior is a modernist black and
grey with recessed neon, up above. Everyone is smoking. And this doesn’t matter to me either.
I’ve just ordered enough food for two. A place like this evokes a
certain nostalgia for a time gone by when I might have ordered eight dishes and
as many beers for what I’m about to pay.
I’m tempted by this place because they have some Shanghai dumplings on
the menu that they have had available.
But the promise infects my calculus, all the same.
What have I ordered?
Upon reflection it wasn’t very diversified. Two of the dishes, as per their names, have similar
sauces. I can recall as my wife
wisely pointed out to me when we’d ordered up-market Chinese dishes fifteen
years ago in a place like Boston that, upon closer inspection, all the dishes
we’d ordered has the same sauce despite the divergent, evocative names. These dishes are far enough apart, but
I could have balanced the intake with a bit more foresight.
I’d already tasted the peanuts of my gongbaojiding in my mind. The Shanghainese version of this dish, popularized along the
Yangzi and available now around the world, is pared-down simple, it’s chicken
cubes, it’s bald peanuts, a sweet sauce and maybe a leek or two. In the right hands, the dish is
celestial, as the 天兵天降[1] general would have preferred. Having been introduced to it
here in Shanghai, twenty-one years ago, that is the way the dish should taste,
and never does anywhere else in the country, let alone the beastly way General
Tso’s Chicken is usually served up in the United States.[2] And for years now, passing through Shanghai on business the
dish is embellished and ruined with macadamia nuts or some other nonsense
allowing the proprietor to slap a zero on to the end of the pricing.
But after ascertaining that this joint had no xiao long baozi dumplings tonight, I
also confirmed that they did not offer General Tso’s chicken, either. Oh
dear. “What chicken then, do you
have? Huh? No. No. No.” I
stated, flipping through the gilded menu I spied some “fish like pork slicing” and
ordered yuxiangruosi. But my pictorial fancy had already
decided on the attractive photo they had of the “fish like eggplant” yuxiang qiezi. I ordered both from memory and moved on consider some sort
of green vegetable. I wanted that
unique taste of doumiao, which is the
leaf of some type of bean. They
didn’t have it. Nor did they have
kale. But they did have something
I knew would taste like a condensed leaf, spirulina-dense, garlic flavored memory in
my mind hoard. And it does. Sometimes pictures don’t lie.
For any normal person with a sentient sense of their
stomach wall limitations, this would have sufficed and been the point at which
to say, jiu zhe yang or that’s about
it, and be done with it. I
considered the possibilities of tofu and ordered a family style version of the bean
curd where the exterior would be good and hard and the spicing only slight. "Give me (an entirely unnecessary) bowl
of rice, bring it out at the beginning", because otherwise Chinese will serve it
when you’re done with everything else.
And a beer.
So the tastes are a solid “good.” And despite the nomenclature there is enough difference
between the sauces to make for a sense of culinary balance. The patron wanted to settle up and I
sent her packing asking for a second beer. "I'm not done yet." But when she returned I gallantly
handed her the requisite funds confirming that should I want another beer, she
was still obliged to provide it to me. Wasn't she? She was.
Now they’ve turned one section of the neon lights out. It’s their gesture to the Klingons here
that the staff, who have taken to parading the place, want to go home. No one here cares at all. There are two guys back in the corner
who make me wonder what discreet humanity every used to before noise reduction
headsets were invented They are
arguing in high voices, at the top of their lungs. They’re well-on-the way to oblivion. The other tables without noise
reduction headsets seem to carry on.
One of the functionaries is staring at me. There is nothing else to do but stare
back. Hi. She decides, eventually that this is
fascicle and turns around, frustrated that this heretofore amusing view, is now one of
confrontation. Somewhere, behind
me, off to the side, the utterly disruptive smell of baijui or sorghum liquor is now confronting my nose. It smells like Shandong and feels like
an invitation to vomit. I’m so
glad I’m not obliged to have any.
I’ll try to pivot the Proustian mnemonic into something like the early
part of an evening with my in-laws when the night is full of possibility and
reflective observations, before the second or third wincing swallow.
Walking home through the drizzle I’ve the melancholy
trombone of Phil Ranelin guiding me along. He’s part of this remarkable Detroit jazz scene that Rdio
has helped me to uncover. “A Close
Encounter of the Very Best Kind” sounds like it can only have been from the
late seventies, playing off the popular movie's title and but it seems to have been
recorded in 1996. “Forever Yours”
is helping me to digest, slowly, thoughtfully. Watch that puddle. He was a session trombonist with
Stevie Wonder and has lots of earlier releases but this is all I can find and
access for now. Born in Indianapolis in 1939, he is still going strong and
appears to be still be based in Detroit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ranelin
[2] Looked up
and though I’m suspicious the general credited with the honorific is Zuo
Zongtang who fought along Zeng Guofan against the Taiping. Certainly Wiki’s suggestion that it was
first introduced in New York in the 70’s is nonsense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Zongtang
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