Any Color Except Red

The restaurant is nearly one-hundred years old.   We drove by about two months back when we were up in Kingston registering to vote, and as I spied the name written in red on the vintage exterior right there on the main strip in upper Kingston it occurred to me that this was the same name of the place my mother had suggested was the Chinese place in Poughkeepsie, back in the fifties and immediately this lodged as something to learn more about.  Had I finally found a place in within an hour’s drive to have excellent Chinese food, beyond my own kitchen?  

My daughter and I had a few things to get today.  Worms, was why she was willing to go to Kingston at all.  It was either to the Petco there in Kingston or the one over in Poughkeepsie that we ought to head to secure meal worms for our Spotted Gecko, Barrack.  That mall commands an overwhelming view of the Catskills that seems almost a pity, heading into Petco which is exactly like the Petco over in Poughkeepsie.  Fish don’t seem to be in fashion these days.  I know a thing or two about cichlids, having populated one tank for South American fish with less alkalinity and another for the cichlids of Lake Tanganyika with the higher ph.  Most of the tanks at Petco were empty.  Over in Poughkeepsie they had only the simplest selection of tropical fish.  But they did have worms. 

 

Deising’s bakery seemed like one of note, when we searched the term looking for a place we might procure a birthday cake for my wife on the second stop of our trip.  We had the nice young lady behind the counter who jumped up to help us squeeze out “happy birthday vida” on the cake.  “Oh!”  My daughter interrupted as she headed off to the back, “Don’t use red.  Write in any color except red.”  It came back in shocking blue.  Looked great.  We got some cookies for the ride.  I thought of Eng’s and their red sign.  The order we’d placed was certainly ready by now. 

We’d bonded with Mr. Sit when we made our purchase, speaking to him in Chinese.  He told us a bit about the family and the tradition.  Marvelous that it really was approaching its hundredth year of operation.  A family business, they were clearly doing something right.  Mr. Sit, who was from Guangdong, but had been in America as long as I’d been in China, promised to have them make our food “Chinese style.”  We sighed.  Smiled.  Explained how hard it had been for us, without real Chinese food.  I paid and left with a big bag of Chinese takeout and the highest expectations. 

 

Sadly, despite the gracious engagement, vintage esthetic and rich tradition of history, it did, in the end, taste like American Chinese food, which none of us were particularly interested in having again.  The search continues.

 

 

 

Saturday, 11/14/20