China's Already on Break

 

My dad and I met this morning as we generally do on Friday mornings. We agreed to meet up at 9:00AM at the gas station, there on the corner of 299, and New Paltz Road.  I texted him that I’d be ten minutes late though he was probably expecting as much, anyway.  Friday I must always push through from a one AM call till 4:00AM or so, when China closes up for the week.  But this week China’s already on break.

Friday’s we’ve been having pizza.  Every week we try a different spot in New Paltz.  And we have a hallway full of Chinese food we’d bought in Hartsdale the day before.  My younger one and I were debating other cuisines, mixed with pizza.  In San Francisco, out in the Mission, not far from where we used to live at the corner of Mission and Cortland, there is a remarkable Indian pizza joint:  Zante Pizza.  Indian cuisine traditionally has bread, they traditionally have cheese, a different pallet of flavors with bread and cheese works.  But China has no baked breads nor any cheese.  Soy sauce on pizza?

 

We rifled through a few different classic Chinese dishes on a cheese pizza in our minds: Eyebrows raised: tangsuliji on pizza? yuxiangrousi on pizza?  Could work.  So before we headed out to deliver dumplings to my mom and stepdad for the holiday, we agreed that we’d get a pizza on the way home and slather it with jiaozi xianr, laoganma and dofu.

Driving out of town on Main St, I asked my little one to write down the name of the pizzeria there on the corner of Main and South Manheim Blvd.  Bellas.  We dialed from my mom’s and swung by to pick it up fifteen minutes later.  There was a family inside, dining.  And there was a couple in front of us.  We dutifully waited.  The lady behind the counter was stressed.  This made me stressed.  She asked if the table needed anything else.  The guy said “salt.”  She went to get some.  I made eye contact with a large guy behind the counter.  But it became clear that neither he nor the other guy in the back were customer-facing. And I wondered all of a sudden if he wasn’t Russian.  He certainly wasn’t Italian.  “Bella” ?  Maybe that the story behind this place?  But then, when I heard him speak I wasn’t so sure that the Russian assignation was accurate either. 

Friday, 02/12/21