Oh no, rice again?!

Here's a cute article from the Times from a former Times City Hall bureau chief. It's pretty straightforward, and it's got suggestions for City Hall area eateries I've never heard of. But one of the things she says is, "Chinatown has its charms, but to me, it is best enjoyed like Lindsay Lohan updates: weekly and no more."

I totally disagree. Not about Lindsay Lohan, but about Chinese food. Last Friday, I ate Chinese food for lunch. In the evening, I met some friends for family style dinner at Grand Sichuan where we ate, you guessed it, Chinese food. The next day, I went to dim sum at Ocean Port, a decidedly Chinese restaurant. That's three Chinese meals in a row. I'm always baffled when, if I suggest Chinese food, a dining companion says, "Oh, I just had Chinese last night." What does that matter? Chinese people eat Chinese food every day.

Besides, each of my meals was completely different. Chinese lunch on Friday was at the local Sunset Park lunch joint. We had various hacked animal parts over rice (barbecued pork spare ribs, soy sauce chicken) with limp, sauteed iceberg lettuce, rice, and and a half-hearted shrimp chow mein. Not the best Chinese food I've ever had, but a serviceable stomach filler. Dinner at Grand Sichuan meant verdant boiled spinach with a tart ginger vinegar and chili oil; red hot bamboo and chicken with plenty of tongue numbing szechuan spices; steamed silken bean curd with a very light brown sauce and shrimp. The next day's dim sum consisted of tasty dumplings galore, suckling pig, steamed noodles, and not a single grain of rice. They were three distinctly different meals. They all happened to be Chinese, but one meal had about as much to do with the next meal as a South Carolina vinegar barbecue has to do with a New England clambake.

There's so much variety within Chinese food, even in Chinatown, that I don't think I'd mind eating it for lunch five days a week. It's gotta be better than slurping down Pax's heavily salted chicken noodle every day. Sometimes I think that if I ate rice twice a day like I did when I was a kid, I could regain my svelte pre-college figure. I discovered pasta and bread in the dorm Dining Commons and I don't think my body ever recovered from the shock of immediate carb absorption. That's right, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

Remember that incredibly inane song by LFO (Lyte Funkie Ones -- you can't make that shit up!): "I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch/Chinese food makes me sick"? I remember in the video the wifebeater-wearing Jersey dumbass (the stringy haired girlyman on the far left) even made a vomit face when he sang about the Chinese food. I'm sure that talentless hack has long burnt away his piddling record company advance on Marithe+Francois Girbaud gear, Accutane, a year of eyebrow waxings, and a Bowflex. I hope, as punishment for making money by irrationally denouncing an entire nation's cuisine, he's been doomed to a purgatory of collecting coins from under the cushions of his poor mama's couch to pay for fried chicken wings and duck sauce at his local greasy Chinese joint. Keep an eye out for the "Where Are They Now?" episode. Closed-minded eaters are the WORST.