2005-01-21 - 2:31 p.m.
Enough gloominess, already. I’ve been in a funk recently, but the fog is lifting. This is supposed to be a food blog, so dangnabbit I’d better start talking about food.
Dining out with a kid is tricky. Those of you with small children understand this intuitively. You need a place that can provide very simple food, that doesn’t mind messes or the occasional screeching outburst, and that has good high chairs. The last detail is important. There’s nothing like the disappointment of finding that your favorite cheap-eats place has the same high chair you had when you were a kid. Yes, the same one that killed thousands before being recalled. That little frisson of panic does wonders for your dining experience.
Now, this would not be a concern if we dined out while leaving the Professor at Camp Grandma. Thing is, Camp Grandma is halfway across the county, and affordable restaurants are few and far between there. So, we all go to family friendly restaurants. Now, family friendly, in my book, means accommodating to all members of the family. The food has to be plentiful, the price has to be reasonable, and the staff unflappable. Chuck E. Cheese’s does not fall into this category. Too much noise, lousy pizza, and rigged games. After about ten minutes in there I start to twitch. After half an hour I’m either catatonic or I’ve mistaken Chuck E. for Dan Rather and I’m trying to beat the frequency out of him.
Anyway, we tend to go to buffets a lot. J and I can stuff our faces real good, the Professor gets some nibbly stuff to chew on, and everybody’s happy. We occasionally go to Hometown Buffet on family night for brontosaurus ribs (big barbecued beef ribs, nice and messy) and fried chicken and so forth. The Professor especially enjoys this, since she gets a balloon from the guy in the bee suit. (Don’t ask.) There’s a large percentage of elderly people; this is not an issue unless they forget that the Professor is not their own granddaughter. A better place is Sweet Tomatoes: all the salad, soup, hoity-toity pizza (they call it focaccia; I submit that flatbread with cheese and pepperoni on it is pizza.) and general good stuff you can handle. The Professor, oddly enough, really likes salad, so she’s pretty happy with going there. J and I don’t feel too guilty about eating lots of salad, and the soups are all pretty good. Still, soup and salad only goes so far.
The real treat is Chinese buffet. All the greasy deep-fried chunks of meat swimming in oily sauce you can eat. There might be a vegetable in there, but don’t count on it. Don’t bother with rice: that just takes up space. Just tank up on the General Tso’s Chicken, the crab Rangoon, the pot stickers, and the ribs. If you’re brave, you can try the radioactive-yellow egg-flower soup. For a while our favorite buffet was way the heck and gone over by Mom’s house; big place called Happy China. The shrimp was good, the chicken wings excellent, and they even had sushi. Not great sushi, but sushi. Best of all, the place was always busy, so the food was fresh. Only problem was the half-hour trek. Lately we went back to an old favorite of mine, Joy Luck. (Hanley & Manchester, for my local readers.) Joy Luck has all the usual dishes you’d expect, plus some more unusual stuff. Drunken chicken, red-cooked beef with anise, braised pig’s feet with mustard greens (yum!), dry-fried shrimp, stuff like that. This makes everybody happy. The Professor gets noodles and egg rolls, J gets her Cantonese fix, and I get the weird stuff I like. The waiters all fawn over the Professor, and are quite charmed when she sips tea from her own cup. (The kid likes plain Oolong. No sugar, no nothing. Go figure.)
But best of all, they have Hot Pot. They bring out a single-burner butane stove, a bowl of hot stock, and various raw goodies, which you cook yourself. Beef, shrimp, chicken, veggies, and rice stick noodles, as much as you like. Drink the soup at the end, after it has taken on all the flavors of the various things you’ve cooked in it. Pure Epicurean delight. Who needs the fraggin’ Melting Pot when you got this kind of goodness, I ask?
