GRANDMA’s HOME — More Lunar New Year indulgence.
(@Google_Gourmet has reported on some locations in China iirc)
We may or may not have ordered slightly too much. But no fear, nothing was wasted.
APPS:
Tofu Skin Rolls with black truffle
You Tiao stuffed with Shrimp
Soy Glazed Crispy Fish
Pork Xiao Long Bao
Lunar Prosperity Dumplings
MAINS:
Typhoon Shelter Lobster
Green Tea Claypot Chicken
Long Jing Green Tea Shrimp
Peppercorn Beef and Tofu
Sweet & Sour Pork
Steamed Whole Bass
Crispy Skin Chicken
Hong Shou Rao / Pork Belly
VEG & SIDES:
Snow Pea Sprouts in XO sauce
Crispy Eggplant & Blistered Peppers
Confit Duck Fried Rice
Scallion Oil Noodles
Bao (for the pork belly)
House Special XO Sauce Chilli Oil
But the shrimp You Tiao and the truffled Tofu Skin Rolls were excellent, and much else was very good including the crispy fish app (not so much glazed but perfectly fried), pea sprouts, eggplant (I am told), scallion noodles, and duck fried rice. The XO chilli sauce was also great (much spicier than but reminiscent of DSGG’s).
Hmm. Maybe, but they were much thicker and tougher than any pea shoots I’ve had before. And no tendrils. Like a cross between spinach and Shanghai bok choy. Possibly Malabar spinach?
if the place isn’t that busy you might try something like “any way I could get a fish fillet sandwich extra crispy with tartar sauce on the side?” and see what happens. Probably the worst thing that could happen is they say no, I highly doubt they’ll shoot you on the spot.
During the pandemic I may or may not have risked my life for an order of two guys Cajun French fries and they were amenable to making a fresh, crispy batch.
I can see how that might have scarred you. I’m still angry at the guy who got me fired from a steakhouse job in college for dropping a tray of drinks in his lap.
ok, maybe it was for asking “can I bring you another round”
I also got a warning at another place for asking “are you sure” when someone ordered pastrami on white with Mayo.
The owner asked me why I asked her if she was sure. I mean, I was kidding with her but apparently no one was amused since she reported it to him and he gave me a warning.
this was right around the time I started to understand the concept of a filter or lack thereof.
I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but I was fired from McDonald’s for completing the “six steps to customer service” out of order. I was a bored 16-year-old cashier, and I decided to calculate how long it took to complete the six steps. It turned out that if I shuffled them (so that customers would be getting their payment together while I collected the food), I could shave about thirty seconds off my time. My manager was not impressed with my initiative. At all.
I’ve never had tough snow pea leaves / pea shoots at a restaurant, but I’ve certainly had some bum batches at home with inedible stems. Malabar spinach is slimy textured, so you’d know it.
It was a different kind of tough than those bum batches (which I have also had). Not woody, just muscular. Conceivably it was snow pea leaves - they’re already available at USQ.
I remember WahKee. Goes without saying the food was great. Notable was the dining nook behind the kitchen, available by reservation if Lucky. Walking past the woks, ducks and assorted delicacies hanging from the ceiling, was a simple alcove sporting on its walls the autographs of the likes of Fonda, Newman, Brando, to name a few. On the wall at the bottom of the stairs was a copy of the original NY Times culinary review, highlighting not only the high quality of the food but it’s uniqueness, as Cantonese food was only just beginning to make it’s mark in NY at the time of it’s writing. We were there in the 60’s.
I once worked for a Silicon Valley company that unveiled “The Ten Ways We Will Transform Life in the U.S.” Standard Silicon Valley hubris, fine. But then they required everyone in the company to memorize the ten transformations and, believe it or not, pass a test on them.
So I activated my standard operating procedure, delay until the people who created the ten transformations were fired, the people administering the test were fired, or I was fired.
After about a year of dodging, a very nice guy called me and said something like, “Look, I understand why you might think this is silly. I’ll just read the ten transformations to you and you repeat them back to me.”
I explained that I was busy delivering actual value to the company, that this might be the most spectacular waste of time I’d encountered in my career, and that at least seven of the ten transformations were thinly veiled reflections of our CEO’s narcissism.
But he was a good guy, so we performed the ritual, he checked my name off the list, and we both got to keep our jobs. I really wish I could find that piece of paper with the tranformations and email them to the idiot billionaire ceo.
