The Unvegan

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‘Chinese’

9/3/2009 Manhattan Beach

Not Quite Sichuan at Szechwan (CLOSED)

Just gotta avoid the green onions.
Just gotta avoid the green onions in the Kung Pao.

For a little Chinese lunch, I headed to Szechwan in Manhattan Beach. It had come highly recommended, so I went expecting something pretty good. When we arrived, the restaurant was only about half-full, but we were still told to wait for a table. This seemed strange, especially when were standing around for five minutes looking like fools. Nonetheless we eventually took our seats and got the chance to check out the menu. The first thing I noticed that seemed off was that the food wasn’t quite Sichuan style (Sichuan being the way Szechwan is actually supposed to be spelled). Sichuan style is usually really spicy food and different from what we usually think of as “Chinese” food. Instead, the menu looked like any other Chinese restaurant.

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5/11/2009 San Gabriel

The Genuine Chinese Experience at Wang Jia

Xiao long bao...Small dragon dumplings?
Xiao long bao…Small dragon dumplings?

Although LA has a pretty cool Chinatown, it’s not really the center of Chinese culture in the area. To got the real experience, you have to take a long ride northeast of the city to the San Gabriel Valley. For some reason, Chinese chose this land to create much more than just a little Chinatown. Driving into it, it almost feels like you teleported to China, as all the signs are written in Chinese and the people almost seem to have made no effort to learn English.

Since I had spent a year living in Shanghai and always missed real Chinese food, one night my friend’s family (they are Chinese) took me out to San Gabriel. We went to a Shanghainese restaurant called Wang Jia (yes, there is more than one kind of Chinese restaurant). The place was packed with Chinese people, which is always a good sign. If the waiter spoke any English, he made no note of it.

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4/22/2009 Los Angeles

Doing Dim Sum at the Empress Pavillion

The shrimp potstickers are a must.
The shrimp potstickers are a must.

In the old Chinatown of downtown LA, there is a massive restaurant called the Empress Pavillion. The restaurant consists of a giant ballroom filled with chairs and tables.

In the mornings, the room becomes packed with hundreds of Chinese and westerners alike, all clamoring for a taste of the dim sum. Chinese women (whose command of the English language varies from non-existent to mediocre) push carts of plates around with varying dishes. If something on the cart looks good, you stop the lady, point to the food and she sets it on your table. Afterward, she takes out a stamp and presses it somewhere on the card on your table. You look to see where she stamped, but can’t really tell what anything means because it is all written in Chinese. Luckily, I can read some Chinese, and

Sticky Rice in Lotus Leaf
Sticky Rice in Lotus Leaf

determined that the stamps go in different sections, meaning small, medium and large. There are more complex symbols, but at least those make some sense to me. Through this mysterious stamping system, they are able to determine how much you owe.

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1/9/2009 Los Angeles

Hop Li

It's always fun removing vegetables with chopsticks.
It’s fun removing vegetables with chopsticks.

When the world shuts down on Christmas, there is only one kind of restaurant that can be counted on to stay open, the Chinese kind. With this in mind, I ventured out to West LA, to a restaurant called Hop Li. The name sounded good, since I couldn’t think of any way to make fun of it. After a decent wait (a good sign!), I was seated and leafed through the vast menu, finally settling on the Mango Chicken.

In a momentary unvegan brain fart, I completely forgot to ask the waiter to hold the vegetables.

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11/26/2008 Charlotte

Manchu Wok (CLOSED)

It's hard to order food without vegetables when it's pre-made...
It’s hard to order food without vegetables when it’s pre-made…

Stuck in the Charlotte Airport between flights at dinner time, I was hankering for some Chinese food. Enter: Manchu Wok, a Panda Express-style Chinese fast food place. I stared at the strange variety of stir-fried meats that mildly resembled what my own wok would look like if I tossed every single food in my kitchen into it. I decided to order the “Pick 3 + Noodles or Rice” and do my best to avoid dishes with vegetables. My chosen trifecta was Sweet and Sour Chicken, Pineapple Chicken and General Tso’s Chicken, with noodles.

The food was lazily all tossed together into a styrofoam container, which made it virtually impossible to tell the differences between the different chickens.

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