![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Egg foo yung for one, please
Dec. 5th, 2006 09:36 pmI want to live in the kind of world where the more pathetic-looking the business, the better it actually is. I want there to be restaurants that look grubby and sad, but have magically fantastic food. And I want to find such a place; I want to know about the secret treasure, and I will only take my favourite people there so I can see their faces when they first see it and then again when they take their first bite.
In my quest to find these secret places that simply must exist in order for there to still be wonder and mystery in the world, last night I ate at a place so small it didn't even deserve to have a full name, but was just called M & A Café.
The only reason I even noticed that M & A existed was because I was hungry when I walked right past it. The one grubby window had a neon "open" sign and a take-out menu of Chinese food stuck to it. They have one of my favourite dishes – mushroom egg foo yung – so in I went.
The restaurant was empty except for a couple who definitely worked there, and quite likely owned it too. It had about ten tables; they looked like they were from an old diner. Most of them had matching booth benches, but a few had dining room chairs that looked like they were taken from some much classier restaurant – one with sophisticated black furnishing, deep red carpets, and starched table clothes – when it closed down or was redecorated.
After they served me a coffee mug of green tea, they made my dinner. My egg foo yung came on a plate that looked like it was from a Canadian kitchen, circa 1950. The rice came in a more traditional rice bowl.
While I was eating my dinner, the couple were having theirs at the table nearest the kitchen. I couldn't subtly tell what they were eating, so the house specialty is still a mystery to me.
The place definitely had the run-down look that could be the rough around the diamond. Now, the moment of truth: trying the food. The food was... good. Not spectacular or magical, but fresh and hot and plentiful. It had big chunks of mushrooms that had never seen a can. It also re-heated well for my lunch today.
So, the search for my own secret treasure continues, but the experiment was pretty tasty, really filling, and didn't give me food poisoning. Let's call that success, of a sort.
In my quest to find these secret places that simply must exist in order for there to still be wonder and mystery in the world, last night I ate at a place so small it didn't even deserve to have a full name, but was just called M & A Café.
The only reason I even noticed that M & A existed was because I was hungry when I walked right past it. The one grubby window had a neon "open" sign and a take-out menu of Chinese food stuck to it. They have one of my favourite dishes – mushroom egg foo yung – so in I went.
The restaurant was empty except for a couple who definitely worked there, and quite likely owned it too. It had about ten tables; they looked like they were from an old diner. Most of them had matching booth benches, but a few had dining room chairs that looked like they were taken from some much classier restaurant – one with sophisticated black furnishing, deep red carpets, and starched table clothes – when it closed down or was redecorated.
After they served me a coffee mug of green tea, they made my dinner. My egg foo yung came on a plate that looked like it was from a Canadian kitchen, circa 1950. The rice came in a more traditional rice bowl.
While I was eating my dinner, the couple were having theirs at the table nearest the kitchen. I couldn't subtly tell what they were eating, so the house specialty is still a mystery to me.
The place definitely had the run-down look that could be the rough around the diamond. Now, the moment of truth: trying the food. The food was... good. Not spectacular or magical, but fresh and hot and plentiful. It had big chunks of mushrooms that had never seen a can. It also re-heated well for my lunch today.
So, the search for my own secret treasure continues, but the experiment was pretty tasty, really filling, and didn't give me food poisoning. Let's call that success, of a sort.
