Once again, dear readers, I apologize in advance for the excessive bathroom content you've been finding as of late in these pages, but it seems that many of you have decided that sharing the juicy details of your bathroom exploits is clearly the correct way to tell me you care in my absence - and naturally, I write about these exploits, and so it only furthers the appropriateness of such tales. A vicious cycle, I say. Vicious vicious cycle.
But, as it were, a cycle I will once again choose to propagate, as a good friend of mine has insisted that I read all about the particularly debilitating strain of culinary delight she experienced and carefully documented in her live journal last Tuesday. Naturally, after reading up on the details of Steph's harrowing incident with Chinese food from the Palace of Pain, I decided that the only appropriate "get well soon" gift I could give her was a public salute on the Plague. She tells me that she quivers with anticipation. Or perhaps that's just from the effort of holding food in.
As usual, I am writing at my desk during my lunch break, whilst munching on a particularly delicious microwave teriyaki bowl, now sold in convenient individual servings. Since I am at work, I thought that perhaps I would incorporate some of the work-a-licious flavor this office has to offer, firstly by making a note of the fact that employees at this office have the particular habit of using the word "beefy" frequently to describe everything from MOSFETs to signal generators. I took this time to explore the properties of said word, and found that, indeed, many and most nouns benefit greatly from the addition of the adjective "beefy."
And so, I would like to begin my short soapbox speech and tribute by saying "My friend, my amazement is immeasurable, my respect for you, immense. Truly, it takes an individual of enormous personal caliber to start a beefy turd on the doorstep, and end it on the walls of the apartment bathroom. Steph, please feel better soon. And please, please, never go back to that Chinese restaurant ever again. Be safe and just stick with Subway."
Let Steph's trials be not in vain - let us all take a valuable lesson away from this harrowing ordeal: most Chinese restaurant food is bad. For that matter, most Chinese food is bad. And coming from a Chinese person, that's saying a lot. While there may be a certain small selection of Chinese food that is good, for the most part, the main purpose of a Chinese restaurant is to feed masses of those genetically denied tastebuds, and gaming runs, for under $20. I will admit here and now that my gaming run has been regularly ordering Chinese food every Friday night for somewhere on the order of over 2 years now, and while we do throw in a beefy $!0 per dish each time, I tend to wonder how else would a business with the name Pu Pu Hotpot survive, were it not for the severely taste-impaired? Certainly, the name fails to bespeak appetizing morsels to tickle my discerning palate - under no circumstances would I consume Pu Pu, not even for the sake of those claiming it to be the finest of ethnic delicacies. And I certainly wouldn't want to be sampling it out of a hot pot either, as I'm sure everyone knows how unsettling enough it is to sit down and find an unexpected pre-warmed seat alongside the lingering aroma of the previous rider's produce - let alone a hot one.
If by now I haven't failed to rid everyone of the notion that Americanized Chinese food, and a good selection of real Chinese food, has any real redeeming qualities in terms of taste, allow me to examine several popular dishes in a little more detail:
Chow Mein (apparently known better on the east coast as Lo Mein) - illegitimate love child of "fried rice," "chop suey," and a bobcat, this particular specimen is extremely hard to find in a pristine, unadultered, edible state. While the concept itself is a noble idea, most restaurants have used this dish, as well as its parent dishes, as vehicles for transporting leftover food, kitchen scraps, and toenail shavings to the plates and mouths of unsuspecting customers. It's the Chinese version of the casserole, only we don't put Cheerios on top or worry about tornadoes flipping over our homes while we're eating (our ancestors flip them for us). Aramark Catering services did such a smash-bang job with this one that they managed to refry leftover spaghetti from the italian food booth in the MIT Student Center food court and resell it as a "food of the world." Risky eating, for those of you who enjoy living on the edge.
General Gau's Chicken - an intriguing east coast delicacy, as you certainly can't find it here on the west coast. Of course, I'm never going to convince those fools who looked at me like I'd grown an extra arm out of my forehead when I said "what the hell is General Gau's?" that the dish is no more than a byproduct of east coast cooks (who wouldn't know good food from a hole in the ground). Never understood who General Gau was or what the hell he was doing with breaded chicken. Generals don't fry chicken. That's a job left to the Colonel. End of story.
Peking Ravioli - oh now this one's a charmer. 'Ravs, as they're often called by MIT students, baffled me for several months, before I realized that they were in fact, potstickers, or dumplings (though, agreeably, "dumplings" has its own implication). In truth, these range from "pretty good" to "not that bad" to "uagh! call 911!" and are therefore one of the less-risky dishes you could probably order at any given Chinese restaurant (though I maintain that the term "Peking Ravioli" is unique to the local establishments in Cambridge - call them that anywhere else and the cooks will serve you up a nice hot plate of Pu Pu for being a culturally-insensitive jackass). The one drawback to the potstickers, though, is the fact that they fall under the category of "meat/filling wrapped in dough," which always includes some sort of risk. As Carsten has keenly observed, "you never see any dogs or cats around the Chinese food truck."
Chicken Feet - enough said, I think, though I should include the comment made by an intern the other day: "the only part I don't like is spitting out the toenails... so I just break off the back digit and then it's fine."
While there's plenty more out there I'm sure I've left off this Chinese laundry list, I'm sure that this small caution is enough for my Plague readers to consider themselves fairly warned by an inside source. For more information on how you can prevent violent strains of culinary delight in your digestive system, please write to your local congressman.
This has been a public service announcement from the Bubonic Plague Luncheonette.
Further bulletins as events warrant.
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