Full of the Joys of Spring

One of the things that has surprised me about living in New York has been how poor the general standard of Chinese food in the city is. Admittedly, a large part of my dining out takes place in the Columbia area, which is, with a few notable exceptions, a culinary wasteland, but even in Chinatown I've had a couple of meals with which I was not greatly impressed. About 18 months ago Nina's husband Matt came out here and we did manage to find somewhere really good in Chinatown, though I am damned if I can remember where it was or what it was called.

It's not necessarily that the stuff's bad, just - blah. Mediocre, really. Kate and I went for dinner at a place down on 94th. Now, I have, from considerable experience, developed something of a barometer of whether the chef at a Chinese restaurant knows what he's doing. I call it the Spring Roll test (春巻きテスト, or maybe, in Mandarin, 春巻考試). If he does, the Spring rolls will be short - 2-3 inches long - golden in colour, with a thin, crispy skin and mainly vegetable filling, as in the left image.

If he doesn't, as has been the case at 6 out of the 7 places I've been, they will be large, brown parcels of overcooked cabbage wrapped in what appears to be a thick, blistered pancake, such as you see below. Not nice at all. And unfortunately, such was the case on Thursday. The search continues.

I talked to Norman, the manager of Megu, about this before Xmas, and he agreed with me on my Spring Roll theory. I have also noticed, and perhaps remarked on here, the fact that anywhere in the city that does Asian food now also does sushi. There's even a place on Times Square that does "Sushi and Dim Sum", which for my money is HERESY, and I would cheerfully torch the place were it not for the fact that it would get me carted off to jail and probably sent to Guantanamo shortly after.

The reason for this, apparently, is that a) you don't have to cook anything, and b) you can serve $3-worth of rice and vegetables for $7-10 a time. Big profit margins. Perhaps because I lived in Shiogamam, sushi capital of Tohoku, for 2 years, I must confess to being a sushi snob, and most of the stuff served in NYC is not particularly impressive.

Anyway, apart from that I got a little reminder in Chinese class that I'm not exactly a spring chicken any more myself. I was talking to one of our undergrads who is part of the group of us that took the class last semester (though not everyone in this class did, so it's kind of a mixture of old and new). Parenthetically, she's Turkish and related to none other than Kemal Ataturk, and so we were talking about this and that in Europe, and one of the undergrads sitting next to me asked me "Where are you from?". Well, I don't mind that so much, but what he actually said was "Where are you from, sir?" Jeez. I'm not that old, for heaven's sake. I mean, I appreciate the courtesy and everything, but come on, it's not like I'm ten years older than him, and even if...oh. Wait a minute...