By: Mark Westphal
I love Chinese cuisine. I love smelling it. I love talking about it. I love preparing and cooking it. I love eating it. I am a connoisseur. I am an expert. I’ve been to China six times. I know the culinary style of a region by its taste alone. I can make the most niche of dishes at home and grow my own Sichuan Peppercorns. Yet, my restaurant of choice is Hong’s Rooster Garden Restaurant, run by my good friend, Old Hong (whom I have been avoiding giving a bag of peppercorns I owe him from an unlucky game of Mahjong).
I always act like it’s not even that good of a place to eat, but it is an old favorite. You can’t beat old favorites. Everything, all 56 items on the menu, is delicious despite questionable authenticity to the Hong’s Cantonese roots. I have no usual item I like getting, and the atmosphere is always fairly quiet. Also, since most people buy takeout, which is a good option, there aren’t many people sitting around. The staff, who know me, always put me in the most peaceful part of the restaurant on purpose to separate me from the hum of the kitchen fan and the range of the speakers playing Kenny G on loop. However, I’m still in a place where I can smell the oil to determine whether it is a good day to order any fried food, even though I hardly ever order it unless I really feel like disregarding my diet.
I’m here today, at my usual time: 7:15. I’m guided to my seat with the usual low-rent fanfare and shy smile by the lady of the house, Hong Xiao Li. I sit down in my booth and immediately start talking to her.
“One glass of plum wine,” I say, “and not chilled, please.” Her head nods as she smiles and leaves me to examine the menu. I smell the oil. Not tonight. They didn’t change it. Steamed spring onion and shrimp wontons it is then. It’s always the better choice anyways; steamed dumplings are one of the finer things in life. I especially love the way Hong’s makes them; the dough is never raw, yet it is delightfully translucent, still retaining a bite as well as a doughy taint that enhances the ginger-and-garlic-ridden filling to the point where it somehow gets sweet. I usually never order seafood from a restaurant due to uncertainty of its freshness and quality, but tonight I don’t care. It just seems right.
She brings me my plum wine. It’s cold to the touch, much to my disappointment, but it’s been a long day and I didn’t want to tell her to get me a new one. What a waste it would’ve been anyway. I order my dumplings. Then I order the Shanghai-Style Red Braised Pork, a favorite in the Hong family’s recipe book, published three years ago and still not doing as well in sales as its contemporaries, which is unfortunate. The pork, however, is absolutely amazing. The flavors work beautifully and the glaze on the outside is perfect. It’s a shame more people don’t order it.
She smiles and nods again and leaves for the kitchen. I take a sip of my wine. It is cloyingly sweet, of course, but still fairly satisfying. I hear the door open and more people coming in. More muttering in mandarin starts emanating from the kitchen. The kitchen must not like these people. I divert my attention to the front, sacrificing my previously veiled position and shuffle myself over to the one spot of the booth in which I can see the rest of the restaurant. It’s 4 people, all standing up, assuming the position needed to order takeout; one is a child, two are parents, and the other is a woman, who is tall, athletically built, and packing heat. Must be a family, although your average family doesn’t have a tough female bodyguard at their side. Probably another attempt at a mob takeover. I start wondering why a family like this wouldn’t just stay at home, order takeout, and have the bodyguard take the food home. It would make more sense.
“What do you mean you guys don’t have cream cheese rangoons!? Every Chinese restaurant has them!” The mother yells at the waitress who took my order earlier.
Hong Xiao Li is not fazed by her outburst: “I’m sorry, it’s not on our menu. I do recommend our fried crab wontons though—”
“Unacceptable! We deserve better than this!” Typical overprivileged family behavior. What’s even worse about this conversation is that the supposed strong father mob figure is completely ignoring the fact that his shithead wife is harassing someone for no reason and is instead showing his son something on his smartphone. I hate having to look at stuff like this, but as someone whose curiosity always got the best of him throughout his life, I can’t help but keep my tired eyes and hateful, judgmental ears open.
Hong Xiao Li looked intimidated: “I’m sorry, madam, really, please calm down—”
“Jesus, Nina listen to the woman and order the fucking food already,” the husband finally chimed in with all the tough guy attitude of a stoic bit of gristle.
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
“Don’t you remember we’re in a hurry?” He retorted and tightly clutched his wife’s arm menacingly. The bodyguard moved over to calm him down and break them up, looking slightly annoyed in the process, and subsequently, the mother named Nina calmed down after that too.
Then Nina finished ordering the takeout. An order of House Special Chow Mein. An order of the Vegetable Lo Mein (good choice, although the oyster sauce-marinated beef that the Hongs add to it is simply to die for if you’re in the mood for beef), an order of Mongolian Beef (I guess these people aren’t the type for Buddha’s Delight). An order of egg rolls (judging from the fact that she ordered the House Special Chow Mein, I’m not surprised at this choice). Chicken Fried Rice, three large orders (Jesus Christ, how much do these people eat, and does everything they order have to have meat in it?). Finally, she wraps up this blasphemous order with an order of steamed vegetables from the low calorie menu (which, if one knew how much chefs hate that loathsome little section of the take out menu, you wouldn’t order from it. No one wants three kinds of vegetables with no flavor whatsoever steamed way past the point where they should be unless they hate the children they feed them to).
At this time, another waitress brings me my pork, making my brain cells and stomach quiver with orgasmic anticipation as I smell the beauty that is the Shanghai-Style Red Braised Pork. No, I didn’t get any vegetables because this is my cheat day. Besides, the Luo Huan Zhai at this place pales in comparison to my homemade version. I make it with way less cornstarch and no baby corn (I’m not a fan of baby corn).
I hear Hong Xiao Li say “it’ll be about 15-20 minutes,” and the family takes a seat at the front of the store on the bench specifically designed for assholes and early birds to wait.
But going back to the question I had before about why they didn’t call ahead, maybe I can fill in some blanks. I know these people are outspoken, talk to each other harshly, have no word filter even when they are around their young son, and have an extravagant-looking bodyguard, meaning that there is a possibility that they are indeed a family with an organized crime background. Judging by the way they dress, too, which I didn’t pay attention to earlier, I’d say this theory still holds up. They had to have bought those painfully-obvious looking monkey suits with laundered money. My eyes don’t deceive me when it comes to things like this.
I scoot back to the position I was in before so they don’t see me staring at them and their child. Minutes go by as I enjoy my delectable pork, savoring every bite I take. The volume at the front of the house escalates. Somehow I knew it would happen. It’s time to come to the front of the house to “get some toothpicks.”
It gives me a good opportunity to get a view of these people from up close. I grab a toothpick from the plastic container near the register. The bodyguard shifts her position to face me with her hand drifting lazily towards the inside of her coat. I wave hello at her specifically. Then the wife chimes in: “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. Just getting a toothpick.” I say.
“Well, you’ve spent a little too much time doing it,” she says threateningly.
Tempting fate, I take another handful of toothpicks and say: “At least I put more effort into grabbing toothpicks than you do in ordering the best food on the menu.”
I really don’t know why I decided to say that; it wasn’t even a good insult. The wife’s stare became more and more intense as I start walking away, and I begin to feel it. Then I hear a gun click. I figure that spinning around quickly and throwing my toothpicks out like ninja stars was just about the worst idea I could think of, so I keep walking, hoping that nothing tumultuous will happen.
Then two shots go off. Neither hit me. Tempting fate yet again, I slowly turn around to see who was holding the gun and, not at all to my surprise, it is the bodyguard, who just shot the wife, husband, and child in two shots. Very efficient. She starts to face towards me.
“Drop the toothpicks!” she yells. I drop the toothpicks.
“Why don’t you just shoot?” I ask.
“I only had two shots,” she says, “and I don’t plan on reloading.” At this point she gets up and starts to walk towards me with the gun pointing at me.
“That sounds like a very unwise decision.” I retort.
“I know, but, I just couldn’t hold it in, you know. I really hated those three.”
“Nevertheless, though, you should probably reload.”
“No. I want everyone in one place!”
She starts to walk me towards the kitchen. Then the fear kicks in; not only am I putting a murderous psychopath in close proximity to the same place where the delicious meals come from, but I’m potentially putting the kitchen staff in danger. She is talking about how the wife would make her wash the car and take out the trash at the mob-owned strip club they run. “I’m a fucking bodyguard! I shouldn’t be doing those things!” she exclaims after her unwarranted rant.
After finally being led into the kitchen, I start feeling the heat from the bodyguard’s anger, the open flames, and steam from the abandoned pots that are left on the heat.
“I want everyone to stand up!” She commands. She then spots a lone paring knife on the counter and takes it, quickly pointing it at my neck. “I’ll cut your neck, asshole!” she yells. “I’ll cut everyone’s necks!”
“Actually, you won’t,” I retort. “A paring knife is a poor knife to cut human flesh with. Not only is it very small, but usually they’re not very sharp. Might want to use—”
She looks at me, dumbfounded. A warranted reaction, I suppose, she suddenly leans in towards me with the sharpest part of the blade pointing directly at my neck. It is like slow motion; I move my hands in position to defend myself (I didn’t just learn cuisine in China, you know), and as the paring knife comes closer to my neck I see a cleaver lodge itself in the bodyguard’s head, bringing her to a full stop as she collapses on the ground.A little blood sprays on me in the process, but then I hear a voice.
“I hope I wasn’t too late, my friend.” It was Old Hong, the Head Chef and Owner of Hong’s Rooster Garden Restaurant, a man with whom I became friends with after over a year of ordering the “Chef’s choice.”
“Old Hong!” I exclaim.
He walks up to me, pulling the cleaver out of the bodyguard’s head: “Now you owe me two bushels of peppercorns, my friend.”
“Right, of course.” I say. I hope he knows he’ll never get any of my peppercorns. They’re mine, goddamnit. Mine!
“Such a shame,” He says, reaching for the to-go box that held an order of food, opening it up to reveal the fried rice that the family had previously ordered. “This was the best fried rice I had ever made, and now nobody is going to eat it.”
As sad as it was to hear that, I couldn’t dwell on it: “Well aren’t you going to do something about this kitchen? It’s a horrible, bloody mess.”
“No, my friend,” says Old Hong. “The kitchen can wait. You must go, and take this with you. It’ll make up for the awful night you had. The police will be here soon. Clean up in the bathroom.”
I do as Old Hong orders. I most always do. After washing the blood off my face I go out the back way, clutching the fried rice in both hands, then open it up and taste it.
Hong was right. Except the chicken is a bit undercooked.
