Chinatown

The only time I had ever been to Chinatown before was to visit my Grandma Edie's old stomping ground. A few decades ago the shops which are currently selling upside down ducks and bizarrely large pineapples were once selling rugelach and kosher meat (which was very much dead and not flopping around like the fish I saw last night). So I was excited to go out and experience the real Chinatown free of Jewish nostalgia for when Hester street spoke Yiddish.

Suzana had arranged the outing with her brother and a friend, but by the time I got there I was just in time to bump into them on the street on their way out. So I struggled through the ridiculously crowded streets like a winding missile. (that makes sense, right?) to the Shanghai Cafe. I arrived just as half the group left, so I watched as Leann, Marion and Jose paid their bill. It looked like a nice enough place, definitely upscale, but the service seemed awfully rude.

The four of us walked in large circles for a bit before we finally hit the Dumpling House. It is exactly that seedy little place you picture when you think of Chinatown. Leann said it's a "crack in the wall" but I think it was more like the dirt in the crack in the wall. It's a tiny shop front where the cooking area takes up half the whole store. Everyone orders and eats at the counter while watching the cooks reuse cooking oil as they fry up and boil dumplings and sesame pancakes. The prices are incredible, just $2 for 8 veggie dumplings. The scary part is that the veggie items are more expensive than the meat ones.... very suspicious.

For dessert we ran around to find The Original Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. The have every flavor imaginable, and some that aren't. Leann got lychee sorbet, which tasted exactly like lychee, which I don't care for. I got green tea, which I love, but I think it was much better in Japan. This was again a standing-only place and we were all getting tired. We walked over to the Chinatown Starbucks, which is really quite pretty, and sat there for about an hour. We ended the night with some very un-Chinese pubbing.