In Nueva York I rarely go a day without MSG. My office digs are steps from Koreatown where everything is slathered in red bean paste, and my route home to Brooklyn runs a few times a week through Chinatown for groceries, Vietnamese food at An Choi or a dumpling & noodle fix.
Finally tonight, after two long days in Hong Kong with nary a Pretz, dried cuttlefish or Shrimp Chip to tide me over, I hop onto the remarkably easy to navigate subway for the Real Deal Holyfield Chinese food for dinner. Any old jam packed with Chinese people will do me. I walk through the neighborhood called Wan Chai, looking through all doors for a full house. Eventually I come across Yuan, which is filled with older women and couples. Every table has a clay pot all up on it. A good sign.
Hong Kong is exceptionally clean for a tiny city filled with 7 million germaphobes. At Yuan, Brian coughs with his hand over his mouth, phlegm rattling around in his chest from a leftover cold. A middle aged woman at a table behind us in stirrup pants and a visor spins around, glares, changes seats to park one entire seat over, and pushes her dishes on the table as far as possible from my germ-carrying boyfriend.
After Brian’s second chesty cough, she scoots her chair farther away from his microbe cloud and glares again. The battle is on for the most withering stinkeye I can possibly give her. I can bring it, too. Don’t try me, Grandma.
Earlier that day, another woman in a visor about the same age hocks a loog the size of a small animal onto the street, narrowly missing my shoes. I would like to know what makes coughing unacceptable among Hong Kongers, but full on mucus street spray a-ok.
Dinner is simple and mind blowingly awesome, as I’d hoped. We end it with a fruit soup/hot custard conglomerate of sticky black rice, red bean and taro - or gabi if you’re Pinoy. When they’re good, Asian desserts are so comforting and not too too sweet. On the way out, I hold myself back from giving the visored hypochondriac a piece of my American mind. She mines her teeth for gold with a toothpick and flings plaque everywhere as I head back onto the street.
