Dim Sum and Desert Weather

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HP4GU-California at yahoogroups.com, "Jennifer Piersol"
<jenP_97 at y...> wrote:

> That is so weird.  Okay, not all of it, but the "ABC Seafood".  My
> dim sum experience is in Monterey Park at "NBC Seafood" (at least, 
> that's what my hubby remembers as the name...). 

NBC Seafood and ABC Seafood are owned by the same person, an 
immigrant from Hong Kong. I don't know if he has a CBS Seafood 
as well. (Fox and WB weren't TV networks when these two restaurants
were founded.)

Monterey Park is on the other side of Downtown from where I live, but
is supposed to be the home of the best dim sum in USA, but one time
the Golds led six of us on an expedition to a highly praised dim sum
restaurant in Monterey Park and we thought it wasn't as good as
Empress Pavilion.

> However, patronage is almost exclusively Chinese (by that, I 
> mean Cantonese - we went with 2 Cantonese-Americans, 1 Cantonese 
> guy, and 1 Mandarin girl, who was at an almost total loss when it 
> came to ordering, so we had the Cantonese guy order for us), 

For many years, Miriwa was in the building that now holds Ocean
Seafood. I *loved* Miriwa (altho' it can be argued that Ocean Seafood
is even better) and went there often with groups from work. One time
the group *happened* to be all-female and consist of one white (me),
one black (Roz), one Latina (Maria), and one Asian (Lois). Lois is
from Taiwan and speaks Mandarin and told us in advance that she
doesn't speak restaurant ... which turned out not to be true, 
starting with laughing at what one car angrily shouted at another car
in the parking lot, and continuing into long happy conversations with
the servers, with resulted in many new-to-me food items appearing on
our table, things I could never request again, because whenever I
asked Lois what they were called, she just said: "You'll like it". 
Speaking Mandarin was one of Miriwa's uniquenesses among restaurants.

> so I spent the entire meal trying to look inconspicuous, which is 
> very hard when you're 1 of only 3 white people (and all of them
> were at our table) in the whole restaurant.  Took us 3 hours to 
> finish that meal.  What a great time!

I generally feel proud of myself rather than embarrassed when I find
myself at the only white-people table in the Chinese restaurant 
(proud of going to a right restaurant, not of being white). What made
me feel out of place at the Monterey Park restaurant was being a
completely child-less table, while toddlers were zooming around all
over the restaurant... That might be an *advantage* for your family.
 
> Hope everyone has a great first weekend of fall!  Me?  It's
> gonna be 98 degrees here today (average for today is 89), so I'm
> pretty bummed.  It's fall, dammit!  When are those darn
> temperatures going to FALL?!?

Here I'm rather pleased that temperatures HAVE fallen some this week,
enough that I can get to sleep at night, and look forward to them
falling more.