Is it odd that a tall, light haired, white girl would feel at home in an area largely made up of small, dark haired, Asians? Sometimes I think that while comfortably wandering the streets of Chinatown. Where the Chinatown is located is not so important. Maybe that is what is great about those neighborhoods in so many of the world’s finest non-Asian cities. The same way we might seek a McDonald’s in Japan after a week of eating fish and rice, we can always feel a connection to somewhere familiar when walking through rows of fluorescent lit restaurant windows framed by swaying Chinese lanterns.
Ever since my first dim sum experience, in Ithaca, New York of all places, I seek out that weekend communal noshing experience when I am in the mood to share dumplings and pass turnip cakes with a bunch of friends. As much as the shared Chinatown experience, I cherish my alone time in those often crazy streets. The produce stalls full of slightly wilted bok choy, the baskets of odiferous dried shrimp, the strange but alluring windows of the medicine shops, all of it a wonderful hodgepodge of interesting, unfamiliar looks, smells, and tastes.
But even the unfamiliar becomes familiar at some point. Which is why halfway through a crazy month of travelling, checked into another new hotel, I found myself hailing the first cab to San Francisco’s Chinatown. After checking in with some Chowhound recommendations, I decided try out what I thought was a Shanghaiese restaurant. It turns out Z and Y Restaurant is more of a Szechuan restaurant but was enough to satisfy my Asian yearning just fine. A hotpot of fresh seafood and tofu with cabbage and bok choy alongside a steamer basket of too many pork and chicken dumplings for this lone diner to consume was just the recipe for my home sickness. Funny how a cuisine so foreign has come to be my own personal golden arches.
Ever since my first dim sum experience, in Ithaca, New York of all places, I seek out that weekend communal noshing experience when I am in the mood to share dumplings and pass turnip cakes with a bunch of friends. As much as the shared Chinatown experience, I cherish my alone time in those often crazy streets. The produce stalls full of slightly wilted bok choy, the baskets of odiferous dried shrimp, the strange but alluring windows of the medicine shops, all of it a wonderful hodgepodge of interesting, unfamiliar looks, smells, and tastes.
But even the unfamiliar becomes familiar at some point. Which is why halfway through a crazy month of travelling, checked into another new hotel, I found myself hailing the first cab to San Francisco’s Chinatown. After checking in with some Chowhound recommendations, I decided try out what I thought was a Shanghaiese restaurant. It turns out Z and Y Restaurant is more of a Szechuan restaurant but was enough to satisfy my Asian yearning just fine. A hotpot of fresh seafood and tofu with cabbage and bok choy alongside a steamer basket of too many pork and chicken dumplings for this lone diner to consume was just the recipe for my home sickness. Funny how a cuisine so foreign has come to be my own personal golden arches.
