Heung Yuen
On Saturday morning it was clear that soccer class was going to be rained out so I planned to take Vida to Capoiera class. She doesn’t really love Capoiera—it’s a difficult class, the movement is almost constant for the entire hour and the moves are hard—but its good for her. She complains mildly about going but since what she wants to do instead is sit in front of the T.V. I don’t give in. We had her friend G with us for the day so we took her along. For the first half of the class I felt vindicated for pushing her into it, she was showing off a bit for G and seemed to have made some distinct improvement. They were both wiped out at the end of class so I thought that lunch should be next on the agenda.
As we were trying to park before class I saw a spot on 22nd in front of a Hueng Yeun Chinese restaurant. An insane man in a 49’ers jacket made a U-turn in the middle of the street and tried to pull in behind me as I was backing into the spot. I held my ground—which probably makes me insane—and he finally pulled out and into the loading zone in front of me. I was kind of afraid to get out of the car I tried to wait for him to leave but instead he went into the restaurant and stared at us through the window while he waited for his to-go order.
That experience aside I decided that we should go have some fried rice at the restaurant. The place was pretty bustling with a wide variety of folks so I thought it would probably be o.k. --despite a rather run down interior. As we walked in a not very friendly gentleman barked “for here or to go” at us. I said that we would stay and he pointed at a table in the corner. When we ordered the chicken fried rice he said loudly “that’s it?” There was another woman working the floor and she seemed nicer but for the most part they were all business. We ordered our rice and I watched as rice plates piled high with incredible amounts of meat rolled out of the kitchen. I asked the server what one of them was and he said only “pork chops”. The food looked good and judging by the number for Chinese patrons it was good, but the most amazing part was the size of the portions—the Carnegie Deli of Chinese food.
Just after our rice appeared G said that she had to go to the bathroom. I groaned inwardly and then all three of us made our way to the bathrooms in the back of the restaurant by the kitchen. The kitchen was shear chaos. People and prep and food were everywhere. By the bathroom door was a disgusting garbage can that looked like it had been filled by people attempting hook shots from the stove. The bathroom was horrible. It was tiny, dirty and there was a rotting curtain stuck in a painted window. Inexplicably just the top half of the walls had been recently painted and the fumes were unbearable.
As we left the bathroom I tried not to look at the kitchen again but opposite the kitchen in a dish washing station there was a huge tub of marinating meat on the floor.
The kids thought the fried rice was delicious although the rice itself was tough as if it had been refrigerated one day too many. They poured soy sauce on it and dug in with their spoons. The bill strangely said $4.50 and that was it--no tax or anything. I paid thinking that most of the places we have gone too for fried rice being a bit more upscale were charging a lot of money for what we were getting.
The rest of the rainy day was spent at the library and B’s house where I watched the Seahawks game and the kids played. By the time we got home it was too late to make anything good for dinner. I pulled out the left over fried rice and Vida ate two huge bowls before asking, “what’s for dinner”?
Restaurant Total: 195
Thai House Express
A while back I was reading about a guy who walked every block in New York—I think it took him a couple of years. The project really appealed to me and when I walk or drive around I think about trying to do the same thing in San Francisco. I’ll have to wait until Vida is older since I sometimes have a hard time getting her to walk from the car to the house if she’s in the wrong mood.
Dinner with Vida is kind of similar in its aspiration to seek out unknown corners of the city—to start with what we know and fan out until we have covered San Francisco’s seven square miles. Vida’s current attitude has frustrated my progress in conquering San Francisco’s restaurants—she has absolutely no interest in going out for dinner, I have to spring it on her and then hang on for dear life as she yells “I don’t want to go out for dinner I want to go home” and then I usually say something like “its late and we don’t have any food at home” and she’ll respond with “I don’t care I want to go home” and then maybe “I want a Slurpee” hoping to wear me down.
I decided my strategy should be to start either at home or at school and drive or walk as quickly as possible to the closest restaurant and then park and get out before she knows what hit her. On Wednesday I picked Vida up from school—she had asked me to come late so she could play tag outside in the dark—and started to drive down Valencia. We passed a number of restaurants that I had already been to and didn’t really care to try again—forgettable places like Rasoi—popular places like Firecracker that I remember as mediocre, Luna Park where I had an incredibly loud and less than stellar dinner with people from work—and Amira where I went to see a friend belly dance rather than for the food. We drove closer to 16th and tried to park but it was impossible. I had a number of restaurant choices in mind as we went around the block a half a dozen times. Finally I just had to get out of the traffic and started to drive toward home. The restaurant scene got slimmer as we drove 18th Street. I thought about a pizza place and there was parking place in front but I had, once again, promised fried rice and pizza just wasn’t cutting it. Luckily we found parking in front of Thai House Express on 19th and Castro just a couple of blocks from. I had been avoiding Thai House Express because it claimed affiliation to the other Thai House restaurants in the neighborhood. But, it seemed very different in style to the other Thai House’s—it was clean, stylish and “express” as opposed to the cheap decor and dirty carpet character of its other incarnations. I just pretended it was a brand new restaurant.
As we walked in Vida was immediately attracted to the very high boarding house tables by the window. She climbed up the tall chairs and started to settle in before exclaiming that she was “in love with the couch” on the other side of the restaurant. It was a shiny silver banquette that did look very inviting and we quickly moved over there. I perused the menu while a very large party sat down next to us. I was afraid the kitchen wouldn’t stay “express” if all 12 of them ordered at the same time so I quickly ordered chicken fried rice for Vida and chicken larb for me. I was in the mood for something more salad like than stir-fried. The food did come quickly and tasted good especially with a cold Singha. Vida was enjoying her fried rice thoroughly and asked if “we could come here every night”. I instantly thought of the guy in New York who went to a Chinese restaurant with an incredibly long and diverse menu and methodically tried every dish over a period of years. It wouldn’t take long to go through the menu at Thai House Express and it would be convenient regular destination but I couldn’t possibly afford both projects.
Restaurant Total: 194
