Spork PI Wei Lee Chinese Food and Dougnuts
The other day I was reading on Facebook about how my friend B takes her daughter out for dinner, just the two of them, every other week. With a new baby and a Stepbrother and Stepsister I’m sure P needs every moment she gets with her mother. Vida really needs that kind of time too. In fact she is constantly asking for time together when Victor is not around—she can’t wait until Victor’s first sleep over at Bob’s house. No matter how much effort I put into making time for her it is never enough. She looks forward, never back, so there is no appreciating past time together. I’m only as good as the moment.
A couple of weeks ago I took a night for myself and B and I went to Spork. We were considering PI, a pizza place near Synergy but B wanted to save that to experience with her daughter who is not so adventurous when it comes to food. Spork was named for the spoon-fork combination utensil made famous by KFC and is located in a redesigned former KFC restaurant. I loved the fact that they kept some of the original fixtures including a huge industrial hood and made them part of the new décor. The restaurant is small so I was grateful when we were moved, from a table where I could touch elbows with the guy next to me, to a lovely two top by the window. We had deviled egg on Acme garlic croutons, a lovely salad and shared a vegetable fricassee. We spent most of the night talking about our kids of course and I suggested that we take our two girls to PI the following week. They are lucky we don’t take them to horrible places like KFC. Although we have had their food before Vida doesn’t have the horrible taste of their mashed potatoes and coleslaw seared into her brain for eternity.
PI is located in the spot formerly held by the Thai restaurant Suriya. It has a nice long wooden bar and some informal tables along the sides of the restaurant. They have a great beer selection and I was looking forward to lingering over one before rushing into dinner. Luckily the girls were doing pretty well amusing each other while we took our time ordering. One of the best things about PI is that you can customize individual slices of pizza. They didn’t have a Margarita pizza on the menu but were nice enough to toss a couple of basil leaves on a slice for Vida. I ordered a slice with pepperoni and sausage. Both girls ordered half portions of spaghetti, one with meatballs for Vida and one without for P who is vegetarian like her mother. We also ordered a Caesar salad to share. B ordered a white pizza for herself.
We had just ordered dessert when my eye caught the couple seated next to us. I recognized the man as a Synergy parent. He was talking animatedly to the woman across from him while he deftly manipulated some tiny foam balls in his hand. They were multiplying rapidly when I had Vida and P look over. They stared in amazement as the balls went from one to three in his hand. Vida loves magic and she instantly asked if he could show her how to do the trick. He said he had spent a year mastering it and that if she wanted to learn magic she should aim for an easier trick. He put a ball in her hand and when she opened it up six or seven balls piled out. They were hysterical with excitement as he did it several more times. We had dessert advertised as rainbow cookies, that was really brightly colored pieces of cake. Just before we got up to leave the magician pulled out a card trick involving his business card. He gave them each a set of the cards and showed them how to do three card monty. The girls left happy and excited.
Vida had her first summer soccer practice the other night at the Beach Chalet fields. I dropped her off and spent a luxurious hour sitting the car playing on the computer and listening to NPR instead of dance music. I had taken her friend B to practice as well and she was supposed to be coming back for dinner. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with dinner ideas as I went to pick Victor up. I had in mind to stop and get fried rice or something from one of the Clement Street take out dives. We had been to Good Luck Dim Sum near 10th and Clement and it was fantastic—there is always a line out the door for the steamed and baked buns, sesame cakes and other goodies they impatiently have to explain to you. Alas, they are only open during the day and I ended up stopping at Wei Lee Chinese Food and Doughnuts. I walked in to order something from the hot food bar distracting Victor from the doughnut end of the restaurant. It was just 6 but it looked like they were already on the verge of shutting down. Most of the steam table was empty. There was some fried rice with what looked like diced barbeque pork, some chicken dyed orange and lots of peas and carrots, it was getting a little crispy around the edges but I thought what the heck how bad could it be. Vic particular is not fussy when it comes to fried rice. The woman serving us was not tolerant of my ignorance so it’s a good thing they didn’t have more to choose from. The only information I could get out her was the kind of meat in each dish. I also picked out some chow fun, also a color not in the Crayola pantheon with chicken and some chicken skewers. For a couple of skewers and a pint each of the noodles and rice my total was eight bucks.
Victor and drove back to the field where it was so windy I was afraid to take Vic out in case he blew over. I enticed him to stay in the car with a bowl, just happened to have an extra one in the car, of fried rice and noodles. He ate the first round and asked for more most of the way through the second serving he decided he didn’t like any of it. When we got back in the car Vida saw the bowl of noodles and I thought I might get her to eat the food if I made it informal enough and encouraged her to try a bite. She said it was “pretty good”. As it turned out B was picked up just before we went into the house for dinner. I made Vida a plate of everything and held my breath while she took a few bites. I didn’t hear any complaining right away but about halfway through the plate she said she didn’t like any of it. I didn’t really blame her, it was some pretty mediocre food, but both of them had enough to call dinner and I was off the hook for the rest of the night.
Restaurant Total: 270
