Before I got married, I lived in an apartment above a video store near downtown Columbus. The video store is long gone, but the Chinese restaurant next door that I used to call "The Crappy Dragon" still exists. You know what these places are like - Americanized-Cantonese/faux-Hunan fare, often shoddily prepared - and chances are the closest Chinese restaurant to you is one of them. These are the greasy spoon diners of American "ethnic" restaurants; a few brilliant pearls in an ocean of mediocrity. Still, occasionally nothing hits the spot like sausage gravy and biscuits. And, like diner fare, sometimes nothing else will do the trick like General Tso's chicken.
I used to hit The Crappy Dragon once every 2 or 3 weeks, usually on a night where there was nothing going on and I was too lazy to cook or tired of whatever leftovers were in the fridge. My go-to Chinese comfort food meal was General Tso's chicken with white rice, a cup of hot and sour soup, and a couple of crab rangoon if I was feeling sassy. Totally classic fat white guy meal. The thing is, the food from The Crappy Dragon, like many of these ubiquitous Chinese restaurants, wasn't very good. But it was close, fast and cheap, so they got my business.
My wife was out of town last night and the refrigerator was getting bare: best option was some quinoa macaroni and cheese (well, Velveeta) and a lettuce-only salad. It was payday, so I decided to revisit my old bachelor ways. I wasn't going back to The Crappy Dragon - it sucks and they've taken enough of my money - but I did make a carryout order with another similar Chinese place that I've had slightly better food from in the past. Same old thing: General Tso's, hot and sour soup, crab rangoon. Pick up in 10 minutes.
I've learned one very important rule about these kinds of Chinese restaurants: if they have hot and sour soup, try some before you order. If it's good, the food will be good. If it's not, go somewhere else. I shit you not, this rule will steer you right damn near every time. It's a foolproof indicator of a chef's talent if a dish has multiple flavor dimensions in a pleasing way. If your hot and sour soup is not both hot and sour (or worse, neither), don't spend another dime. Just get up and go.
I've had the soup from this place before and it made the cut last time. Unfortunately for me this time around, my soup was bland and, in adherence to the rule, the rest of my food was craptacular as well.
Crazy thing is I don't regret my decision, even though when I walked into their empty dining room at 6:30 on Friday night I had a feeling that disappointment was inevitable. Chinese food isn't quite in the pizza and sex "even when it's bad, it's good" category, but it does fill a nostalgic need for me every once in a while. Just me, a plate full of greasy chicken and rice and Star Trek re-runs to keep me company, thinking about how things used to be and how much better they are now that I'm not living alone, above a video store, next door to The Crappy Dragon.
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