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I remember the first time my father tried the hot mustard. He spread it on his eggroll like he was at a Syracuse Chiefs game eating a Hoffman’s hot dog. He took one bite and started coughing. Not a ahem, ahem kind of cough but a hack with force and tears and sweat and a quick escalation of redness in his face. I was sure this was it. The Chinese were killing my father. We all stopped, chewing, spinning and slurping and stared. My mother put her hand on his back and asked if he was choking. She was a nurse, she knew the Heimlich, surely she could help him. But no relief came. He vigorously shook his head no. Not choking. What was it? Why was he like this? I had never seen this kind of reaction. Had they poisoned him? Was he paying for all of our white guilt? Were we next? What is this I’m eating? Within 1.2 nanoseconds there were three very helpful servers next to him. Two with glasses of water and one with an entire pitcher. The man with the pitcher laughed and said with a very thick and very appropriate accent, “hot mustard is hot sir.” Through tears my father started laughing. One by one we all started breathing again as did my father. We all joined in the laughter and it escalated until the entire staff and family of Crouchers were in hysterics. Holding our sides, wiping away tears, smacking our thighs and punching each other in the arms. “Hot mustard is hot” became our anthem. And for months to come, every time we went back to the Hunan Empire, somehow, the hot mustard joke would come up. Either the staff would bring him an extra side of the hot mustard or one of his children would offer it up. We thought ourselves on the cutting edge of humor.

Flash forward to me living in NYC. I have no idea where the germ issue of buffets came from and when I decided that all Chinese food restaurants were just as incubators of bacteria. Most of my years living in NYC have included me working in the food service industry, so it’s not like I don’t know that all restaurants are filthy. Especially a certain national chain located on 5th avenue and 48th street across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral where food was often picked up off the floor highly trafficked stairwell and put back on the plate. And I’ll get into that at another time. Anyhoo, maybe I’ll figure out where it all comes from but I just know that it’s there. So we’ll get to buffets tomorrow but today I’ll finish out the Chinese food.

Here I am, living in Astoria and my boyfriend at the time is obsessed with Chinese food. He comes from LA and says how good it is out there and how he misses it and how it’s really, really, really, really important for him that I experience real Chinese food in Chinatown. I’ve done this before, my mother and I came to NYC on many a dance workshop/conference thingy and always got our Chinese food on. But, as a woman, I know it is important for the man to teach me things. To show me just how good something is. My friend Megan calls it the Aladdin complex…..”I can show you a world…A whole new world.” So off we go on the N train down down down to Chinatown. A place I love and explore as often as I can. I used to coach a Junior High track team down there just because I loved walking the streets so much. I admit, it was great, we went deep into the neighborhood. Winding streets, nary a street sign or storefront in English. Again, I felt like I was 8 years old and going on an exotic culinary adventure. We arrived at some place that we had to walk downstairs to get into. That’s when the breaks came on with a screech. From the fluorescent lighting and carpet that looked and felt wet, and the dank green walls, I immediately started to panic. We got our seats at a big round table w/ a lazy susan with a lovely Chinese family of 5. My breath was getting short and tears started to form behind my eyes. I excused myself to the bathroom. There could not have been a worse idea. Bathrooms in Chinatown are not known for their high standards of cleanliness. I touched nothing and repeated “do it for him” until i got my shit together enough to go back out to the bacteria infested basement we were about to dine in.

I looked around and surveyed the staff. One waiter blew his nose 5 times into 5 different paper napkins and then of course promptly walked over to us to get our order. Is it hot in here? I let my boyfriend order and focused on how crowded it was. Many families. Lots of couples. All different ethnic descents. This is New York Lex, get it together. You’re fine. This is where you live. You eat hot dogs aka dirty water dogs. You live in Queens and you eat kabobs. Let it go. Luckily my boyfriend was fairly oblivious to everything that wasn’t him so he didn’t really notice that my insides were threatening to come out. At one point boyfriend stopped our influenza ridden waiter and asked, “do you have brown rice? we’d love brown rice instead cuz it’s healthier.” Healthier? Healthier. Everything here is laden in a brown or pink goopy sauce after being breaded and fried and you’re concerned about the rice option? Yeah, that makes sense. Would you like a diet coke w/ your big mac? Our food comes, I quietly push around things on my plate and eat the broccoli and rice. and fortune cookie. This place is no Hunan Empire, they always gave us an orange slice with our cookie. We leave and I start breathing a little easier. All I can think of is the slice of pizza I am going to get as soon as I drop boyfriend off at his gig. And just like that, on cue, three blind rats come scurrying across the street. So close are these rodents that I feel the breeze on my legs. After I stop squealing like a Mary, we laugh and I take boyfriends face in my hands and say “Honey, I love you, I’m never eating Chinese food with you again.”