The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [135]
A couple of hours later, I stood by the rotating door of Macy’s. It was the middle of the week, late summer, not exactly any particular season for shopping, but the entrance to the store was flooded with traffic as usual. The dollar had been in decline all year long, and in recent months I’d heard that hordes of Western European tourists were coming to New York, traveling in flocks through Times Square, or shopping in midtown to take advantage of the weak dollar. As I stood by Macy’s, it sounded like everyone around me was speaking with a British accent.
“Hi, Cath!” my mother called from a few paces away on the street corner. Beside her, Jo-Jo was waving his arms like slow windshield wipers. I squeezed past a small crowd to meet them.
“Okay, let’s eat,” my mother said, turning to Jo-Jo. “Which place should we go to?”
“Any. It doesn’t matter,” he said. We walked two blocks down to Thirty-second Street, turning at the start of K-town. We chitchatted along the way, my mom asking her usual questions about pieces of my wardrobe that she had never seen before (“When did you get that?”), as if I was supposed to tell her every time I bought some clothing. The topic of why I had spontaneously decided to join them for lunch was oddly, or perhaps purposely, not raised.
We stopped at the door of one of the first restaurants we passed. My mom took a look at the menu on the window.
“This is the good one, I think,” she said.
“Okay,” Jo-Jo agreed.
We filed into the narrow lobby. It was the middle of lunch service, and the tables were filled with customers. Luckily, we were quickly seated at a table just as a party was leaving. A waiter brought a metal teapot to our table as soon as we sat down, and another waiter came by moments later with a half dozen trays of cold appetizers.
“Okay ... great,” my mother said, taking in the sights.
The kimchee was closest to me. Now, this was something I hadn’t eaten in quite some time. Nor had I thought to try my hand at making it myself. I’d learned how to make several types of pickles, tinkering around with cauliflower and Brussels sprouts at different times, and unusual spice combinations for the brines. But the fermented and chili-soaked cabbage that was so essential to Korean cuisine had evaded my DIY home-cooking attempts and my taste buds for the past two years. I was ready to dig in. Only, I had no chopsticks. In all their speediness to serve us the appetizers, our waiters had forgotten to place utensils at our table.
My mother signaled to a waitress, who nodded and came to our table. She said something indecipherable in Korean.
“Uh ... don’t speak Korean,” my mother said.
“Oh, sorry,” the waitress responded in English. We asked her for chopsticks and she nodded and left.
“I guess we look Korean,” Jo-Jo s aid, grinning. My mom shrugged. In the past, I’d seen my mom confused for Japanese at restaurants with Japanese-speaking staff. More commonly, at Chinese restaurants she would have to revert to English when a waiter began speaking Cantonese, and not her native Mandarin. This never happened to me, since my Mandarin is elementary at best and my appearance more Caucasian than anything else. But just from years of being around my mother and uncle, I knew about the advantages of the native-language exchange with restaurant workers. For instance, at Chinese restaurants my parents frequently had dishes that were not on the menu, or they might receive more authentic menus printed only in Chinese. Usually, there was some dialogue with the waiter about what was best to order, or to clarify what was available. Sometimes dishes were specially made at my parents’ request. This was the way my parents always ordered at Chinese restaurants—with a back-and-forth exchange and at least one off-the-menu course. But alas, it was not to be for this Korean lunch.
The waitress returned shortly afterward with the chopsticks. I appreciated the fact that they were reusable plastic chopsticks, unlike the wrapped, wooden disposable types that were served at so many restaurants.