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By Root 1030 0

her Honda up to a corner in downtown Flushing, where Jo-Jo, Chris, and I were standing. My brother and I were each holding plastic cups of bubble tea, with wide, neon green straws sticking out of them to allow the marble-sized, chewy tapioca pearls at the bottom of the tea to come through. Before my parents arrived, Jo-Jo had taken us to a couple of bakeries in the neighborhood and bought a package of high-end moon cakes. At another one, he got a bag of beautiful, individually wrapped pineapple cakes, or feng li su, a specialty of Taiwan. These had been my absolute favorite treat in Taiwan while I was there, and unlike bubble tea (which could be found throughout New York City), I had never seen the real thing outside the island before. We also strolled through a shopping mall and eyed the Chinese food court’s hand-pulled-noodle shop. Again, I hadn’t seen a chef pull fresh dough into noodles with his hands since the street-food stands of Taipei—although I knew that handmade Chinese noodles existed elsewhere in New York City. For a predinner snack, we’d stopped at a small window to a restaurant on a busy block with a line of customers crowded around it, a good indication that this restaurant had the goods. At the window, I bought a freshly steamed pork and leek bun for $1 and shared it with the others. The moment I took the first bite into its soft, foamy crust, the juices from the filling dribbled down my wrist.

“Okay, we decided on two options,” Jo-Jo said to my parents once they emerged from the car. “There’s a very good Taiwanese place, up the street. Then there’s that Szechuan place you read about. In the article.”

“Ooh. Hm,” my mom said. I took the bathroom scale she was holding out of her hands as my parents thought about this for a minute. I placed it on the sidewalk and stepped on it.

“What are you doing?” my brother asked.

“Never mind,” I said, taking mental note of my weight. I picked the scale back up and stuffed it into my tote. Chris shrugged.

“The Szechuan place looks nice. It might be a little more formal than the other,” Jo-Jo offered.

“Is it crowded?” my mom asked. We walked down to the end of the block and craned our necks through the glass storefront windows. “It does look pretty good,” she said, eyeing the trays of prepared appetizers at a cook’s workstation, which were all dyed a rich red hue, a signature of Szechuan cuisine because of its heavy use of chili oil. It might not have been the only authentic Szechuan restaurant in the city, but according to The New York Times article, it was certainly one of the best. It was called Spicy and Tasty—which was an understatement, considering the bold flavors of Szechuan food.

“Why don’t we go here?” my dad suggested. We all agreed.

We filed into the restaurant and settled at a large round table that was really meant for about twelve people. It was the only available table in the restaurant. As platters drifted by us balanced on waiters’ palms, we stopped to gaze at them all. “Wow, what’s that? I want to get that,” my mom would say as each one went by.

To be sure, this was exotic food to all of us at the table. My mom and Jo-Jo grew up in Taiwan, and their parents hailed from Hunan Province in China. We had never tasted anything like the pungent, spicy dishes of Szechuan until a trip to China a few years back. Soon after that, my parents discovered a gold mine of authentic Szechuan food at a restaurant in New Jersey. Since then they’d been developing an ecstatic, burgeoning love of the spicy, salty, and yes, tasty food.

When we left the restaurant, I was beyond full, and my spicy taste buds were well satisfied. Later that night, even though I was still fairly full, I found myself alone in my apartment with one of the pineapple cakes that Jo-Jo had bought, and three of his moon cakes. I ate one of each. The moon cake was really exceptional. It was dense and moist, its molded cakelike crust gleaming with egg wash and tasting faintly of dried fruits, or molasses. On the inside, it was filled with a sweet black sesame seed paste. “The best,” Jo-Jo had said