Chinese Food
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Monday, August 20th, 2007So the manuscript is copyedited! I was surprised because I actually get back a physical copy where I have to enter my comments in on the manuscript copy in pencil. And then this hand-edited document gets re-typed in with our comments and changes by a typesetter. I was surprised they don’t just enter the changes […]
The fortune cookie writer is getting a little saucy…
Friday, August 17th, 2007This fortune found on Flickr shows that the fortune cookie scribe was running out of ideas, no?
A fortune cookie romantic comedy!
Friday, August 17th, 2007This is another entry into the “Fortune Cookie as pop culture” canon. I was recently sent a cute funny DVD with a short romantic comedy called Fortune Hunters, about a guy who writes fortunes for his father’s forture cookie company and his embarrassing (and public) experiences to woo back his girlfriend. The short been accepted at least 10 different film festivals, […]
Confucius say, You spend too much time on Facebook!
Monday, August 13th, 2007Since Facebook opened up the gates for outsiders to create programs for its users, one of the most popular applications has been Fortune Cookie by Tyler Ballance of Slide.com. It now has more than 4 million users, making it variously in the top 10 applications of all facebook apps. And now they let you “send” fortunes to people. The […]
Can you wok the wok? Why Chinese restaurants aren’t dominated by chains
Sunday, August 12th, 2007Chinese food is the largest restaurant segment not dominated by chains — as opposed to hamburgers, pizza, Mexican and Italian. Big chains like General Mills and Darden have tried and fled with Leann Chins and China Coast. Of the 40,000 Chinese restaurants, the two big exceptions are the Chinese restaurant chains Panda Express (fastfood) out of Rosemead, […]
General Tso’s Pizza? Why not?
Saturday, August 11th, 2007Green Tea Chinese Bistro in Newington, Connecticut has decided to embrace Italian-Chinese fusion. Among their new dishes: General Tso’s pizza and roast pork pizza with scallions and red onions. Why not? It’s a bit California Pizza Kitchen — which offers among its choices Thai chicken pizza, mango tandoori pizza, carne asada pizza, and Jamaican jerk pizza. […]
Some fortune cookies contain no fortunes?
Thursday, August 9th, 2007I’m trying to decide if this fortune is incredibly zen or totally inane.
They are supporting a family with your tips
Thursday, August 9th, 2007Clem Richardson of The New York Daily News was scolded for being a poor tipper to the deliverymen at his local Chinese restaurant. He thought that $2 or $3 was pretty good considering they didn’t cook the food or have to keep visiting his table, figuring they make 15 to 20 deliveries an hour (this […]
Conan O’Brien serenades dumplings in Mandarin
Thursday, August 9th, 2007Conan O’Brien and a “Chinese deliveryman” sang a West Side Story-style duet about dumplings in Chinese during last night’s show. Came with subtitles and everything. Conan’s pronounciation was pretty decent actually.
Made a reservation at Wakiya Gramercy for Friday
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007Finally have a free night in the city, so I made a reservation at Wakiya with my friend Eric Lee. It wasn’t that hard to get a reservation for 2 (7, 8:45 or 9 p.m.) The feedback on Wakiya at New York Magazine’s Grub Street  and Chowhound have been lukewarm. The Amateur Gourmet has a post from James […]
The joys of Slideflickr!
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007After some trouble with Simpleflickr and Firefox, I decided to try Slideflickr as a way to do photos on this blog. It’s pretty simple actually. You just type in a set, a group or a user and it generates a line of code that you stick on a blog page and you get this neat […]
Forget Atkins, South Beach, Lemonade Diets. The Ultimate Plan? Moving to China.
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007John Vause of CNN says he has lost 10 pounds in the last several weeks because he is terrified of Chinese food products. As he writes: But these days, the joy of anticipation of what the next dish will bring has been replaced with, well, the dread of what the next dish may contain. When […]
I’ll need that by Feb. -30-
Monday, July 30th, 2007The New York Times ran a correction, which undoubtedly will go down into the canon of great corrections. An article on Thursday about the arraignment of three men in the shooting of two New York police officers, one of whom died, misstated the schedule set by a judge for a trial in the case. The […]
I’m catching up on two years of sleep…
Monday, July 30th, 2007Working on the endnotes, bibliography and acknowledgments now. (It never, ever ends). AAJA convention in Miami at the end of this week. Will be back blogging full force in a few days.
Wow. The cardboard in porkbun story was a media hoax to get ratings?
Thursday, July 26th, 2007So a few weeks ago there was a huge ruckus about a Chinese television report that showed a vendor mixing cardboard into his bun filling in Beijing. It ran around the world — picked up by CNN and Fox News — because it seemed so resonant with the dominant narrative at the time (food scandal […]
Wakiya’s Menu
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007Here is a look at Wakiya’s menu, courtesy of Menupages. The restaurant Web site claims (when are they going to update that thing?) “It will offer a new style of Chinese cooking inspired by the traditional food of Shanghai and Northern China. Currently not available in America, this new genre of Chinese cuisine is rich in imagination and dynamically […]
More Culinary Xenophobia? Pat Oliphant’s Chinese Restaurant Cartoon
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007Click to enlarge. Lots of debate in the Asian American circles over this Pat Oliphant cartoon commenting on the recent food issues in China. If you can’t tell well enough. It depicts a well-to-do white couple in an alleyway behind the “Inn of the Lucky Happiness Chinese Restaurant” picking through scraps from dumpsters and trash […]
A How-To Menu Guide for all the Laowai!
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007Ben Ross in China has compiled three years of culinary exploration into a very handy guide to ordering Chinese dishes in China, complete with pictures, phoenetics, and descriptions at howtoorderchinesefood.com. It’s also useful for people who want to order “off the menu” or more authentically at an American Chinese restaurants. It’s not the most aesthetically […]
Don’t Talk to Me Until Friday
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007Final final manuscript due Thursday. Meanwhile, I eliminated a chapter, consolidating it into another. And am rewriting two chapters after I decided the prose was mediocre. (And I read Harry Potter 7, which makes you appreciate how elegantly everything is constructed)
Forget singing. Try reading aloud to yourself in the bathroom.
Thursday, July 19th, 2007So my editor, my agent and my friends have all recommended that I read the manuscript to myself out loud as I do the final fine-tooth line-editing. When you read it out loud, it is like music. If something is off, you can tell immediately. Each paragraph, sentence, word has to justify its existence in […]
Imagine if America only had 100 restaurants today. That was China’s culinary scene in in 1976
Thursday, July 19th, 2007Oliver August‘s new book was released yesterday — Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of China’s Most Wanted Man (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). It is the product of seven years of working, hunting for Lai Changxing, a country-boy turned billionaire fugitive and a fascinating tale of how China is wrestling with its new freewheeling wealth. […]
US and North Korean nuclear envoys meet on neutral ground: Chinese restaurant
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007The AFP writes about how the US and North Korean nuclear envoys met in Beijing and went off to a Chinese restaurant. Given that they are in China, perhaps this is not so surprising (but then again, they did chose to meet in China — neutral territory?). But this brings to mind another “dining diplomacy” […]
Ouch! Scathing review of NYC Wakiya @ Gramercy Park Hotel on Chowhound
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007So it’s friends and family week at Wakiya. And the reviews are trickling in. One anonymous one at Chowhound is particularly scathing — saying they found it “HIGHLY disappointing, overpriced & disorganized” (caps in the original). Their check for 3 came to something like $280 (Ouch!). This blogger is kinder, saying it was one of […]
Dispatches from Wakiya (the Tokyo, not NYC, version) — one of the Best Chinese Restaurants in the World
Monday, July 16th, 2007As New York ramps up for the launch of the Yuji Wakiya’s eponymous restaurant in the Gramercy Park Hotel, it might be interesting to look at the original Wakiya in Tokyo. That restaurant is discretely tucked away in an alley in Akasaka, an upscale neighborhood known for its ryotei, discrete high-end restaurants favorbed by Japanese […]
Chinatowns, urban redevelopment and Hooters!
Sunday, July 15th, 2007Carol Huang writes about the Chinatown landsqueeze across the country in The Christian Science Monitor (yes, I’m a bit late, but I was finishing my last chapter so I missed this piece and stay with me, I’m getting the Hooters point). The piece basically points out that Chinatowns have stopped being gateways for new immigrants […]
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