Would You Like Number Twenty-Three?

/ Jeff Cann

Would you like number twenty-three?
Leave your yens on the counter, please.
     –Lyric from Hong Kong Garden, Song by Siouxsie and the Banshees

Never mind that the plural of yen is yen.

Never mind that yen is the currency of Japan, not China (or Hong Kong for that matter).

Never mind that Hong Kong Garden is a song with racist elements referencing several Chinese stereotypes—even though Siouxsie Sioux wrote it to show solidarity with the Chinese waitresses at her local takeaway (named Hong Kong Garden) after she witnessed their skinhead customers mistreating them.

The problem is the song’s stuck in my head.

Two weeks ago, I wrote my post Mall Life and introduced the word FWANEO (food with a non-European origin). I’m happy to report that the acronym I created to replace the Eurocentric term ethnic food has taken on a life of its own. I’ve seen it mentioned in articles in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Des Moines Register. I ran a google search and it returned over a billion hits. In that post, I wrote that Gettysburg is a FWANEO vacuum. You want pizza or a burger, you’re in luck. You want Indian food, drive to a city.

Last weekend, Susan and I flew to Wisconsin to visit Sophie. She’s living and working in an area known as the North Woods. It’s super remote (appropriate for the forestry project that hired her) and is usually considered pristine. Unfortunately, a smoky haze has hung over the area most of the summer from Canadian wildfires leaving it cool and dim. The three of us drove north and spent two days hiking, sightseeing, shopping and eating in a hip college town on the southern shore of Lake Superior called Marquette. Marquette was a bit of a FWANEO vacuum as well, but we found some tasty restaurants featuring superb foods with European origins. I considered the trip a foodie-success.

In the meantime, home alone for the weekend, Eli proved my Mall Life post false by trying a restaurant in Gettysburg called Chinatown Kitchen. I may have exaggerated when I called Gettysburg a FWANEO-desert. We have four reasonably good Mexican restaurants and a Chinese buffet. I stay away from the buffet, because, well, it’s a buffet. The older I get, the more grossed out I am by the concept. The food sits in heated tins, abandoned, for extended periods of time. The only time it isn’t unattended (and therefore open-game for buzzing flies) is when a stranger is standing over it, touching the food. I prefer my food more sheltered, less worldly.

Chinatown Kitchen opened thirty-five years ago. I’ve lived in Gettysburg more than half that time, and I never once considered going there. No one I know ever talks about it. I’ve seen the menu before, there are at least one-hundred-fifty options—something I consider a food-freshness red flag. Being a carryout, it’s a bit of a hole-in-the-wall—the hole, well, door, is squished in between two other shops, seemingly without enough room to harbor a restaurant. Viewed through the plexiglass façade, every visible inch of wall space within the cramped restaurant is covered with photographed food selections.

When we returned home from Marquette, Eli raved about Chinatown Kitchen. “This was only ten bucks. I ate it for two meals, and I haven’t even made a dent.” He was right. At a different restaurant, the plastic container of food he held might have been considered full. “You should try it, it’s awesome. It only took them ten minutes to make.” Eli convinced us to try Gettysburg’s only Chinese carryout.

When I placed our order, Hong Kong Garden began playing in my head.

Would you like number twenty-three?
Leave your yens on the counter, please.

As a matter of form, I considered ordering number twenty-three, the seafood soup, but Asian soups rarely fill me up. Susan and I went for the Hunan Chicken and a Garlic/Eggplant dish. Eli was right, the food was delicious. And the portions were huge. Susan and I pigged out on Sunday. Eli and I ate leftovers for dinner on Monday. Susan had it for lunch on Tuesday, and then I had it a third time for dinner. I started doing math. I could buy three dishes on Sunday and have all my weekly lunches and dinners already prepared for just thirty dollars.

Since the start of the pandemic, almost all our restaurant meals are takeout. We got used to that when the dining rooms shut down, and we never got back in the habit of going out for a meal. But since I moved from DC, I really haven’t used any restaurants where the only option is “to go.” We typically buy our meals at the cash register of empty sit-down restaurants. Chinatown Kitchen seems just as good and far cheaper.

I think Chinatown Kitchen will be a mainstay in our carryout rotation from now on. I still have one-hundred-forty-eight other selections to try, including the seafood soup. When I get around to ordering number twenty-three, I’ll use my credit card. Chinatown Kitchen can convert it into any currency they want.

~ ~ ~

Because of the negative stereotypes in Hong Kong Garden, I’ll leave you with a different Siouxsie and the Banshees song from the same era. Christine is reminiscent of those British and American psychedelic garage band songs that were so popular in the mid-sixties. While you listen, notice how sparse the instrumentation is. Siouxsie Sioux has a powerful voice. Her strong vocals fill the space left vacant by minimal accompaniment.

19 thoughts on “Would You Like Number Twenty-Three?”

  1. I’ve had some very bad experiences with Chinese food, including being hospitalised in Shanghai over a bad prawn or something such like. Because we were nowhere near the international hospital at the time, I was taken to a local one where the doc – who spoke no English – showed me all the sterilised equipment before giving me two bags of liquid. At the end of five hours I was, not unexpectedly, dying to spend a penny. The doc, somewhat shamefacedly, led me to the loo next door where I saw a trench in the floor with wads of unmentionables floating in it. There was a downpipe next to it which I clung to for dear life while I prayed to whomever was listening not to let me fall in. There is a silver lining, though: without the dud prawn, I’d never have got to tell this story!

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    • Scary experience to be hospitalized when you can’t speak the language. I definitely think some risk is involved in a place like I described. That extensive menu has to mean that things are hanging out in the freezer way too long. When I was biking across the US, I met up with a group of cyclists dead center in Kansas. We all went to a diner together. One guy asked the waitress “How’s the fish?”
      Waitress: “I don’t know, no one has ever ordered it before.”
      Guy: “OK, I’ll have the fish.”

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      • Your story reminds me of a trip to an opal mining area we did three years ago. I saw fish on the menu, and asked what kind it was. “Frozen,” came back the answer. I ordered something else.
        Our Shanghai guide stayed with me in the hospital to do all the necessary translating. This was 30+ years ago, so I’m sure it’s very different now.

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  2. Those 150 menu items may be comprised of about a dozen ingredients chopped and combined differently and with different sauces. So freshness may not be a big concern.

    Glad that FWANEO continues to spread as a term in our cultural consciousness.

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  3. You’re probably right about those menu items. I haven’t taken the time to actually read the menu. I just let my jaw hang open when I saw it. When FWANEO becomes a thing, Gwyneth Paltrow will probably take credit.

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  5. Ahh, the best Chinese food comes from the sketchiest restaurants. There’s always a spindly guy in the back, chopping things with breakneck speed, or hunched over a hot wok, casually tossing ingredients in with the expertise of a PhD.
    My dad loved this one place that always had cardboard boxes flattened out on the floor so the greasy tile wouldn’t be a hazard. The food was cheap, and SO DELICIOUS. I still go there when I’m back in the city visiting.
    As most FWANEO towns don’t have a lot of ethnic diversity, I suppose it’s difficult to employ, but I always look for the presence of other folks from the ethnicity of the food I’m having at the restaurant.

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  6. I’m fortunate where I live, as we have many excellent restaurants of all ethnicities – American, Chinese, Thai, Turkish, French, Indian etc. We are spoilt for choice here. However, I’ve only occasionally been to any of these, partly because it isn’t always easy to get vegan food there, although it’s better these days than it was a few years ago, and partly cost. I do have a favourite Thai restaurant, though, called The Banana Tree – it’s open all day and is very reasonably priced, as well as having the most delicious food.

    Like you, we also have a Chinese buffet-style restaurant. I’ve never fancied going there for the same reasons you mentioned in your post – the food sitting around all day and the generous quantity of flies buzzing over and occasionally settling on the food. Ugh! Also, the choices of vegan Chinese food are very limited. I’m glad you have discovered Chinatown Kitchen and that the food was good and plentiful there, too. It’s great when you find somewhere you really like.

    During lockdown, all our restaurants closed, and some never reopened, which was sad, although a few had food you could take away at the desk, as you’ve mentioned you had, too. I guess I could get a takeaway from the Banana Tree during the day, but somehow, it’s not the same eating them on your own as it is with a friend or my family.

    I’m feeling hungry now that I’ve read your post and written my response! Perhaps, I’ll order a takeaway from the Banana Tree tonight – my tummy is rumbling at the thought.

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  7. I love that you worked out how many meals you could get out of ordering to-go 3x/week. That’s so Jeff. And the 150 options and photographs, that’s so American Chinese restaurant anywhere. Nicely done, HT to Siouxsie Sioux.

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    • Sadly Bill, you are the only one who mentioned the Siouxsie Sioux connection. I thought goths would spring out of the woodwork to complain about my treatment of Siouxsie or to praise Christine. Apparently, you know me pretty well. There is actually nothing more “Jeff’ than calculating how many Chinese orders it would take to cover the week.

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      • That’s a funny phrase about goths, I’d think they’d prefer to kind of cower in the woodwork as it were ha ha 😜…my only real claim to being a fan of hers is the fact that my favorite singer is Elizabeth Frazier and her fav was Siouxsie. I think she was aping her on the first couple Cocteau Twins albums. Have a great weekend man. Soak up this summer!

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  8. My mouth was watering by the end of your essay. I haven’t heard “pigged out” in 40 years and it makes me feel like your familiar and that I know you even though I don’t. Your writing appears to bring people from a vast array of backgrounds together. It’s got a beautiful extra ordinary vibe to ordinary daily life stuff. We’ll done.

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