Food, Self, and Society

This past Saturday I went to dim sum with my girlfriend and her parents. Instead of going to china town in downtown Manhattan, we went to the chinatown in Brooklyn. Since I’ve never been to a dim sum in my life I had no idea to expect when I heard “Chinese breakfast”. I thought “well, breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, so it cant be that different!” When we arrived at the restaurant, I noticed that we were proibably the only, and I mean ONLY white people there. Yes, I did look around just to make sure. To me this was very new and a little intimidating but I realzed that it only added to the authenticity of the restaurant. Another really cool thing about it is that we sat in big round tables with complete strangers. The table in a way unifies the people that are seated in it in the one main thing everyone has in common: We are here to eat! Sooner or later we started making friends with the people on the table. Now this was the best part, there were little food carts going around everywhere. Basically you would stop the and tell them what you wanted, they would give it to you, and stamp your ticket. I’ve never been to anytihng like this and it was fascinating. Anoter tihng I noticed was that all of the people that were pushing the carts and serving the food were women, and the waiters and sitters were all me. Anyway, it was the first time I tried steamed pork buns, and I must say it was one of the tastier things ive ever had. The dough and the filling wre both so sweet and so savory! Another thing I should note is that the restaurant and how they renovated and catered the place made you feel like you were eating in China. I was very proud of myself because this is the first time I’ve never had to ask te waiter for a fork, it was very exciting. I finally learned how to efficiently use my chop sticks, and after a while it became pretty easy. After we left the restaurant we went to an asian supermarket. Since we were reading Omnivores Dilemma, I decided to look around and check out the ingrediants of certain prodcuts to compare. What I noticed is that almost non of the produdts use high fructose corn syrup, instead they use pure cane sugar, no additives, etc. I guess if you can’t afford farmers markets in new york city, your best bet is to shop at foreign food stores.