The Oriental Restaurant was the first and only source for Chinese food in my 1950’s American community. It was something unusual and became a hit with my family very quickly. Even my grandparents, kids from the back woods of Idaho, became fond of the unusual food mixtures.
Chow Mien, in those days, was a mixture of celery, onions, water chestnuts and bean sprouts with julienne chicken, pork or small shrimp served on top of crispy noodles. It was served with rice cooked in a way no rice had ever been cooked in our house, fried with egg, vegetables and a savory sauce. Been sprouts, water chestnuts, rice with egg, these ingredients and mixtures were unusual but so tasty. My Dad expanded his menu favorites to include Almond Chicken, sort of a Chinese version of good ole fried chicken, breaded chicken pieces with a savory sauce graced with chopped almonds. The Won Ton soup preceding the dishes was a simple clear broth with a fat stuffed noodle. Noodles and broth were familiarly American but seemed oddly exotic served in this simple way and the adding of soy sauce was my first introduction to enhancing dishes with sauces.
The ubiquitous soy sauce that sat atop each table to enhance the dishes served played a role in one of my earliest memories as a maturing child. I remember sitting in a booth with my folks at the Oriental Restaurant and hearing them jokingly refer to the soy sauce as ‘bug juice’. I believed it and think it was much later as an emerging adult that I thought about that, learned different and went on to expand my ethnic food horizons. I wonder now about the ‘bug juice’ incident, was it a clue about some remaining reticence of common American folks to trying foods from cultures very unfamiliar. I have fond memories of the Oriental Restaurant and of being introduced to different foods. It was the beginning of my awareness of lives different from my own.
