Garlic and Sapphires (27 page)

It
was
as dense and intense as Hong Kong—little grocery stores and bakeries and restaurants crowded together in a dizzying mass. Men stood on corners spooning clouds of homemade tofu out of big silver pots and frying fragrant turnip cakes on jerry-rigged griddles balanced on cardboard boxes. Billows of anise and five-spice announced that women were cooking red-cooked oxtails on one side of the street while the competition on the other side dished up bowls of fish balls and steaming tripe. Frogs escaped from the straw baskets that held them, hopping down the streets, dodging men wheeling whole roasted pigs and racks of ducks.

After the boisterous streets, KB Garden Restaurant seemed as cold and quiet as an icebox. Shiny philodendrons, still wrapped in congratulatory red ribbons, stood at attention in the front of the room. Tanks hugged every wall, fish swimming in frantic circles as they waited to become dinner. Peering through the throng of waiting customers, we could see that the restaurant was a vast, high-ceilinged hall, so large that the other side of the room might have been in a different state.

Dozens of women trolled the room, swooshing down the aisles with laden carts, stopping to hold out baskets of dumplings—har gow and siu mai and some I'd never seen before—and plates of vegetables, roasted meats, pastries.

A hostess in a slim silk dress handed us a number and we waited our turn, growing hungrier and hungrier as the minutes passed. “Dim sum with two people is so embarrassing,” said Carol. “You end up ordering more than you can eat, just for the variety, and then everyone looks at you as if you were a great big pig.”

The young woman in front of us turned to look at her and I experienced a quick moment of embarrassment; engulfed in the sing-song sound of Cantonese, we had been talking the way tourists do, as if nobody could understand what we were saying. “It
is
uncomfortable to be alone when eating dim sum,” she said. Her face was Chinese and very beautiful, her accent clipped and very British. “The moment I walked through that door I wished I had not come. “ She tossed a strand of long black hair over one shoulder and smoothed her suit. Was it Chanel or just a knock-off? I couldn't tell, but I understood that she felt as out of place as we did.

“Would you join us?” I was taking a chance.

“I would not be
de trop
?”

“No, please, you would be doing us a favor. We're eager to try as much as possible.”

“You are certain?” she asked, her face softening. Her name was Diana, she was from Hong Kong, and she was doing graduate work at N.Y.U. “Sometimes I so much miss being at home. I am filled with a longing to hear familiar sounds, smell familiar smells, be among faces that are not white,” she said. “So I come to Flushing. But once here I realize that I am as foreign here as I am in Manhattan, and I understand that the idea was not good. This bears no resemblance to home; the people are poor, their accents unfamiliar.”

“And the food?” I asked.

She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “The food. That is not unfamiliar. That is why I come.”

The hostess led us to a table and I began turning this way and that, searching out the good carts. Meanwhile Diana sat like a statue, calmly raising one manicured hand. “We will now order tea,” she said, issuing instructions to the waiter in rapid Chinese.

“If you do not order tea,” she said, “they bring you the cheapest swill they can buy. It is dreadful stuff, nothing you would want to drink. But even if you do not care about the quality of the tea, by demanding the best you make the establishment understand that you know what is good and are willing to pay for it. And then you get a better meal.”

“What did you order?” I asked.

“Iron Goddess of Mercy,” she said. “It is always my preference. It comes from the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian. The mountains there are very steep and in the old days monkeys were trained to climb up and pick the leaves. It is a lovely story, but the tea is even lovelier and extremely fragrant.”

The tea was strong and very dark with a taste that reminded me of whiskey, of olives, of cold winter nights. “I asked the man to bring us some duck webs in oyster sauce as well; they are very good here and I will be devastated if they run out. And I also ordered some big dishes. You must not leave without tasting the shrimp.”

She pointed an elegantly manicured fingernail toward a tank on the wall; the waiter was dipping a net into the water. He came up with a tangle of shrimp angrily waving their feelers at the intruder. He dumped them unceremoniously onto a tray and a waitress rushed off to weigh them. Two minutes later he was setting a plate of rosy shrimp, steaming slightly in their shells, onto our table. Their feelers were still.

“You simply pull off the shells and dip them in this sauce,” said Diana, removing her rings as if she were rolling up her sleeves. With one rapid motion she slipped the shrimp from its carapace, dipped it into the soy and scallion sauce, and put it into her mouth. Her small white teeth closed around it. “Excellent,” she said. “This reminds me of home.”

The shrimp were plump and sweet, with a soft delicacy that was not like any shrimp I've ever tasted. For a moment I imagined that we were actually in Hong Kong . . . and then I was back, eating another shrimp, and another, the shells piling up into a small mound on my plate.

Great platters of green snow pea shoots were set on the table, and a whole sole, simply steamed in ginger. Diana was stopping carts filled with clams in black bean sauce, and tiny spareribs coated in rice flour. We ate bowls of ginger-laden congee, the thick porridge hot enough to cook the slivers of raw fish served on the side. The duck webs were all texture, gelatinous and so soft that the bones dropped from them when you put them in your mouth and all you tasted was mushrooms, soy sauce, ginger, anise, and wine reverberating down to your toes. At the end we had little dot hearts—the deep yellow tarts made of lard and filled with sweetened egg yolks—that are one of life's primal pleasures. And then, finally, those crisp little sesame balls that melt into such sensuous chewiness it seems like a trick.

We didn't talk much—just ate the food and watched the carts and listened to the activity in the big room. “I am so happy,” Diana said, sighing, when the bowls were empty. “It was lovely to have your company. Please be my guests.”

“That's out of the question,” I replied.

“But it would give me such pleasure,” she said.

Wondering how to stop this argument, I had a sudden thought. “I have a great favor to ask of you.”

“Yes?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“I want to order a banquet. I need your help.”

The eyebrow went down. When I explained the purpose of the banquet, her lips curved into a small smile. “The chairman of the New York Times Corporation?” she breathed. “I would be very honored.”

I had forgotten how much the Chinese respect status. When Diana summoned our waiter and asked for both the bill and the banquet manager, she looked positively regal.

The man who presented himself was not impressed. He was young and sharp, with his hair slicked back, his tuxedo pressed, his shirt starched. He doled out a supercilious smile meant to tell us how lucky we were to have his attention.

Diana took his measure, swept him with a cool look, and spoke in a commanding tone we had not heard before. He stuck his hands in his pockets and gave a deliberately careless answer.

Diana's face turned to ice and her voice became a bark. The man was startled into standing at attention. She said something in an even sterner voice and he stood up straighter. Ten minutes later, when he pulled his card out of his pocket, all the starch had left his body.

She glanced at the card and handed it to me. “Now you give him one of yours,” she said in a different voice, one that said she was tired of all this and ready to depart. The man respectfully accepted my card, saying in careful English, “I can promise you, ladies, that this will be a banquet to remember.” Diana nodded a curt dismissal and he shot off before she could change her mind.

“What did you say to him?” I asked Diana.

“I began by informing him that you desire to have a banquet for some very important people. A dozen, I said—is that about right?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “But it must be, more or less.”

“He asked if you were willing to spend three hundred dollars.”

“That's so cheap!”

“An insult,” she said, flicking it away with disdainful fingers. “But merely the opening shot in the negotiation. I replied, very casually, ‘Oh, we might spend more. Maybe even five or six hundred dollars.' Then I paused and said, so low that he had to ask me to repeat it, ‘They might even spend eight hundred eighty-eight.' That impressed him. It's a big number and eights are lucky to us. It showed him that I was a serious customer.”

“What did he say to that?” I asked, fascinated.

“Oh, he was impressed. He said, ‘Well, for that I could do a lobster salad.'”

My face fell. “Lobster salad? Who wants lobster salad?”

Diana laughed. “Please do not look so sad,” she said. “We were negotiating. Of course I told him that was not what we had in mind. I said”—and here her voice took on the contemptuous tone she had used with the banquet manager—“I see you don't have anyone in the kitchen who is capable of cutting vegetables. Too bad. I thought this was supposed to be a good restaurant. Oh well, there are plenty more we can try.'”

“What did he say?”

“He was very quick to contradict me. Of course, he said, of course their people could cut vegetables. And then I said that we only wanted the banquet if the head chef, the
dai si fu,
was going to cook it. I said that we needed a person who understands the way to treat important people.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he could accommodate us. He said that last night they did a banquet where they served a phoenix with five thousand feathers on its back. That's a complicated cold plate. He said that the night before they served pandas at play, with pandas made of tofu, playing with carrot balls. It sounded quite ornate; the beasts were cavorting around a gelatin lake on which daikon swans were swimming. The landscape was dotted with broccoli trees and there were paths made of cold meats and walls built of sugared walnuts.”

“Wow!” I said. “Sounds impressive.”

“Perhaps,” she conceded, “but I think he was just talking. It's a famous dish and I don't believe that they really served it. So I yawned and said, ‘Pandas at play is pleasant. But don't you ever do anything original?'”

“You didn't!”

“I did! And then he said that if we were willing to pay the men in the kitchen for their trouble he was sure they would produce something really special, something no one had ever seen before.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “Joe will like that.”

“I asked him what he took us for, that of course we intended to pay the men in the kitchen. We hardly expected them to do extra work for free. I said that we were entertaining big shots, white people who spend much of their time in Hong Kong. I threw down a challenge. I said that all my friends say it is impossible to get good food in Flushing.”

“Did that impress him?”

“Definitely.” Diana's smile flashed briefly. “That is when Raymond asked for your card and gave me his. He went back into the kitchen to make up a menu. He will fax it to you this afternoon.”

“What do I do then?” I asked.

“Send it back!” she replied. “Whatever he offers, you must not accept it. He'll think that you don't care, or that you don't know what you're doing. You have to tell him it's not good enough, challenge him to be better, fax him back, change the menu a few times, be demanding. That's how it's done.”

“I never could have done this without you,” I said.

“I know,” she replied. “And now I don't feel badly about allowing you to pay for my lunch. But I must go; I want to buy some superior shark's fin and fermented tofu. They will tide me over until I come back.”

We walked out of the restaurant, going in opposite directions. Not until the subway doors had closed did I realize that I had neither her last name nor her number.

“Some reporter you turned out to be,” said Carol.

 

 

 

 

 

T
he menu arrived a few hours later. Carol and I stood by the fax machine as the document, half in ornate Chinese calligraphy, came rolling off the machine.

I read the first dish and rejoiced; Raymond had suggested the many-feathered phoenix surrounded by jellyfish, spicy pork kidney, beef shank, pork shank, little fried fish, jellied eels, thousand-year-old eggs, smoked fish, and squid with celery. “He took Diana at her word!” I said.

“Maybe,” said Carol, “but what's this?” Her finger was pointing to the next line. “Egg rolls?”

I shuddered. It was an insult.

“And this?” she said. On the line below the white-cut chicken and the eight-treasure winter melon soup was lobster salad.

“These sound good,” I said, noting the next line: fried roe shrimp and whole steamed flounder with its own fried bones.

“Yeah,” she said, “but look at this! It sounds like some tired dish from Chinatown.” Her finger was resting next to something called steak kue. It was followed by Peking duck and fried rice served in pineapples. The finale was sweet dim sum.

“Diana didn't get all that much respect!” I said.

“He must be testing you,” said Carol. “But at least he offered the phoenix with a thousand feathers.”