We’re not stubborn. You’re stubborn.

So it all started in Chinatown circa 1985. Our estimable matriarch, Carol Williams, had a few rules when it came to eating. Okay, she had a lot, but a few were really important. Especially in Chinatown. It was a different time. Every Chinatown, even now, seems like a little fiefdom to itself, but back in the, suddenly treasured, 80’s, multiply it by a factor of a hundred. Rule Number One was if she walked in to a Chinese restaurant east of Broadway, in the vicinity of Canal Street, and you saw more white folks than you could count on one hand, it was time to leave. When we traveled abroad “tourist trap” was like a four letter word. With more letters. Suffice to say, to this day we are always looking first and foremost for the real dish. The legit scoop.

Chinese restauranteurs aim to please. Many American customers have no inclination to use chopsticks. We are an uncoordinated family, but, ever the contrarians, we were determined to buck the trend. Just to be clear we have no problem with people not using chopsticks. If you want a fork, use a fork. Makes sense. It’s what we grew up eating with, at every meal. In the mid-eighties, when we reached our teen years, we began to try in earnest to eat food with two un-pronged long pieces of wood or plastic or metal (metal is kind of diabolical for the beginner). The waiters in many restaurants, doubtless with the best of intentions framed by many past experiences, would often bring us a fork.

When someone brings you a fork unbidden in a Chinese restaurant. That, dear eater, is the Fork of Shame. Unless they are bringing everyone in the place a fork. This is anathema to us. To be pegged as a dilettante eater, with only an interest in eating Americanized, ethnic foods, gives us the willies. That is why, when ordering for the first time at a new restaurant, we wave in the offal or the spicy fermented raw crab. We’re not messing around folks. Keep your fork of shame, even if some us (>cough< Doug >cough<) may sometimes need it. It is better to fumble than feel out of place. When the waiter’s esteem is won, we beam with a pride far disproportionate to what we have achieved. And embodied in this ethos (humor us) is what is at the very core of our food pursuits and, by extension, the essence of our blog.