Christina: I want to find a place with cheap food. We've gotta go to the Chinatown here.
Louis: (laughs) There's no Chinatown here! Do you really think there's a Chinatown?
Christina: Of course. There's a Chinatown everywhere.
Louis: There's no Chinatown here. There has been no mass immigration of Asians here the way there is in America.
Christina: No, there's a Chinatown here. It's where cheap food is.
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ZING!!! The Asian Arch.
There is a Chinatown in London. (Was there ever any doubt?)
Travel guide for Asians (courtesy of my dad):The one and only sure indicator of a good Chinese restaurant is a restaurant full of Asians. This probably also means the food is cheap (but so good), and the decor is hopeless.
And YES! - There is a good restaurant in Chinatown we found (and we looked in every single window to see whether they were crowded with Asians), the food WAS cheap (by London standards), and the decor was just abonimable (our table was in the basement of the building).
Curiously enough, we also noticed the Asian accent in the UK is the same as the Asian accent in the US.
(Other notes important to Asians: No fortune cookies to take as a stash. Charge of £1.60 for each serving of white rice. Cash only. We asked for change back for our bill, and they did not understand our American English so we had to ask again for the change.)
And like any good Asian restaurant, we cannot remember the name of it after we left.
1 comment:
One comment needs to be made about London Chinatown in regards to the decision making process. All of the restaurants on the main row in London have lighted menus outside near the door. When trying to make a decision on where to go, we would review the menu selections and prices as well as assess the demographics of the customers (as discussed above). However, each restaurant had a young Chinese woman (probably around age 20-24) standing guard outside or on alert inside for any potential customers. I remember seeing one person out of the corner of my eyes moving at a brisk pace through the restaurant while we were doing our menu review. Each occurrence included bringing out 'actual' menus and telling us different combinations we could make in what seemed like a concerted effort to overwhelm us with choices we couldn't resist. One girl asked: "so, table for 2?". Neither of us really bought into that type of marketing and drove us away from a bunch of places. It kind of reminded me of the tough Italian guys who try to usher you into their restaurants in Little Italy in New York.
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