FEELING DOWN IN THE ‘SHRUMPS’

Nothing says “Chinese New Year” like a dinner out. It doesn’t even have to be Chinese food; I once capped off a quarter-chicken value meal at Pollo Tropical with a fortune cookie, and considered my actions sacri-licious, though not necessarily sacrilegious. But this time, K., her pals S., J., and E., and myself decided to dine in Chinatown, specifically a cozy little restaurant near Elizabeth Street. They served wonderful entrees such as salt-baked shrimp. Their all day dim sum menu, however, pushes them to the top of my personal recommendation list.

If I had to recommend any particular item off that aforementioned dim sum menu, it would be the piping hot soup dumplings, or the finger-lickin' good pan-fried dumplings. Both the pan-fried and the steamed varied in the texture of their thin, external wrappers (Not to mention the fact that the piping hot soup dumplings contained, you guessed it, piping hot soup). The real star of either, however, was the juicy, meaty, slightly spiced interiors, which practically exploded with flavor.

The price of dinner was also very reasonable, considering how much food we ended up ordering (We actually declined the traditional staple of steamed white rice, and left some fish and tofu casserole behind in its hot clay pot). I would recommend the place to anyone, and will heartily recommend it, as soon as I can remember its name. Until then, I will relate the following dim sum menu-related anecdote:

As K. and I perused the single sheet laden with small photographs of every item, and equally tiny captions located beneath each corresponding picture, we soon became aware that the restaurant served something called “shrump dumplings.” This caused initial confusion, since the flip side of the menu listed another item called “shrimp dumplings.” Were they different items? They looked exactly the same, though that isn’t saying much. The main visual characteristic of all dumplings is the outer wrapper, which renders shrimp, shrump, beef, or chicken more or less alike, especially when projected on a one inch-by-one inch photograph.

It didn’t take us much more perusing to figure out that the restaurant printed the same menu on both sides of the sheet. They just happened to list them in different sequences. We found this initially disorienting, but mostly harmless. But even after we pared down our selections to a mere half-dozen, and put the single album page away in deference to the entrée list proper, a thought continued to gnaw at me: It was impossible to tell one dumpling from another by the pictures presented to us. Also, the images were sorted differently on both sides of the menu page. And yet, here we were, smug in our assumptions (or at least, I was smug in mine) that “shrimp dumplings” and “shrump dumplings” were altogether different things.

But how could we be sure of this? Each side of the dim sum menu featured fifteen photos, arranged in three rows by five rows. For all we know, the aggregate number of dim sum items was sixteen, so whoever made up the menus used shrimp on only one side, and shrump on the other. Hey, anything is possible. You know what else is possible? That shrump is the most mouth-watering shellfish in the world, exponentially more delicious than shrimp. And for all we know, that restaurant we went to for Chinese New Year is the only eatery in New York City that serves shrump, but no one knows, because everyone assumes that “shrump” is a typo.

Now I know what you’re going to say: “Phil, if you care so damn much, you can always go back to that restaurant and order shrump.” But for all we know, after K., S., J., E. and I gave our non-shrump order to the waitress, who brought it over to the kitchen, the following exchange went on in the backroom:

Kitchen Worker: Looks like we have to throw out the last box of shrump. It’s past the expiration date.*

Chef (Exploding with rage): Why doesn’t anyone ever order the shrump? That’s it! No more shrump! We are never ordering shrump again!*

(*Translated from Mandarin)

So there you have it. Quite possibly, the shrump boat has sailed, and the only way that I or anyone I know will ever get to savor the succulent flavor of fresh shrump is to order it someplace like Cambodia or New Orleans, where it’s served with optional botulism scare. Perhaps that isn’t fair, but that’s life. During tough times like this, I am reminded of advice my mother once gave me for similar situations: “Accept the things you cannot change, and always order an extra shui may.”