Our “Place To Be” — A Restaurant Review

April 22nd, 2009. Published under ano ikaon mo?. 7 Comments.

Just as Gaisano Department Store is the “place to be” for Ilonggo shoppers on a budget, the Golden Dragon in LA Chinatown is the “place to be”  for the Baylon family when they want to eat out without spending too much. As long as my husband is not working, Saturdays mean lunch at the Golden Dragon. “Can we go somewhere else?”, I plead. “I don’t like chicken feet anymore,” grumbled my son. It used to be his favorite – those yummy, yellow, gelatinous, and edematous feet, which remind me of diabetic patients in nursing homes.

Wubbzy, my daughter’s favorite cartoon character, sang “Too much of a good thing is not a good thing, it’s never fun.”  We’ve been there so many times that my three-year-old has developed a sort of affinity for the jovial Buddha statue that greets customers at the entry to the main dining hall. I pointed at it once and asked, “Athena,who’s that?” Without batting an eyelash, she declared that it was her daddy.  Amused that she had right away seen the similarities between the deity and her two-hundred-pounder father, I laughed out loud. Her dad gave her a bland smile and muttered, “I need to lose weight.”  I repeated the question to my little girl. Sensing that her previous statement elicited a strong reaction, she gave a different answer this time. “He’s my Lolo”, she corrected herself. Her grandfather, who’s always with us on these lunches, is bald like Buddha.

My Chinese friend, Carmelita Lim, introduced me to this place years ago. I introduced my husband to it and we’ve been coming back ever since. The food is good but it’s a bit greasy. They have a wide selection on the menu. What we like the most are the many dimsum carts that go around the room with bowls and small plates filled with pretty-looking food.  There’s siomai, turnip cakes, steamed vegetables, steamed buns, baked buns, salads, noodles, bread, multi-colored jell-o, custard cakes, maja-blanca-like dessert, wonton soup, and so much more.

My cholesterol-rich father-in-law sticks to the steamed chinese broccoli and seaweed salad.  Athena only eats steamed meatballs and chicken siopao. My son’s new favorite is the braised beef and the curried chicken baked in puff pastry. My husband, who has vowed to be a vegan, struggles with his self control. And I eat whatever I want. Selecting food from those carts is always fun for me and my family, just as much as keeping the food steady in between two chopsticks. Now I understand why the Chinese drink tea during meals. It washes the grease off your palate, taking away the aftertaste of food. Then you’re ready to chow down some more. It allows you to eat like a pig without feeling like a pig.

In addition to the gustatory adventure, you also get to experience a linguistic adventure. Sometimes when a waiter offers you something from her cart, you have to stop and think hard, carefully process what she’s telling you. When they ask if you want something that sounds like chicken nana (meaning puss in Filipino) or nono (meaning dwarf in Filipino), they’re asking if you want chicken noodles. Once I was handed a small plate filled with three pieces of  bread. The bread had a shiny yellow center. The waiter said,”Try it. It’s seaweed.”  I’ve never tasted yellow seaweed baked in a bread so I took it. After one bite, I was confused.  The yellow seaweed tasted like custard. Wait…it was custard! Seaweed, I realized, meant “sweet”. When we left the restaurant I had a richer “Chinese-English” vocabulary.

And don’t get me started on the restaurant’s sanitation rating… For years, I’ve never seen the Golden Dragon display an “A” on its doors.  It’s always been “B”. This year they slipped down a notch, but still prouder than ever. Even with a “C” rating from the sanitation department, the customers keep coming. They keep eating with gusto.  My husband, like the others, is unfazed by the big red “C”. I am a little apprehensive. When they put the food on the table I turn to him and say, “I wonder how their kitchen looks like.” As he inspects the tempting dishes on the cart, I warn, “Don’t get anything that has milk in it. It might contain melamine.” My mother-in-law (who is convinced that the Chinese have an evil plot to rule the world by  slowly poisoning people with lead, formalin, and melamine) nods her head vigorously.

Hubby pays no heed. He tells me that all my comments are just scare tactics so we can go somewhere more upscale, like Louise’s Trattoria in Los Feliz. Why not? Golden Dragon has the ambiance of a Sulpicio Lines ship cafeteria.  The dining room is crowded and filled with the din of silverware and people talking. Not relaxing at all.  Sometimes, while you’re sucking the flesh off the phalanges of your chicken feet, you’ll see a small and consumptive-looking man pushing a large trash bin from the kitchen to an exit across the dining hall. How delightful!

I reminded my husband, “That man with the trash bin in the middle of the room looks like your friend, Oplok.”  He squinted his eyes in an effort to recall the name and the face. “Oplok, the guy at the Dumangas-Balabag jeepney terminal . It was his job to call for passengers. He had TB, remember?”, I told him. He marvelled at the resemblance. Somehow the thought of a kitchen personnel who might have TB didn’t sit well with me.  ”Do you think that guy has TB?”, I asked. Hubby eyed his plate suspiciously for 2-3 seconds. Just when I thought I have made him see the light, he reached for the plate of stuffed mushrooms with black bean sauce, Oplok-look-alike already light years away from his mind.

Several months ago he discreetly pointed at a bespectacled man seated a few tables away from us. He had a confident posture and an air of quiet authority about him. Hubby whispered, “That’s Dr. Yamamoto. He’s the best cardio-thoracic surgeon at St. Vincent Medical Center.  Drives only the best cars. When he transferred to another hospital, all the ICU nurses went with him because he asked the hospital to increase their hourly rate. That’s how influential he is.”  He looked at me meaningfully, with raised eyebrows. “Imagine a man like that eating here!”, he continued.

Hubby’s Subtext: Stop your yapping. If a bigtime health professional like him can eat here without fear, so can you.

I guess Loiuse’s Trattoria will have to wait ’til my next birthday.