Man, I love the food options here in Springfield, VA. I needed to go food shopping, but I was incredibly hungry. That’s never a good idea, so I had to eat something. I had seen this fairly non-descript restaurant with the uninspiring name of “Canton Cafe” near the Trader Joe’s I usually go to many times but I had never been hungry enough to actually give the place a go.
Here’s the thing, ever since I had really good Chinese food, the stuff here in the States has been really unappetizing. Believe it or not, the best Chinese food I’ve had wasn’t in Beijing (although the duck there was amazing), it was actually in Yemen. Im just a little too squeamish to enjoy a dish that I know is made up of chicken cartilage, goose intestines, or jellyfish. That’s the kind of stuff you routinely got over in China. Even when the ingredients were a little tamer, they inevitably left the heads on the thing you were eating, often times gracefully turned back to face you. They couldn’t do that in Yemen. The places I ate in were still mostly catering to the Chinese population, so the food had the same vibe as the stuff in Beijing, but they had to stick with more standard cuts of meat, vegetables, etc. It was amazing…
That’s a long winded way of saying that I missed that more authentic way of cooking. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the menu at the Canton Cafe and saw a dish called “Duck’s blood with yellow scallions.” Yowza, that sure sounds like the stuff I could get back in China. Sure enough, the menu was full of duck webbing, heads of things, etc. All of those things were listed under the “Chef’s specialties” there was another section for the more typical American fare of chicken with cashews, etc. I got one of the Americanized dishes (general Tso’s) both because I’m a little squeamish and I didn’t want to spend 20 bucks on lunch. It was a cut above the typical stuff I get, I’ll go back again when the Chinese mood strikes me.