Tonight's Dinner: September 30, 2012

Tonight the Chins and Fongs got together at Imperial Restaurant for an  Autumn Moon Festival dinner. My extent of knowledge about the Moon Festival growing up is that we had to eat gross moon cakes.  ...And that in Harvest Moon my farmer girl would have to take a day off for the Autumn Festival which meant that I would lose a day of farming.  The moon cakes are still disgusting to me, mind you.  As a child I would eat them because I was fooled by the "cake" and would forget how terrible they really are.  My dad describes them to be like fruit cakes with a salted duck egg in the center.  First of all, I don't enjoy fruit cake.  Secondly, why, why, why, would you put a salted duck egg into a dense sweet cake?  I always say that I am a pretty traditional Chinese person when it comes to food (since I don't speak the language or follow a lot of the customs), but this is one food that I do not abide by.

Normally, my family doesn't observe the Moon Festival, but Mr. Fong said it's a good excuse to get together and eat good food.  This was the first time that my family had been to Imperial.  I've been several times with the Fongs.  It's pretty good Chinese food for Concord.  Of course, Mr. Fong knows how to order and goes there so often that he knows the owners, which means we get special treatment.  The head waiter has taken a liking to me because we are from the same region in China.  All of the other wait staff and owners of the restaurant are from the area where Mr. Fong is from.  So the head waiter and I are minorities and I suppose he feels a bond.  He always asks me if I want mango pudding for dinner and then points at Nick and says, none for you.  He brings it out for Nick anyway, but I get a kick out of it.

This sucker was four pounds!  Poor Nick couldn't eat any, but his parents
ordered a tofu dish just for him.  It's one of his favorites.  The rest of us chowed
down on this beast of a lobster. We didn't take pics of all the food since it was
pretty standard Chinese fair, but I thought this lobster was something that needed
to be documented.  We also had a black chicken soup with escargot and conch
that was very similar to something that my grandma makes.  Christopher and
 I were slurping it down.