a fire in Berkeley and mandarin chicken

There is, or was until it experienced a major fire overnight, a large, old fashioned Chinese restaurant in downtown Berkeley. I never ate there.  I passed it often, for it is only a few blocks from my home and I always walk if my destination is within Berkeley.  I usually stop and read the menu and then have decided I wasn't hungry.

I never felt called to eat there because the place was always empty, or nearly so, even at times most restaurants would be busy.  It had the look of an old school Chinese restaurant with kitschy attempts to appear Chinese to mostly Americans.

When my daughter was growing up, she and I had a couple favorite restaurants that we nearly always went to. And she and I dined out a lot. The Great Wall was our go-to Chinese place, a nice place with not much kitsch and modest pricing. And white tablecloths! I always got the kung-pau shrimp and she always got the chicken mandarin. We were regular enough that all the hostesses knew we wanted to be seated in the no smoking section, this being back in the day when all restaurants did not yet ban smoking in the whole place, as is the practice now.  The hostess, or host, rarely spoke fluent English. She would raise two fingers as she saw us enter, looking at us to confirm we wanted a table for two. As we approached her more closely, she would say "Two no smoke, 'ight?" And we would say, yes, two no smoking.

We had dinner there every Christmas, having had our family holiday deal meal on Christmas Eve. Then we would go to a movie at the nearby multiplex. Our Christmas tradition.

One block from where I live now is Great China, widely said to be one of the best Chinese restaurants anywhere, as good or better than you find in San Francisco's China town.  This place is always packed.  They serve what is said to be the best Peking Duck anywhere, with many Chinese insisting it tastes better than any Peking Duck they ever had in China. When I first moved here, I wanted to try that Peking Duck, for I have never had Peking Duck, but, six years and counting, I have still not had my Peking Duck. It is a dinner for two, expensive by my standards and, at least in my view, the kind of festive indulgence one only has with a loving, fun friend.  Back in the time when my daughter dined with me, she and I would have had a blast trying that Peking Duck, if I could have gotten her to change from the chicken mandarin. My Rosie was always a picky eater.

When she was a toddler, about once a year, I drove her to my mom's home and left her with mom and her second husband and, in the earliest years I did this, her aunt, my sister.  Mom and Ron had other grandchildren and took them all in stride. Rosie was the first grandchild in my family of origin and all my relatives seemed to enjoy having a baby around again.  Rosie is fourteen years younger than my sole sister, and my sister is fourteen years younger than me. We hadn't had a baby around in fourteen years.

Mom and Ron were frustrated by Rosie's picky eating.  My mom had her flaws, so many that she probably should never have been a mother. My mom, however, was better with her grand children than she had been with her children. She did not try to force Rosie to eat. She and Ron seemed to enjoy the challenge of finding things she would not only eat, but enjoy.

Ron, a bit of a grump but also a cook, would make her all his best dishes. Mom never really cooked. And Ron would bring home white bakery boxes tied in string filled with Napoleons, his favorite decadent pasty, hoping to entice Rosie into eating one. And, although Ron and my mom had both had, even before getting together, strictly enforced the clean plate rule with all their kids (mom had six, Ron had three), they did not enforce it when the first grandchild, my Rosie came along. Instead, they metaphorically tore their hair out trying to find things she would eat.

I feel loving fondness for both Ron and my mom as I recall their favorite solution to Rosie's picky eating. Wendy's.  Rosie would not eat their burgers at that time. And my mom and Ron had not frequented any fast food joints before Rosie began to visit for several weeks at a stretch. So why Wendy's? They had a salad bar, a substantial salad bar in the early eighties.  My mom, who always ate with pious nutritional posing in front of people, esp. her second husband, would just get the salad bar. And little Rosie, in her little squeaky Munchkin voice, said "Grandma, I want the salad bar too."

To mom and Ron's amazement, Rosie ate more off that salad bar than they had ever seen her eat in one setting before. So, bless them, they took to going to Wendy's several times a week while she was visiting.

And they loved to tell me about having figured out how to get her to eat.

My mom, and also Ron, but he died when she was about five years old, was very good to my Rosie. Yet Rosie lived in the same city as her grandmother for the last years of my mom's life and never once contacted her.  My mom had only been good to her.

Back to the Chinese restaurant burning in Berkeley. This is not exactly an essay, just me revving up for my writing day. My morning pages, as it were.

Nearly every time I passed the Chinese restaurant that burned last night, I often had the intuition that it would burn down. And when I walked past it just a couple days ago, I was the most tempted to order something from it than I ever was, with a strong sense that the place was about to go away. I had a dark intuition. I did not think "there will be a fire". I simply sensed finality and darkness.

And do I think it was arson?  Hell yes I do.  The building of that Chinese restaurant is on prime downtown real estate, just a block away from two pending high rises, one a hotel and one an apartment tower. Prime, top dollar real estate.

Berkeley has had a significant increase in fires lately. And every time I see one, I think 'arson'. No trouble getting a demolition permit to demolish a building destroyed by fire. And no trouble selling that property to a real estate speculator who will hope to cash in on the scary gentrification happening in Berkeley and all over the Bay Area.

I wonder if they had a salad bar, mandarin chicken or Peking Duck. Now I will never know. No matter. Rosie is thousands of physical miles away and she might as well be living in an alternate reality. She is not ever going to have Chinese with me ever again, I predict. Plus, if anyone wants good Chinese when they visit me, we go to the Great Wall. Or Chinatown. I like the restaurant in Chinatown where Obama gets dumplings when in town. Someone I love is coming to visit me soon-ish. If he wants to eat in Chinatown, I'm going to push for Obama's choice.  Unless he wants Peking Duck, then we'll stay in Berkeley for that.

And here is a little bit more of nothing about nothing: in the Midwest, any Chinese restaurant I ever ate in always served bowls of white rice, included in the price of any entree. Here on the West Coast, Seattle and here, rice is always extra.  I wonder why this different practice exists. I won't wonder a lot but I wonder.