Chinese New Year

Dinner at aunt's restaurant China Gourmet. Same old menu, same old string bean beef, walnut chicken, chow mein with the same overly soysauced taste.

It's a small place, the kitchen plus the dining area probably no more than a couple hundred square feet. The clamoring woks and spatula and the shouting orders added a hole-in-the-wall feel and actually made the place more Chinese eventhough the items are white Chinese food. It's the first time I actually observed how uncle run the business, chatting and joking (consisting of mainly generic comments and greetings and hearty but transparently business smiles) with the customers, in my opinion probably trying too hard to add a homely feel to just another Chinese fast food restaurant, but it must've worked over the years. That's what experience gives you I suppose, restaurant after restaurant after restaurants.