In Praise of Shitty Generic Asian Food

Moving is hell. I’m starting to remember that. It’s been five years since our last move, and the first move with two children underfoot. Do you have any idea how much garbage kids collect? And each broken toy, each half used strip of stickers, every scrap of mangled paper is as precious to them as the well loved stuffed animal they’ve slept with every day of their lives.

All the same, we are doing triage on all of the junk drawers, closets, and toy bins. Real trash is being thrown away, usable items are getting donated, precious things are being labeled for storage, and essential items will be moved to New Jersey.

Miraculously we are getting through this without a lot of tears. But it’s stressful for everyone, and it takes a ton of time.

So there hasn’t been a lot of cooking going on around these parts. Not only are we leaning more heavily on convenience foods, but we’re eating out a lot more too. Really, given the constraints of bedtime, we’re mostly picking up restaurant food and bringing it in. Mealeo has proved to be very convenient.

In a fit of exhaustion, last Friday I hit a new low.

Our typical Friday night dinner is a simple affair. A roast chicken from Hannaford,  a challah, and some kind of vegetable on the side. It’s typically string beans, but peas or corn sometimes come into play. In the summer, it could even be escalivada with produce from the CSA.

Last Friday I already even had the chicken and the challah in the house. Really all I needed to do was heat it up in the oven. It would have taken 25 minutes, and it would have been delicious.

But I was dead to the world, and after a tough week, Mrs. Fussy had no interest in heating up the house with the oven either. So we pulled up Mealeo and I had a crazy idea.

How about Ichiban?

People love Ichiban here. Yes, the name is Japanese. And yes, they have sushi. But they also have an extensive Chinese menu. And the last time I ate at the restaurant, the placemats were decorated with the Chinese zodiac. Thankfully, they stay away from Thai, Vietnamese and Korean dishes.

So you can get miso soup with your General Tso’s tofu. Young Master Fussy loves miso soup. He also loves chow fun, so we got an order of that too, and some “Szechuan” string beans to round out the meal. There was also white rice, which we almost never eat, much to the dismay of the children.

Oh, and naturally since we ordered more than $20 worth of food, the restaurant threw in a free order of teriyaki chicken skewers.

I have to admit that it was a fun treat to eat these gloppy, sticky and salty sauces. It’s been a long time since I’ve had classic Americanized Chinese food. Honestly, it doesn’t matter much what you fry and slather with General Tso sauce, it’s going to be tasty (if a bit heavy). The chow fun was bland and had no wok char, but it was easy to perk up at the table with good soy sauce and sriracha.

Those “soy sauce” packets that were included with the meal went straight into the trash. They are literally nothing more than colored salty water. Seriously, you should read the ingredients. The same goes for the duck sauce which is just colored high fructose corn syrup. Hot mustard was indeed hot mustard, but the packets just looked nasty, so they got tossed too.

Mrs. Fussy noted, and I agreed, that the string beans would have benefited from some ground pork. And despite being labeled Szechuan, and observing the presence of red pepper flakes in the dish, there was no notable heat. Really, it bore little resemblance to any of the dishes I’ve had that come from the province.

Still. It was a fun meal. We washed it down with the 2012 Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc-Viognier. Dinner was truly effortless. We didn’t have to turn on the oven, there were copious leftovers, and the whole thing for a family of four came in under $28.

That’s about the price of one hibachi combination dinner at Hana just a few doors down the road. It’s no wonder Ichiban is so popular.

Still, earlier in the day I had stopped into Ala Shanghai to get the kids some soup dumplings. Do you know there isn’t a Japanese dish on their menu? And the soup dumplings keep on getting better and better. Maybe in a future Photo Friday I’ll show you how thin they were able to make their dumpling wrappers.

But I have to stop eating like this. Chinese for lunch, soft serve at On the Farm, generic Asian for dinner. It’s all going to my waistline. And the stress of moving isn’t helping either. Luckily I hear that New Jersey cuisine is all about clean and healthy living.

Or maybe I find a way to start exercising.