The (Lido Galilee) Pagoda @ Tiberias, Israel

Serves: Lunch, Dinner
Cost: ???
Experience: ^_^
Decor: Casual dining

So, my first posting to this in a while, and it's for a place halfway around the world. However, them's the breaks. I was also far too tickled by the thought that I spent a full day traveling to Israel and end up at a Chinese restaurant.


However, as the experience rating reveals, this will not be a harangue of the metaphorical slaughtering of my people's ethnic food in other nations' hands. The Pagoda is a kosher Chinese, Thai, and Japanese sushi restaurant which our driver had highly recommended as we toured northern Israel. While in general I tend to avoid eating Chinese outside of my mother's kitchen - not simply because I'm spoiled after being raised all my life on home-cooked Chinese, but quite honestly, because I feel that when I am out of my parents' house I should try the local ethnic cuisine - I would not deny others the pleasure of indulging. Thus, I put up no protest when we drove up to this delightfully touristy facade:

A kosher Chinese restaurant. Who would have thought? All these years, I had absolutely delighted in horrifying friends and acquaintances with tales of our being equal-opportunity eaters, and here was one that did not serve pork, was closed during Shabbath, etc.

But, anyway, on to the food! We started with some soups, but instead of the usual bowls, we were served the wonton and the hot and sour soup in these wonderful, personal hot-pot-like devices:

 

There is, no doubt, a technical term for them, but I can't for the life of me remember right now. Anyway, there are more important things to talk about, such as the flavor - these two dishes were the first sign that this meal was going to be something to talk about, and not because some foreigners had tried to imitate Chinese food as badly as how some of the road signs had been translated into English!

I thought the wonton skins were a little too thick - thick even for regular dumplings, I felt, much less the traditional thin-skinned wontons - but I could not fault the flavors (even if the filling was not made from pork - sigh). The sweet and sour was wonderful, even if it was not anything like any traditional sweet and sour soup I had ever had. Beyond the more usual chicken and mushrooms, it included bean sprouts, some minty-type greens (borrowed from Thai flavors, I suspect), and tomatoes. However, the chef did an excellent job in blending all these new flavors into the more familiar sweet-and-sour without overwhelming it - it still retained that pleasant, warming burn afterward with the tangy sharpness of vinegar and a hint of pepper. Beautifully done!

I had ordered the Thai fish in a red and coconut curry sauce as my main dish, while the others had picked out a pad thai and a cashew chicken with vegetables:

I thought this centerpiece was quite a cute and unexpectedly pretty conceit - I won't pretend that I know what it is for sure, but if that really is basil, I had no idea the flowers were so aesthetically pleasing.

I never made it to the cashew chicken, to be honest. I had been absolutely stuffed, between my entree and sneaking in a few mouthfuls of the pad thai. Once again, the taste did not disappoint - the flavors were well blended, and tasted authentic. Considering that most of the Chinese restaurants in southern California have Mexicans making the food these days, I certainly do not think that only Chinese or other Asians can manage to balance flavors in a traditional manner. But I am not ashamed to admit I was surprised by how well they have managed to make it taste as if I was back in California eating at one of my parents' favorites. (Well, for all I know, there really is an Asian working there as head chef, but everyone else I saw there were notably non-Asian, and I'm more than willing to give them credit.)

This last dish is the short ribs. The glaze on the two ribs which I stole looked and tasted beautiful. My only complaint would be that the portions were far too fatty and the meat slightly on the chewy side, even if they were soft enough to slice off with a dull knife (not to insult their silverware) - and on the subject of fat, I'm somewhat ambivalent. After all, some of the most famous Chinese dishes are based on literally marinating slices of pork fat for direct consumption, the fattier the better, and marbled fillets owe their extraordinary tenderness and flavor to the fat which gives them their pebbled appearance. But over the years, I've started liking my cuts of meat to be only moderately fatty, and couldn't stomach more than a few bites with a thin layer still clinging to the meat while discarding the remaining mouthfuls.

In terms of consistency of quality between all the dishes? Another big thumb's up. I can, without hesitation, give The Pagoda a resounding recommendation ... if you ever happen to be in the neighborhood, of course.

dragon whiskers

There is a traditional Chinese confection called Dragon Whiskers or Dragon Beard Candy. It is made of caramelized sugar or corn syrup that is drawn out, folded over, again and again - much like hand-made noodles - while in a bowl of flour to prevent entanglement. The sugar is stretched until it resembles fine thread - a carded mass of powdered floss - and then broken into stretches of about 5 inches. These are then wrapped around a loose filling of chopped peanuts, coconut, sprinklings of white or brown sugar, or any other flavor of the day the maker wishes to indulge.

Over twenty years ago, I remember running to my mother for money and then over to a tiny, open stand over which hunched an old, wizened man. His eyes were nearly hidden in folds of loose skin and his knuckles were swollen and knobbly, but his hands were deft and careless in their mastery. In the time it took me to check that the stand was there and to run to my mother and then back, he would have a fresh box made and sealed, red print dragons wrapped around its corners and silently snarling the contents in square characters down the lid's center.

I would hand him the money, and he would give me a gap-toothed grin with a little nod and a wheezing chuckle. I would reach carefully for the top of the pristine white boxes stacked like bricks, and before I had even turned to search for my mother again, the shallow box would be open...six pillowy white bundles, like sleeping caterpillers in their silk cocoons; filling the small space perfectly. (Not long after, down to five - then, too soon, none).

The stand is long gone, and even the Chinese market it had stood before is no more. I half-heartedly searched for the confection in the last decade while I was in San Francisco, and told my mother who lived near such Asian centers as Los Angeles, Monterey Park and Rowland Heights; to keep an eye and ear out for it. One time I found a website offering it for online orders - the only one I could find (at least, that I could read, being functionally illiterate in Chinese). But the candy should be eaten fresh, the sugars tending to harden and congeal within even a small handful of hours of its making; I didn't want to risk spending premium money for a high potential of disappointment. I thought that it would forever remain just one of those nostalgic moments of childhood that will never be repeated except in memory.

Today, while I was visiting my brother for the week in North Carolina, he took me to the only Asian market in the immediate area. It was filled with the reassuring sing-song dialects of Chinese, the shelves stocked with familiar clutter and ingredients. For a moment, I forgot that I was not back in California, shopping in one of the plentiful Chinese market chains that dot its coast.

And then we turned a corner, nearly walked into a post, and in dodging around it, almost walked into an isolated table tucked between canned goods and dried foodstuffs. A thin man stood behind it; hair still lack, but liver spots dotting his hands. His fingers combed rhythmically through a shallow tray of flour, spider-silk strands multiplying with each pass, a smile on his weathered face as he nodded to us.

The boxes were different, but twenty years later and the width of a continent away, the Dragon Beard Candy was still just as delicately sweet as memory. So if you ever find yourself in Cary, North Carolina, and have some time to visit a market, drop by the Grand Asian Market - and don't forget to tip the confectioner for his hard work.

(This also marks my first post composed on a mobile device - which had been a pain where proofreading and typing is concerned, but nothing beats the instant gratification when the writing bug hits! Unfortunately, the iPhone mail interface has no method of adding a picture after beginning an e-mail, so I'll have to add that manually later.)

Sent from my iPhone