Sketcher.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2030, 25 February 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Sketcher.

Dining at a Chinese Restaurant. I went with my friend. At 8 o’clock in the evening we entered the restaurant of Mong Sing Wall, at 18 Mott street, New York. Mong Sing Wall is termed the Celestial Delinonico of New York, and his place is patronized by thase Chinaman who are on the home-stretch of their fortune making in this country and are anticipating their early return to the homes they left behind them in Canton and Hong Kong. But to the dinner. There was a portion of it before us, and so, carrying out my friend's injunction, I took up my chop-sticks with an air that was intended to convey to the other customers present the idea that I was a proficient in their use, and had, in fact, eaten with chop sticks all my life. These instruments of gastromonic nature are about the size of a lead pencil and are made of hard, black wood. Two of them are furnished to eacli person at table. Despite my clt'orts at nonchalance, 1 discovered that I was in a bad box. I did not know how to eat with my lead pencils any more than a baby would know bow to properly handle a fork. A kind-hearted Chinaman at the next table took pity on me and showed me how to handle them. It is not at all difficult after you get the hang of it. You must hold one of the sticks rigidly, letting the upper end project over tlie hollow of the hand, as a school boy holds his pencil, and gripping it lirmly between the first and second lingers and the ball of the thumb. The other is held lightly, as a good penman holds his pen, between the first and second linger and the bull of the thumb. “ Chow-chopsney” was the first dish we tackled. It is a very palatable stew, made of bean sprouts, chicken gizzards and livers, calves tripe, chagon fish dried, joirk and a number of other ingredients. “Chop-scow” was the next course. This is a perfumed roast pork. After being roasted, the pork is hung in the smoko of various aromatic herbs, which are burned under it. This gives it a most delicious flavor. Like everything to eat in a Chinese restaurant, the pork is cut into small and thin slices, so that it may bo conveniently handled with the chop sticks. No bread is ever served with a Chinese dinner, the place of the “staff of life” being taken by boiled rice, or “fan,” as it is called by the Celestials. Nobody can cook rice like Chinese. When they set it before you, it is beautifully white, dry and nutritious, every grain being thoroughly cooked. It is not mushed together, hut every grain is separate. “ Sans-sui-goy” means fish, and the manner in which it is served at Mong Sing’s restaurant would make your own chefs of Y’oung’s or Parker's green with envy. It is baked in a sort of brown sauce that possesses almost every heavenly flavor, and one can go cm eating it forever, apparently, without tiring of the taste. The average Chinaman uses very little flavoring in his food ; consequently at this Mott street cafe we were given only one condiment, called “seow,” which is a sort of mild halfcousin to our well-known Worcestershire sauce. The dinner over, we washed it down with quite a number of cups of

BHued from rice and poured over figs R prunes to give it a sweet, fruity flavor. It is served in odd little tea-cups and is a most insidious imbibation. The cups do not hold much more than a tablespoonful and while you are drinking “ no-nu-deo’ it tastes so mild, sweet and harmless that you do not imagine it can do yon any harm. Hut suddenly the intoxication comes ujkju you like a thunderclap, and you must either stop drinking “ no-ma-deo,” or else be willing to stagger homeward. My friend ordered “yeu-ti,” and the waiter brought a small tray of cigarettes. Well, the dinner was over, our hunger was appeased, and the cost was only about 2a. (id. for the two. “Now come and get shaved by my Chinese barber,” said my friend, and a few minutes later we entered the “tonsorial palace” of See Chung, at 22 Mott street. This, to the uninitiated, is even a more novel experience than to dine at a Chinese restaurant. I doubt if there is any barber in Boston who would understand how to use such an assortment of razors as See Chung keeps on hand. First, the Chinese barber lathers the face of his customer with a toothbrush, and then ho goes at the beard with a broad, shortbladed razor, sot in its handle like au axe. After scraping away with this instrument for a while, he changes it for a much narrower and lighter blade, until, when he comes to shave the nose and the inside of the ears, ho uses a thin, flexible hit of finely tempered steel, which is only about as broad as a toothpick. I will confess that it makes a novice a little bit nervous to have this glittering little piece of keen steel go waggling about the delicate tissues and fibres of the ears and nasal organ, hut if you did not see it, you would never know that it was being used upon you, so light is the touch of the artist who is manipulating it.