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When I was a kid I used to go to the neighborhood Chinese Restaurant, Nan Kin. It was across the street from the bowling alley in our Forest Park neighborhood, and was always a wondrous place, full of great and exotic food.
Now, granted, this was in the days before we ever heard of Szechwan cooking or Sushi or Vietnamese cuisine.
They had dishes with pork and shrimp and lobster, these were things that little Jewish boys only heard about, because they wouldn’t have been seen in our house. It’s not like we were kosher, it’s really just that these foods were foreign to us at the time.
My father would not eat Chinese food, so this became a special place for my mother and I to eat lunch on special Saturdays or Sundays. We would get Chow Mein and Fried Rice and all those exotic Cantonese dishes.
As a teenager, I returned there with friends. My friend Ted Fisher and I would go there often very late at night and get combination platters, a great bargain. The pork chow mien and fried rice with an egg roll and soup was about $1.10 and the shrimp egg foo young and fried rice and an egg roll with soup was about $1.25. These came with dessert of course, peppermint ice cream!
I know this place closed many years ago, as well we moved on to the Lotus Inn when we were mobile, a more upscale (slightly) place a mile or so uptown. When I was older, we were turned away from the Cantonese places by the more exotic ones, but my memories of sitting there with warm china containers with chrome lids full of wonderful food and pots of tea still remains.
Much like my story about the Pimlico Hotel, I have a Nan Kin story. No, I didn’t steal from these lovely people, but an opportunity came up a few years ago on eBay to acquire four tea cups from the restaurant.
I hold the cups in my hand and it takes me back to a kinder, gentler time……
Now, granted, this was in the days before we ever heard of Szechwan cooking or Sushi or Vietnamese cuisine.
They had dishes with pork and shrimp and lobster, these were things that little Jewish boys only heard about, because they wouldn’t have been seen in our house. It’s not like we were kosher, it’s really just that these foods were foreign to us at the time.
My father would not eat Chinese food, so this became a special place for my mother and I to eat lunch on special Saturdays or Sundays. We would get Chow Mein and Fried Rice and all those exotic Cantonese dishes.
As a teenager, I returned there with friends. My friend Ted Fisher and I would go there often very late at night and get combination platters, a great bargain. The pork chow mien and fried rice with an egg roll and soup was about $1.10 and the shrimp egg foo young and fried rice and an egg roll with soup was about $1.25. These came with dessert of course, peppermint ice cream!
I know this place closed many years ago, as well we moved on to the Lotus Inn when we were mobile, a more upscale (slightly) place a mile or so uptown. When I was older, we were turned away from the Cantonese places by the more exotic ones, but my memories of sitting there with warm china containers with chrome lids full of wonderful food and pots of tea still remains.
Much like my story about the Pimlico Hotel, I have a Nan Kin story. No, I didn’t steal from these lovely people, but an opportunity came up a few years ago on eBay to acquire four tea cups from the restaurant.
I hold the cups in my hand and it takes me back to a kinder, gentler time……
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