So as to not leave you hanging, the surprise is not that the food didn’t completely suck, nor that it was decently clean. The surprise is that it’s popular! 6pm on a Monday night and that place is hoppin’. In the approximately 15 minutes I was inside, China Kitchen had 13 customers. Well okay, now for the details.
To follow up on my previous post, I first decided to see if I could score some sweet greeting cards or find out what’s so cold at the Denver Grocery and Liquor. It’s tall and open and sunny inside, but lest you think I’m comparing it to an atrium, I’m not. It’s more like warehouse meets alleyway meets foreign country convenience store. There is a chain-link fence running down the middle, not reaching quite to the ceiling, but close, separating the Grocery from the Liquor. I stick to the grocery side. The goods are mostly flavored, sweetened water of the bubbly and non-bubbly varieties, and various starchy salty snacks, all of which are still in their cardboard cases, partially wrapped in dusty plastic. Why unwrap and stock? What a waste of time, the customer can complete the process themselves, dust be damned. The end cap has a bin of potatoes, the only produce I see.
Of course it’s potatoes, they don’t need water, they keep for awhile, they’re starchy, they taste good with salt. The counter guy sees me take a picture and I get really self-conscious. Now I’m on a mission, this is not a place for browsing and I don’t want him to think I just stuffed half a dozen russets in my purse. Forgetting entirely about the greeting cards, I get a pack of smokes (cheaper than most places). He cards me. Nice. I’m drawn to the immense amount of incense at the front counter, bins and bins of incense, but none of it smells, maybe it’s been baking in the sunny window for years and it’s lost of all of its scent. Was anything about that place particularly cold? Hardly. But on my way out I glanced down the other side of the fence, the liquor side, and sure enough, cold beer as far back as I could see, the fridge doors frosty and fluorescent and humming, as if each case had a base of dry ice inside, keeping it cold as can be.
Outside is the normal hoi polloi of the block. Five steps to the restaurant, the open sign is on, the door is unlocked, there is no going back now. It’s well lit and the staff is friendly and there are people dining. Good signs all around. I see the trough of scoops. Hmm. A group of 4 comes in behind me and I let them go ahead, they have clearly been here before and know what they want. The woman behind the counter points me to the menu. Yes they have a regular Chinese food menu, dishes available in pints or quarts. Normally food made to order is the natural choice for me, but this is the scoop place and I’m gettin’ me some scoops. The options: vegetable lo mein, vegetable fried rice, chicken, beef, or pork with broccoli, sesame chicken, some sort of waffly-potato product, wings, meatballs, egg rolls, and whole fish.Whole fish! I’m not feeling that brave tonight, don’t feel like picking scales out of my teeth later. How many scoops could a whole fish be worth I wonder. I get the veggie lo mein, chicken and broccoli, 2 meatballs, and a can of root beer for 4 dollars and 50 cents. The popularity is starting to make sense.
I sit under a gigantic photo of Hong Kong. All this time other customers are coming and going. There are three other groups of people sitting and eating, others getting food to go. I had no idea. In fact, the other diners are really digging into their plates like it’s their last meal, heads down, forks quickly dipping and rising, not a lot of talking. It’s oddly and awkwardly quiet, the only sound coming from the owner’s 4- year- old daughter playing with a kiddie laptop. No music, no tv (yay!). The only utensil I received was a very flimsy plastic fork. It’s troublesome with the broccoli, long stems and all. The food is. . .well, when you have very low expectations you can be pleasantly surprised. Like I said it doesn’t suck. It’s mild, blandish, sweet. The meatballs are actually the best part, although I couldn’t identify the meat, a combo of pork and beef probably and stuffed with herbs and spices, drenched in a Korean BBQ style sauce. After a few bites I douse the plate in the packet of soy sauce, it really does need more flavor. Where's the MSG? My main concern is that the food really isn’t that hot, certainly not the 140 degrees it should be at by law, and now I know what I’ll be thinking about at work tomorrow. Better get my thermometer out. And strangely, the root beer isn’t that cold. Ah well, shovel it in iron stomach lady.
The décor is pleasant enough, the walls are painted in a yellowish green spongy tree pattern, and up toward the ceiling some decorative molding. Toward the ceiling, not at the ceiling. There’s a 10 inch gap between where the walls stop and the ceiling itself, this seems to be a pattern on the block. The dust in the Grocery and Liquor’s got nothing on the China Kitchen hiding spots no doubt. And three hours later, as I type this, my fingers show no puffy traces of MSG.
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