Great Wall: Oh my gravy!

The final third of the Asian food trilogy on this section of Colfax found me wishfully and wistfully remembering certain clichés: "first is worst, last is best", "third time's a charm", "bad things come in threes". I pushed these phrases from my mind, wanting to treat Great Wall like every other eatery on Colfax, with the respect and curiosity that each of these places deserves, like I've never tasted food like this before, especially not two other times in the last two weeks. Great Wall is different I tell myself, anyway they have a website (http://greatwalldenver.net/) and myriad reviews, most of them favorable, and I have seen with my own eyes people entering the establishment. Clearly it's not the mysterious hole-in-the-wall that is China Kitchen. Mostly I ignore the restaurant reviews, especially ones from a certain website named after something an anthropomorphized dog might cry out, but I couldn't help but notice the neighborhood depictions, always prefacing the meal itself, using words like "shady location" and "grubby". Why yes it is rather shady right now, locusts and beeches leaf-filled and filtering the sunlight on the avenue, and why don't I take this moment to create a new definition for the word grubby. Grubby (adj.): pertaining to grub, i.e. food. I get defensive easily you see. 

Walking in you get a full view of the kitchen, a young lady is poking at some raw meat with tongs, meat so red it must be dyed. Another woman notices us but continues to ferociously scrub down a metal rack. Oh they'll wait, she thinks, this grease mark has priority, which gives us time to check out the now-expected full color photos of the meals. Must try something new I muse. Like some of you reading this, I too was raised on the excitement of Friday night Chinese take-out, so my options for first-time-ever are limited. Egg Foo Young, there we go. For whatever reason my parents never thought it was good enough for their little princess. It appears to be a pancake of sorts, chicken fried rice and an egg roll. With an orange Fanta, $6.45. We sit at a booth that looks like it was mauled by a dog, albeit clean. Above the booth, another gigantic photo, country scene this time, a lake ringed by rock cliffs and a traditional Chinese boat propelled by peasants. I'm facing the door and see the oddest thing: on top of the trash can, a cardboard box once containing frozen french fries is propping up an electric heater. A permanent fixture apparently, as any need for heat right now would come straight from the kitchen. Something about the cardboard box/electric heater combo makes me yearn for the Taki's fire extinguisher. 

The food is delivered on paper plates, plastic forks and spoons are already sur la table in a plastic cup, next to another plastic cup containing the condiment packets. No ramekins here, not even plastic. My Egg Foo Young looks disturbingly unlike the photo, and for a second I assume there's been a mistake. Wait no, there's the pancake, 2 actually, underneath an immensely heaping pile of brown gravy. Brown gravy? Again? The food is steamy piping hot, but as I push my utensil around the gravy to get a better look at what's underneath, it's already starting to get that cooling gelatinous look. Better dig in. The pancake is actually an omelet with white onions, lots and lots of white onions. Each time I bring the fork away from the plate a very thin filament of gravy comes with it, bringing to mind things I would rather not see while eating. Still, it's tasty. The chicken in the fried rice is ever so tiny, I wouldn't have even noticed it but for the astonishingly red color, not raw chicken pink but FD&C red #40 red, clearly my food has not escaped the touch of the tongs. The egg roll is amazing. It's crispy and crunchy and I could eat a whole plate of them. The only sadness comes from having to drizzle on a measly amount of sweet and sour from the packet, instead of dunking it like a proper egg roll. 

We tear open our fortune cookies mid-meal, this is not my parents dinner table after all, why wait? Kristin's is truly Coloradoan: "It's your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude." It brings to mind our state's recent economic stimulus (dispensaries) or perhaps a disaster on Mount Everest. Mine is definitely more Chinese and somewhat anachronistic, which is actually how I like my fortunes --old school.