How hard could it possibly BE, people, to find a decent take-out box of shrimp lo mein?!?!
Apparently, it's impossible, here in the grand old PACIFIC Northwest.
Grrr.
When I was in college, at the wonderful old school nicknamed Billy and the Bitch by people who have, as their mascot, a castrated turkey (!!!), my friends and I were connoisseurs of Chinese take-out. We had the GREATEST Chinese buffet complete with all-you-can-eat Mongolian BBQ in town, but if we wanted to hole up in our dorm room to study for the final to the class we never went to, we would get take-out from Mr L's Chinese restaurant. That was partially due to Mr L being the father of one of our friends, and so we felt obligated to help support him.
The other reason we always ordered from Mr L is because he had the best college specials. You could get any entree on the list from chicken lo mein to shrimp in lobster sauce to kung pao beef to sweet n' sour pork, along with either steamed or fried rice, an egg roll, a fortune cookie, and a Coke. All that, for something like $6. How much better could it get?!
It did get better. You could get it delivered. Of course, this meant that your Coke (or Diet Coke, if you were so inclined) was invariably warm since it was sitting next to your very hot entree, but somehow warm Coke in a can goes so well with Chinese food. And the egg rolls were huge and always had duck sauce to go with them. The fried rice was just perfectly spiced and the lo mein was to die for.
My mouth has now started to water.
While Kurt was gone for the last seven months, I had a few occasions to want take-out food. Most of the time it was of a pizza nature, since we have an awesome pizzeria on the reservation nearby, but occasionally I wanted Chinese. It's actually sort of hard to find in this area. Mostly we have places labeled "teriyaki," which makes me believe the food is of a Japanese nature.
Then there is the restaurant downtown that is teriyaki with philly cheesesteaks. That, I just don't understand. It's a wacky combination.
Finally I found a Chinese restaurant, down on the reservation across the street from the pizzeria. I walked in and asked for a menu. My eye frantically scanned the page for the three simple words "shrimp lo mein," and it was NOWHERE to be found!! I saw "chow mein," but I always knew chow mein to be chunks of meat and veggies in a sauce over crunchy noodles. That just didn't appeal to me. So I went with kung pao chicken and left it at that.
Recently, however, I have gotten closer to my nirvana. Kurt and I were out and about a few weeks ago, and again my mouth started to water in anticipation of the noodle-y goodness that is shrimp lo mein. We found a Chinese restaurant in town, and again I scanned the menu in vain. Kurt, however, being far less shy of strangers than I am, went up to the manager (who was NOT Chinese -- it weirds me out when non-Chinese people work at a Chinese restaurant. It feels WRONG, somehow) and asked about lo mein.
Apparently, in the freaky state that is Washington, lo mein is called chow mein, and you can get it one of two ways. One way is called hard noodle chow mein, and is the kind of chow mein that is sold on the East Coast. The other way is soft noodle chow mein, and that is what they are passing off here as lo mein.
And let me tell you -- the soft noodle chow mein isn't anywhere near the yumminess that lo mein is. The noodles just seem to be lacking flavor; there is no sauce lightly covering each and every noodle. They're almost naked noodles. So it was a lackluster lo mein that I ate without much gusto a few weeks ago. Plus I didn't have a Coke in a can either, warm OR cold.
I just don't understand why these people can't make a decent lo mein out here, and then why they don't even call it lo mein!
What else would you expect from a state who sells butter in cube form, instead of sticks like the rest of civilization?!