The Long March

At the toll of the lunch hour on a magnifico summer day, I found myself in Venice Beach searching for some quick comida before taking a long siesta in the sand. Luckily, I recalled that a newly formed lunch combo has been instituted at Mao's Kitchen. A bit torn between Chinese and a pulled puerco sandwich, I ultimately decided to take an amended page from the Little Red Book ("An army without tasty eats is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.") and dine like a dutiful comrade. Despite being designed to "serve the people" with its flexibility concerning menu substitutions, some people would argue that Mao's isn't real Chinese food at all. At this point, I will take a slight diversion. Let's take my order for example:

Surprisingly flavorful hot and sour sopa, spring roll, sesame and yam beef (lightly batter-fried carne, snow peas, tomate, yam in spicy-sweet sauce sprinkled with toasted seeds) and steamed rice. According to the menu, this recipe comes from Nanjing in the Jiangsu Province. Even though China maintains a single time zone, its geographic size weighs in at a vast 9.6 million square kilometers. Imagine transporting this dish to Urumqi in the Xinjiang Province where it would certainly be considered non-halal, possibly bland, and maybe even inedible. With that said, it seems that real Chinese cuisine is dramatically regional, thus the Americanized version is just another offshoot of a diverse culinary system. This is not to say that it's always good, nor would I be so presumptuous as to even mention it in the same sentence as the Eight Great Traditions (oops), but who hasn't experienced a little rush when finding that neighborhood joint that's a little better than the rest. Maybe Mao's would be that go-to spot if I lived in Venice, but I'd definitely have a closer look around just in case. Oh, and make sure to BYOB fellow comrades.