Lunch With Bup: The Yen Ching Edition

This Sunday I had the pleasure of eating lunch with my grandfather at Yen Ching; a long-standing Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Milwaukee that calls it's food "fine Mandarin cuisine".  While I think the word "fine" may be a little lofty to describe the lunch I had at Yen Ching,  I did find the overall experience to be enjoyable.  Truthfully, I think a lot of the charm of Yen Ching was how definitively not fine it was. Outdated kitsch reverberated off of the walls, the five foot tall plastic buddha, the plastic flowers and the Chinese horoscope placemats.  Everything about Yen Ching's aesthetic stokes my imagination and conjures images in my brain of the kind of family depicted in "The Wonder Years" packing in a car and traveling to that fancy exotic restaurant that just opened up on Good Hope!  I can almost see the curmudgeon of a dad staring in befuddlement at words like "kung pao" and "crab rangoon" and wondering what the hell happened to this country.  These may sound like criticisms, but to me they are sacred accolades. 

Being that this is some sort of bastardization of a food blog I will of course be talking about my meal, but first a little bit about my grandfather, who will be called "Bup" from here on out.  Bup got his name as many goofily named grandfather's do, which is as a result of my oldest brother (the first grandkid of many) being unable to pronounce "grandpa".  Bup is a veteran of the Korean war as well as a veteran of more than six decades of intense labor, working for the plumbing company his father started in 1938. He traveled the world and lived richly with the love of his life until July 2nd, 2007 when my grandmother passed away from leukemia.  At 82 years old he made the concession to move in to an independent senior's facility where he plays cards and shares Korbel with his fellow compatriots in advanced age.  The reason this relates to the lunch I shared with him is because it adds immediate significance to the meal.  Egg rolls and fried rice can have substantial meaning when you are sharing them with unquestionably one of the greatest people you've ever known, as is true with any food.  On to actual lunch, which I should introduce by saying I almost decided to pass on in exchange for some lazy alone time.

I hopped in my sister's car and started our trek towards Yen Ching, a solid fifteen to twenty minute hike from our home in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood.  After ten minutes on the freeway we got off on the paradoxically named Good Hope Road exit.  The paradox is the result of Yen Ching existing in the middle of a huge stretch of homogeny and empty abandoned lots, the type of landscape I find to be exact opposite of "hopeful".  Bleakness aside, Yen Ching breaks up the monotony with it's signature old school Chinese restaurant exterior.  Walking in to Yen Ching was instantly charming for me.  The restaurant decor is about as on-the-nose as you can get, even by Chinese restaurant standards.  To my left I noticed a decades old restaurant award from the Shepard Express, to my right, an enormous plastic Buddha.  When we were seated, given our menus and ordered all within about eight minutes.

For starters my grandfather and I got the obligatory egg drop soup. My sister ordered hot and sour soup, which we are pretty certain was just egg drop soup with a healthy pour of soy sauced added in. We also ordered egg rolls which were decent and entirely unremarkable; which is to say, exactly what I want in a spot like Yen Ching.  My sister and I were ensconced in some gossip when my grandpa, with a hint of dejection on his face, exclaimed at his egg roll "So what's supposed to be so good about these!?" My initial response was a polite snicker, but after mining my brain for merit, I came up completely empty.  The typical egg roll is really nothing but a big tube of bland that has a pleasant crunch-to-slime ratio, but that's about as big of a compliment I could up with the Chinese-American classic.  Thanks for unintentionally demystifying the egg roll for me Bup, I am happier and sadder as a result.

Oh, Tso Shiny

Next came my main course, the almost impressively reflective General Tso's Chicken.  I swear to God, I took at least ten other pictures of my lunch and this was the least glossy one of the bunch.  The lunch menu was pretty limited, keeping me from my usual vegetarian go-to when it comes to eating Chinese food.  My choice to eat primarily vegetarian when I eat Chinese isn't an ethical one, I just take great pleasure in the texture of crispy bean curd.  Anyhow, not wanting to just eat green beans in sauce I opted for the classic General Tso's Chicken.  I'm not going to lie, it was pretty damn delicious.  There was nothing delicate or refined about it, and I'm pretty sure it was absolutely hammered with taste enhancers, but it was a slightly elevated version of what is often consumed by blacked out nineteen year olds at four in the morning.

Frog and vase are friends

Uncharacteristic of me and my voracity I couldn't finish my lunch, so I sat there and nursed green tea and conversed with Bup and my sister while they picked at their sweet and sour shrimp and kung pao chicken.  It was at that moment that I decided that the lunch was entry worthy.  Simply sitting, having lazy conversation and a full belly, no particular urgency.  Sometimes life just feels warm and gratitude for one's own existence emerges out of the little things.  For me, I often find that feeling when I'm sitting around a bunch of empty plates and am stricken with the implicit coziness of a food coma.  It's something I could just as easily have not absorbed at all; hearing my Bup go in to extreme detail about a plumbing job he did fifteen years prior, then shifting conversation in to what we think the Brewers are going to do this year, and most sweetly hearing him give accounts of all of the things "Grandma used to like", but much like the lunch itself, I'm so glad I chose to participate.

After twenty or so minutes of priceless and irreplaceable small talk, it was time for us to part ways. Bup grabbed his cane and slowly made his way to his truck while Cait and I packed back in her car for the trip back to the city. It felt good to remind myself that the experience of eating can be as much about the quality of your company as it is the quality of the ingredients themselves.  It also felt good to be given the position to realize that you shouldn't reflexively pass up on great lunches with your grandfather, you little ingrate. Anyhow, the whole ride back we talked about what we always talk about; what we just ate and who we were hanging out with.  Today, it was Yen Ching with Bup, and it was fantastic.