The last thing I learned from Eddie is about MSG (monosodium glutamate) in Chinese restaurants. Those who dare to serve Chinese style chicken, close down in just a few months from lack of customers. It's Springfield style chicken, or not at all. They're highly profitable, and if you don't serve the regional style recipes, the public won't eat there and you're out of business. If you are Asian and want to move to the Midwest and make a good living, and have the investment money, you can buy the secret "Chinese" recipes, buy the supplies and get the "kit" to set up your own Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet. The second thing I learned, is that early on chef, David Leong, must have created a package deal, a "kit" that he sells. I soon observed that most Chinese restaurants have Vietnamese owners, a few have Koreans. Every little town of 1,000 people or more, will likely have at least one "Chinese" restaurant (and most are named Hong Kong or Chinese Buffet, or Golden Dragon). First, that it is highly unusual to find Chinese people running Chinese restaurants in the Ozarks. What I learned over the next several months surprised me just as much. That's why you almost never see an overweight Asian person." "They'll eat the rice," he said, "but not the fried foods and things like egg rolls and won tons. He also guessed that I would never see a Chinese person, eating at such buffet. Their features, their hair, were not Chinese. The inflection, the tones while speaking, were not Chinese. " They're Korean," he said, and when I listened, I could tell. He said, "Jim, do all Asians look alike to you?" I was brought up short, I had to think and eventually, sheepishly, said, "Well, I guess I do." He showed me what to look for - first at the facial features, but more importantly, to listen to the voices. I asked how he knew, because I just assumed they were. His next observation was even more startling to me when he said did I realize the owners weren't Chinese. "No," he said, "there's nothing here recognizable as a Chinese dish." And Edie knows Chinese food! "Not the egg rolls? (No, Chinese would never make a big fat egg roll like that, that's an American invention) "Not the rice noodles and seafood?" I went down the list of things I thought were purely Chinese, and which were to be found on every Chinese buffet anywhere across the Ozarks.
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