CHINESE FOR JOZI : Charlie and the Chopstix Eatery

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ARCHIVES: CHINESE FOR JOZI : Charlie and the Chopstix Eatery

Often you want to eat Chinese food but feel disconnected and somehow left out or palmed off with something less than the dishes the owner and their friends seem to be enjoying. Maybe the food that’s for you is the Westerner version, specially slung together for gauche. You even peruse the boring list of wines and choose any of them, to hear none seem to be available. Is it a joke? Or some list of wines they don’t have.

The menu, unlike most puzzling Chinese hundred-choices collections, is blessedly short. The last time, I had had beautifully made, translucent, pork sausage-meat-filled Magic Bags, from the Dim Sum section of just four other dishes. I’d also sampled Charlie’s Kung Pau Chicken from the main menu, from among other completely different mains. On the menu too are six Small Plates, five fried rice dishes and five Chow Mein dishes. That’s it.

Before I call a friend to help me eat, I make another, Nhanhla Ngulube, a local guy who learnt Cantonese while studying in China. I call the same friend who had once been so reluctant to have Chinese food at Chopstix. I need someone to eat with me so that I can order a few more lunch dishes to make it a proper meal. While I wait, I drink the luxurious Pi tea with Charlie and marvel over the menu’s food prices that will make my forthcoming meal even more of an easy pleasure. Charlie’s been as conscious of pricing as he’s been about getting every dish just right.

It’s a little after lunch time when my friend pitches up and I ask Charlie what dishes he thinks we should have, given those we’ve already enjoyed. After another food trial in Cyrildene, I read about Chinese ordering, that it’s not supposed to be the way we South Africans usually do it, making up starters, mains, etcetera. The real idea is to have all the dishes on the table and all its people to share in all of them.

The large queen prawns in their pockets are filling, richly moreish. The prawns are combined with chopped chicken thigh meat, all plumped into their freshly fried pot sticker boats, seated on a crisp pancake with a few chopped vegetables and ginger at the bottom of the serving dish. His mind flew back to all that cooking he’d done back home, got partner funding from a Chinese person this time, and worked on the idea little by little until the 27 Boxes management offered him Covid-freed space on the ground floor.

 

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