chen's yen!

BE WARNED. A LOT OF CAPS. AND EXCESSIVE EXCITED RAMBLING ABOUT TO START. NOW.
So just this morning I've been thinking of a restaurant idea whilst having this traditional Chinese dish that my dad cooked. It's roasted and steamed pork belly and rice with napa cabbage. It's so much better than it sounds but it's like just really delicious. My parents are really good cooks. And I know everyone says that their parents are the best cooks ever but really.... my parents are pretty damn good. Not the best but really really effing good. Better than all the other Asian parents. Trust me I've gone to holiday parties and it's just like eating at home because I end up eating only my parents food. But my grandparents are like REALLY AMAZING. I can resolutely say they're the best ever. My granddad makes the best fried chicken EVER (MY granddad can totally whoop YOUR grandma's ass) without actually deepfrying anything, and my grandma is just like the TOP CHEF of my life. She makes the most fantastic angel-fish stew ever. UH HUH. WHO MAKES A STEW OUT OF ANGELFISH? MY GRANDMOTHER, BITCHES. And on my dad's side my grandmother basically makes the best Chinese home-style country cooking available. She's the best. :)

So going on I thought, there aren't any really nice Chinese restaurants out there. There aren't. Maybe in NOVA. PF Chang's? FALSE. Not real. I mean the Great Wall of Chocolate or whatever? That's so Chinese.
Anyways. I suggested that my dad start a nice little over-priced restaurant (he's about to quit/get laid off his job by the assholes at LG despite the fact that he's the hardest working, most needed guy there. POOP). I can tell he wants to do it but he's opposite of a risk-taker. He doesn't gamble, is afraid of playing the stock market, and has an iron-fist around the family savings. But I can tell he's intrigued by the idea.
So I've got this whole thing like panned out a little bit. It'll be a casual but overpriced and EXTREMELY DELICIOUS Chinese tapas bar. We'll have SCRUMPTIOUSly gorgeous traditional Chinese dishes served up rul pretty and in tiny portions so that people will think that it's like really really really high class. I mean it will be high class. The plates will look like peices of art and no one will want to eat them. And when they do they'll think they've gone to Asian heaven because everything will be melt-in-your-mouth, holy-Mao GOOD. It's GOING TO BE LEGEND-wait for it-DAIRY!
Here are some planned menu items. This is all stuff my parents or grandparents have made. Just a few selections.

• Steamed Arctic Char with braised fennel and a Fen Jiu (Chinese vodka) ginger reduction
• Hand-drawn twisted noodles with Chen's favorite Ragu! made pan-seared shitake mushrooms, mu-er (wood-ear), stewed tomatoes, egg fritata, and carmelized green onion. Served with a soy chili vinaigrette.
  
• HOT POT - a wintery dish that offers up the best of Chinese home cooking. A simmered Chinese-style mirepoix is simmered in sauce to perfection then blended with boiling water in a hot pot over a stove right at your table! Assorted thin-sliced beef, vegetables, mushrooms, noodles, tofu is served table-side to be dipped in the fondue and relished with a Secret Sesame sauce. One of my favorite meals.
  
• Grilled Sea Cucumber with slow-cooked celery in a thick soy garlic sauce - a true delicacy with textures and flavors you've never tasted but will surely love. Good for health as well.
• True-Moo-Shoo - small individual flour tortillas made the tradition way (cooked one on top of the other, you get to peel them apart!), sweet soy-bean paste, tender green onion slivers, and the following stir-fries: Egg fritata with mu-er shitake mushrooms and shredded pork, pickled cabbage and vermicelli, assorted delicate mushrooms and asparagus in white sauce, and bamboo shoots and sliced beef in a spicy sauce. Take the tortillas and spread the paste. Then lay down the green onion and a bit of every dish. Wrap and enjoy the explosion in your mouth.
• And for dessert: Honey ginger housemade gelato over sugar-crusted sweet potato bites. Drizzled with ginger-pear syrup.
• Ok so I've never actually had the last one but it sounds good. My mom makes the sugar-crusted sweet potato bites sometimes. It's really easy, and crusted is really not the right word. It's really more sweet potato chunks with a sugary glazed shell. It's sooo good.
  

Anyways. Thats my plan. And someday I will have a restaurant and it will be delicious. And you will all eat in it and be amazed.