Bok Choy Garden now delivers.
This is amazing. On par with a two-hour full body massage. Or getting out of work early. Or discovering that your cat knows how to fetch (which mine does because he is a genius -- he also talks).
I heard the good news when I dropped by Bok Choy Garden tonight. I was craving potstickers -- vegetarian potstickers, to be exact. And Bok Choy Garden is the place to go for vegetarian Chinese food. The choices are endless -- everything from sauteed soybeans with bean curd and seaweed to bamboo pith soup to taro "fish" with sweet-and-sour sauce. It's no-meat heaven. And I would probably live in their kitchen if I didn't spend so much time being too lazy to walk or drive over there.
But now that has changed, due to new ownership as of a month ago, and I can be as lazy as I want.
And that's not all: Dining in is different too. True, the recipes are the same (same cook and everything), but it's like there's a new energy in the place. The service now kicks some serious ass -- I dined alone and didn't feel awkward or patronized at all. The dishes came out in a timely manner -- no main courses overlapping appetizers, which used to happen all the time. And the new owner is chatty (in a good way), enthusiastic and extremely professional. He told me all about his plans -- the new delivery service, the Web site he hopes to construct, etc. I felt like I was getting five-star attention but in a teeny-tiny, hole-in-the-wall, super-casual restaurant. And that's my favorite kind of feeling.
And here's the best part: When you get your check, you also get a little dessert called a "crystal ball" (other diners at a table behind me kept calling it crystal meth, but funny-ha-ha, that's not what it was). The crystal ball is fabulous -- it's a chewy little ball of green tea curd in a rice-based gelatinous wrapper. And it comes served on a small plastic leaf (cute presentation that sort of reminded me of Japanese toys for some reason). The owner told me a hilarious story about how one customer asked him to save all the leaves because he wants to make a costume out of them. Oh, hell yes. It doesn't get much better than that!
Despite the changes, essentially Bok Choy Garden is still Bok Choy Garden. The display rack filled with pamphlets with titles such as "GOD: Supremely Lovable," "LONELINESS" (not good when you are dining alone and missing your winemaker boyfriend terribly), "Nuclear Power?" and "Marriage: Great Expectations" still hangs on the wall on the way to the bathroom.
I wonder if when I place my order for delivery, I can also request the "CONQUERING DEATH" pamphlet with my meal.
2 comments
I hear ya. There is this tiny Japanese place in Long Beach that used to deliver if it was super local. They had this combo that was great: teriyaki chicken, salad, all sorts of sushi, tempura. I used to get it quite often when I went over to Ryan's old place. Then they stopped delivering. I think I picked it up only once after that . . . which was probably almost a year ago.
I wish there was a pho place that delivered . . . I would probably order that at least 3 nights a week.
yummy. i want bok choy.
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