Living in Prospect Heights, on the edge of Crown Heights, I see on every corner the forces of "urban" culture and gentrification duking it out. There's tony cafes with $50 prix fixe meals next to storefront churches, next to cafes serving $3 cups of coffee, besides auto repair shops with scary junkyard dogs. But how do you determine how ghetto your block is?
I realized the other day that one indicator of the relative wealth and "ghetto-ness" of a neighborhood is the kind of Chinese restaurant you find there. Here's some indicators:
If your block has a Chinese restaurant where you order from a tiny slit in a wall of bulletproof glass, that's a good sign that you are in the ghetto. - If the most popular item is chicken wings and fried rice, you are most definitely in the 'hood.
- If the restaurant specializes in a particular kind of Chinese cuisine — szechuan, dim sum, Taiwanese — you have left the ghetto.
- If they offer brown rice as an option, you are in gentrified territory.
- If the menu is not in English, you are in Chinatown. Unless it's in Spanish, then you are in Washington Heights.
- If the employees that work there are caucasian, you are in the suburbs.
Any indicators that I missed?
I just love that in America, Chinese has become so ubiquitous that you can find so many different manifestations of it, nearly everywhere you go. Really is there anything as American as General Tso's chicken?
Sign says “Chinese and American Foods” = ‘hood.
Basically the whole menu is batter-fried stuff with your choice of day-glo marmalade sauce. Plus oily rice. And maybe something that used to be a vegetable covered in a salty sauce.
And if you’re in Brooklyn, they probably have ghettoized Mexican stuff, too. (at least 3 of those on Flatbush Ave!)
Actually I only have fancy Mexican in my immediate vicinity: Chavellas on Franklin, Pequena on Vanderbilt, and Tacos de los Muertos on Washington.
If you can order fried chicken WITH your Chinese food, you’re in the ghetto fo’ sure.
I need to do a blog about the obsession with Chinese food and doughnuts here in San Francisco. Or, actually, any kind of food and doughnuts.
You do not Rik – Yummy Taco – the place I order those amazing “feels like a brick in your stomach” tacos is a chexican (or is that mexinese?) ghetto place. But it is on Flatbush.
I can’t tell if that is an endorsement or a warning!