Nate Beaty's Brainfag

Tony Cheung, LA Fusion and Dreams of Dishwashing

posted in Home Jabber on September 22, 2007

I just finished watching another Wong Kar Wai movie, Days of Being Wild, and as with the rest of his movies, I'm blown away. His movies beg the use of the word cinema. The final scene in the movie is one of the most precise odes to cool I've ever seen. Tony Cheung is shown preparing to go out, cramped in a low-ceiling hovel, as he goes through a series of slow, calculated routines like he's the chinese reincarnation of frank sinatra, sauntering through his trail of cigarette smoke, adjusting cufflinks, greasing back hair, etc.

Add me to the Wong Kar Wai fanboy club.

And now for something completely different.

In many ways living in LA, at least the neighborhood we chose, has felt very similar to Portland. The main difference being a 10 minute drive in any direction will immerse you in all sorts of extremely different neighborhoods: Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Silverlake, Echo Park, Downtown, Glendale, Burbank, Universal City (this may be the only time in my life where my employer owns a city, and is the one that I work in), Hollywood and probably a good dozen or so I don't even know about. Sunset is right down the street, and you come to a crazy crossroads heading towards all different states of urban decay, glitz, mundaneity and bustle. And then you multiply that by doing the same thing from each of THOSE points, and you start the get the idea. Our little neighborhood, Los Feliz, is such a small part of LA proper it's ridiculous.

With that said, once you get a little ways out from our posh, largely white, supposedly infested with Hollyweird types bubble, it gets more interesting. One of the things I've been noticing is some weird-ass restaurants. Consider what I'm now eating as I write this:

Housed in a styrofoam container (the container of choice of every restaurant I've been to here), there's what looks like wild rice, celery, onions, cashews, and tofu in a somewhat generic, sweet sauce. Lying beside them, like an oafish aunt who's ate too much and is leaning her bulk across a sofa, is some nice, deep-fat-fried onion rings. Cashew tofu with onion rings. The strange part is it's actually good. I found this mystery meal in the fridge when I got home. Sometimes I get lucky and can eat Soon Bok's leftovers and avoid that much less traffic in a day.

I've seen more than one of these wacky Thai future fusion vegetarian restaurants. It's a great idea for a chain if it was done right.

And now for something completely different.