pregame chinese takeout

I help host a weekly radio show each Saturday called Ripped Radio at Overtime Studios, a rap production spot in the basement of my buddy's South City home. Rip James, a well-known local rapper, asked me to fill the regular hostess spot after running into me at a rap show last week at The Way Out Club, this great spot I enjoy seeing shows at. I've stopped by the studio before and handled the mic on the air well enough to be welcomed back for a weekly spot, an opportunity I openly embraced, as it's fun to kick it and riff about whatever, very free form and funny and bordering on the risque and absurd. And by border, I mean full-fisted knocking on the line between appropriate and obscene.

My kind of show!

If you've never been to The Way Out Club, I recommend stopping in some evening in the near future. The decor is choice and the vibe is chill, though I will never eat their pizza again. I don't do thin-crust, but after three or four beers I can chew and swallow damn near anything, and accepted a slice when offered. Huge mistake on my end.

The pizza went from oven to bartop to mouth to floor, leaving me there looking stupid and cursing with a burnt tongue as I hastily grabbed some tissue-like napkin squares to wipe the sauce off the cracked linoleum floor. Never again, I said. Then I had another slice an hour later. Decent when cooled, I found, but still, to hell with thin crust, I can't take it seriously, it's like a working man's brushetta or something equally cheapish and offputting to my appetite.

A week later, I was sitting in the studio, sucking down tall cans of Pabst with a dozen other rappers and crew, most whom I recognized from a show here or an event there. Everybody knows me as Mickey in the rap circuit, throwing what's ups and fist bumps and classy handshakes with like four physical steps in em that I try to fake so I don't look foolish.

Calls are answered and questions posed on the live feed before the Cypher spot, a freestyle bout that many struggle to hold their heads up in, but enthusiastically (bravely) participate in. A couple rappers, Rip James being one of them, shine on the mic each time and blow the group away, who pause and whoop as the verse ends and the beat keeps running, ignored for a moment under a wave of off the top accolades.

It gets hot and sweaty at this point, there's no ventilation down there and I start to feel a bit tipsy and uncomfortable, so we bail in search of pre-show munchies. En route to a local hip hop artist showcase at Fubar, my favorite bar, I suggest chinese to avoid the old standard of burgers and fries. I am bored with basic fast food fare, and am in a place in my life now where, believe it or not, I can manage an on-the-go meal with a price pushing past a fiver a person. Big change, big thangs, right? Chinese, it is!

I check Yelp on my phone as we drive to find the closest rice shack, and settled on Fortune Express, a well-reviewed spot on Chippewa. As we approach, I immediately notice the throngs of people crowding in front of a Ted Drewes next door, a local frozen custard shop I haven't yet had the privilege to experience. Andy's is the equivalent to TD's in my hometown of Springfield, MO. I desperately craved some during my last trip down there, but time and circumstance did not allow me the opportunity.

We have an Andy's in STL now, I hear. I may need to check it out, though the two locations in Springfield (Campbell and Glenstone) would really ramp up the nostalgia factor for me to a surreal level, and I must admit, I'm into experiencing that extreme sort of emotional connection to frozen custard. I am patient, and can wait forever for custard. Ted Drewes will come first, I'm thinking. Take the kiddo over there sometime, watch her inevitably (albeit inadvertently) cover her face with frozen cocoa cream. Such a messy girl!

We park a block behind the restaurant and walk instead of scavenging for a parking spot up front. I change out of my glossy black stilettos into a pair of white cloth flats with marker art all over them, to make the journey all the more comfortable. It's a little after 9pm, and the place is abandoned, save for a couple waiting on a takeout order.

I was craving hot and sour soup and an egg roll with hot mustard, but I have a known passion for pork fried rice, and when I saw it mentioned in a Yelp review, I was sold (as was the piggy rice). A large soup and rice with two egg rolls came to around $12 and took two seconds to prepare. We watch a college football game on a corner flatscreen as they prepare our order, which they handed off to us before the couple who had been waiting received theirs. Their order must have been a bit more elaborate than ours, who can say?

I noticed on the menu they carry St Paul sandwiches, a regional dish I was made aware of only recently by a buddy of mine with more culinary culture and exposure than I. The sandwich sounds...gross, it's an egg sandwich with mayo on white, that sounds unappealing as a motherfucker to me, but the kid who recommended it also turned me on to sizzling rice soup, and that shit knocks me out. You can HEAR the rice crackle in it! How ridiculous is that? Added it to my list of must-try-at-home dishes. Recreating a restaurant plate is the sincerest way I can show respect to the dish and the restaurant, outside of, you know, regular patronage.

I grabbed a couple mustard packs for the egg rolls and a couple small styrofoam cups to split the soup and rice into. There weren't any spoons, so I made do with the forks available and headed back to the car, cutting through what appeared to be either a church or elementary school parking lot, I'm not sure, it was dimly lit by this time and I had been drinking a bit so the passing details were difficult to notice.

I did notice a drop of beer from my last swig travel down the length of the tall can at the studio, tinged pink from my lipstick. It's mysterious to me what sticks out as significant, makes me wonder what I'm missing, what the mind decides to absorb into background obscurity.

We park on a side street a block or so down from the club and unpack out order. I sip hot broth from the styrofoam, tangy and spicy and boiling hot (just how I like it, better over than under when it comes to food temperature). There were large, thick strips of vegetable in the soup that still had a bit of firmness to them as I bit down on them. I immediately feel warmer in my own skin and, after swallowing the last of the soup, refill my cup with the rice.

The rice was perfect, still steaming with heat and packed with big chunks of purple pork. Takeout rice is notoriously tepid, so it was a bit of a reassuring shock to have to hold my mouth open as I took each bite, gently exhaling to release some of the heat. Fried rice is one of those foreign dishes I am yet to master, one that no matter how many times I execute it, the rice never tastes like a proper restaurant mock-up. It doesn't taste the same as take out!

Is it the msg, I wonder to myself, shoveling huge bites of rice into me, each grain coated in a savory sheen, the fermented soy and green onion aroma entering my nostrils like an old friend bearing gifts from faraway travels. I must offer a faithful execution to this dish. I'm so taken with it, it's a signature comfort food that takes me to a place of serenity and restful satisfaction.

We polish off the rice and make for the egg rolls. Mine was crispy and full of cabbage and ground meat, seasoned well with onion and garlic and maybe ginger, it's hard to say. I use the egg roll more as an edible vessel for the magical condiment that is hot mustard. You must respect this sauce. Most run of the mill asian restaurants have bland, runny mustard, but not this one.

Immediately upon entry, my eyes water and nose runs, the wasabi-horseradish hot running in a nerve line from tastebud to temple. I love this feeling, it's a slight gastronomical masochism I readily embrace. I enjoy food that fights back, I like the physical reaction of slight pressure treading closely to pain, especially with that strong hot sensation. I use the entire packet for my egg roll, wiping my eyes and nose with napkins as I do. I got a single drop of mustard on the hem of my black cotton dress. I ain't even mad, that mustard was incredible.

The takeout, mixed with the tall cans and the radio show, had me riding a good vibe as I exited the Jeep and made my way to the venue, still rocking my canvas flats in tights and lipstick. Screw the heels, I'm comfier in these, I reassure myself, checking out the varied pumps the ladies outside the club are rocking, shifting their weight from side to side, taking turns leaning on the windows of the club for some much-needed ankle or toe relief.

You look good, ladies, I remember thinking, loving the look but not feeling the feel, not tonight. That rice and soup and mustard-slathered role put me in a good place, smiling softly past the doorman as I wait in the rowdy bar queue for a couple tall cans, same as before, same as always. I was likely the only bitch there rocking busted ass shoes and gave zero fucks. That $12 takeout was everything to me.