After taking my birth mother for a visit to her Dr. recently, she offered to buy lunch and we came…read morehere, a restaurant she was familiar with. I wasn't, but I was agreeable to giving it a shot. Chinese food used to be a staple of my diet, but I eat it sporadically at this point. Not that I find it suddenly distasteful, but in the past, I always associated it with "big feasts," and in recent years I've been trying to eat healthier and wiser.
When my late father was still living in Caldwell, after my mother died, we'd get together once a week and eat out. We'd either eat at Olive Garden (which he, for some reason, loved and I came to grudgingly like) or the Original Pancake House (which I sorely miss) or a Chinese restaurant that was located in a Caldwell shopping center (the name of it escapes me now, although I liked it a lot). I'd always order Wonton Soup and the Happy Family platter, which included an Olympic-sized portion of pork, chicken, scallops, shrimp, beef, broccoli, carrots-- all mixed up in a thick brown sauce over a bed of rice (brown rice, in "deference to healthy eating."). After dining there, I'd waddle out with my father, feeling like an overstuffed King George IV, amazed yet again at my overindulgence, my head about to explode into migraine agony from the MSG. I later heard Andrew Zimmern say that it's racist to ascribe all MSG agonies to Chinese restaurants, since MSG has been present in all kinds of food, and I'd normally be in agreement, but I know that nearly every time I ate out in that particular restaurant with Dad, I'd get a brutal migraine afterwards. And you know what? I didn't mind. Maybe I'm a masochist at heart, but the food was so good, and so satisfying, that I was willing to suffer for my gluttony.
Anyway, back to the present...
Empire Hunan is located on Broadway, a heavily traveled thoroughfare that leads in 1 direction to Ft. Lee, in another to Paterson. There was parking on the side. Given that we were dining on an off hour, parking wasn't a problem. The restaurant also serves Japanese food, which I don't occasionally mind having, but we were focused on this particular day on the Chinese part of their cuisine (I think Japanese might be a little too exotic for my birth mother's somewhat finicky, idiosyncratic tastes. For instance, whenever I eat fish, which I love, she looks repulsed, and asks, "How can you eat that?" "Very easily," I reply. If she doesn't like fish...and she doesn't...Japanese cuisine is probably going to be a problem.).
Inside, we were led to a booth. There were only a few other people in the restaurant at that hour. Atmosphere wasn't off-putting. The room wasn't especially well lit, but the shadowy ambiance appealed to me. Service was pleasant and prompt. I can't remember exactly what Mom ordered, but I started with a bowl of Wonton Soup, and... maybe for "old times sake"... the Happy Family. Wonton Soup was hot and tasty. We were also served those crispy noodles with a bowl of hot mustard and a bowl of duck sauce. Again, nostalgia kicked in (as well as hunger), and I dived in (but not before...being the gentleman I like to think I am... beckoning for Mom to partake first. She declined to partake at all.). The hot mustard was potent indeed and cleared my nostrils right out, as well as bringing tears to my eyes. I decided to stick to the pleasantly sweet duck sauce.
The Happy Family wasn't the gargantuan feast I remembered from bygone days. It was still basically the same dish on a bed of brown rice (instead of carrots, it had green peppers, which didn't ruin it for me, but I would have preferred the carrots, as I'm not a green pepper lover) but the portion size was more moderate than I used to have at that Caldwell restaurant. Part of me missed the epic amounts of food that I used to readily consume in the past. But, overall, it was a satisfying meal, and the prices seemed fair (although Mom paid, so perhaps I'm not in the best position to access affordability. I did pay the tip, and I'm always a good tipper, or at least try to be).
And I didn't get a headache.
Also, I'm sure my delicate digestive system (it has become very delicate in recent years, unfortunately) was appropriately grateful for my restraint (if a digestive system has its own separate sentience from the human organism...namely, me...that it's a part of, that is!).
And no dessert! Whoever thought I'd live to say that?
At 1 point, I used the men's room, and the bathroom seemed clean and tidy enough.
If I were still the glutton I once was, I guess I might have lowered my rating to 3 stars (which I guess rates these days as "meh") instead of 4. But since I'm trying in my old age to eat like a normal, healthy, civilized person--- I'm recommending Empire Hunan. Good food in a nice setting.