wings

I had to go to San Francisco yesterday for some blood tests, so I used the opportunity to go and have wings at San Tung. To me, it’s really the perfect food. Chicken wings? Love them. Chicken wings fried in a vat of fat? Fantastic idea. Fried chicken wings drenched in a sweet, spicy, sticky sauce? I’m dead and I’m in heaven, right? It’s kinda like General Tso’s chicken, which used to be one of my guilty pleasures back in New York, when I could order them from the bullet-proof glass Chinese takeout restaurants. I had never heard of these before Mrs. Kwong introduced them to me, but they are evidently some sort of hybrid Chinese Korean dish, and when you go to this restaurant, every single table has a plate of these things.

When I walked into the restaurant, it was just noon, but the place was already packed. I was seated at a 10-top table all by myself, but was soon joined by a very large man wearing an extremely loud Hawaiian shirt. We ordered the same thing, the gan pong chicken. Except for him, he wanted the sauce on the side. And instead of plain rice, he wanted fried rice. And when that fried rice came, he drowned it with soy sauce. Which he also added to his soup. And he never touched his gigantic bowl of sweet, syrupy sauce! What a travesty. I almost reached over and spooned his sauce directly into my mouth. But man oh man was that chicken good. The chicken is fried perfectly so that it still crunches when you bite it, even though it’s covered with sauce. And when you’re done eating the wings, you can spoon the sauce onto your rice and slurp the whole bowl down. Too bad they don’t travel well at all, or else I would’ve ordered a vat to bring home.

When Mrs. Kwong comes to the Bay Area, it’s wings wings wings, gimme more wings. I think she finds excuses to come to the Bay Area just so she can have wings. Since she introduced them to me, I’ve become hooked. It was one of the few things I craved when I was pregnant. Unfortunately we live too far to go to San Tung often, but I just read on Chowhound that there are restaurants that serve gan poang chicken. I’ll have to try them and report back to Mrs. Kwong.