I was thoroughly reminded of this at
my uncle's Mid-Autumn Festival dinner thanks to his awkwardly well-intentioned
wife. Spinsterhood was around age 25 in Jane Austen’s time. 29 is 45 in
Chinese-auntie years, and they advertised accordingly. “She’s a good
girl,” my auntie insisted, “Nothing wrong with her – just a little old.” Well
some things get better with age, thank you very much, and alcohol is one such
thing. Perch makes one heck of an OLD Fashioned.
Chinese aunties are, if nothing else, brutally honest. Their love is manifest in their bluntness, which can hit you even more unexpectedly than the overly sweet glaze on this soft slab of Pork Belly. But underneath the backhanded compliments lies a love and caring beyond comprehension, unlike the pork belly, whose sugary glaze is barely skin deep.
No one does backhanded compliments like Chinese aunties. They love to tell you that you look significantly more well-fed or significantly less morbidly obese than the last time they saw you, and sometimes they'll even praise you on how well you've aged...now that you're no longer the ugliest person in your family. Unfortunately, that's about all I can say about the Baby Beet Salad - it's the least bad thing I had at Perch. The sweet red dots of fresh beets punctuated by chunks of blue cheese have a smooth vinaigrette and sharp bites of arugula and endive. A solid salad overall, but it's far more forgettable than the backhanded compliment I gave it.
The cute little fireplace next to my table gave me almost as much heat as all my aunties did, but the Boeuf Bordelaise got me a lot less hot and bothered. The standard short rib with a standard side of potatoes and onion went in one ear and out the other...but let’s not get too graphic about that...
I think you can infer that the best part of the mid-autumn festival is not the company. The best part is the moon cake, a tribute to the moon goddess of immortality. Apparently she has two rabbits who do all the medicine-grinding for her elixirs of everlasting life, and I had one of them for dinner. Little Bunny Frou Frou probably wasn’t working all that hard, though, because the rabbit that fills the ravioli is as tender and flavorful as everlasting youth, but let’s just say the overpowering, generic cream sauce will never achieve immortality.
I wouldn't ever want to become a Chinese auntie, but I do want to give a Chinese auntie compliment to Perch. Perch makes veggies a lot less poorly than they make meat. The side of Cauliflower with savory brown butter and a dusting of curry-esque spice was the best thing I had all night.
The grass is always greener on the
other side, but at the end of the day, I wouldn't trade my side of the fence
for anyone else's. I'll never understand why my noisy, nosy, nagging, eternally
overbearing family expresses their affection in the form of constant
criticism, and I'll never understand how a place as prestigious as Perch gets
away with such poor offerings of food, but great love and great
food both speak a common, universal language. My family is pretty
fluent in love, but Perch will need a few more lessons.
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