Xian Famous Fail

Marriage to CodeMonkey has taught me many things. Some I expected, like patience. Some were unexpected. This is about one of the unexpected ones.

We decided to go out to lunch today and opted for Xian Famous Foods. The restaurant was made famous by Anthony Bourdain and it has since opened up locations across New York, but the original is still in the basement of Golden Shopping Mall, amid a warren of food stalls and rickety tables. Ever since they opened up locations in Manhattan, the hipsters have stopped trekking out to our neighborhood for food, so this location is very by-Chinese-for-Chinese.

Now you must understand that CodeMonkey and I tend to attract some stares in our neighborhood. He has all the grace of an elephant in clogs and tends to bang into people a lot. I'm white and he's Chinese and we're in a homogenously Chinese area. I regularly get mistaken for a high schooler, while CodeMonkey is in his late twenties and looks it. As I said, people tend to stare; we're a strange looking couple.

So we make our way to the stall. I bump into a man, but we make it there without serious incident. I successfully order our food. The smiling teenager hands my husband his plate of cumin lamb noodles, dripping with red hot oil. The plate collapses, CodeMonkey loses his grip, or the teenager hadn't quite mastered the hand-off. It doesn't matter, but the noodles slid off the plate and chili oil went down the front of CodeMonkey's shirt. We ate the noodles we could salvage, along with the lamb burger, before I marched CodeMonkey home for a wardrobe change.

See, marriage to CodeMonkey has been something of an advanced seminar in stain removal, as he's prone to getting food down his front. The shirt may be a lost cause, but I've attacked it with all my various laundry potions. My husband thinks I am the goddess of laundry, but this may be beyond my powers.