At Yen China Cafe I am a regular. I'm there a couple times a week. In fact I even have my photo on the "Great Photo Wall of Yen China" as one of the constant customers. You can see me smiling at you as you pass down the corridor to the restrooms.
Nichole and Chen treat me well. They always knock off a buck-and-two-bits from the lunch item I order and I always tip a few extra bucks so it makes a 30-40% tip. I know many of the regulars as well. Not everybody knows my name, but a few do. It is like Cheers - only like Ted Danson is from Hong Kong. As a well treated regular, I was in the mood to spread a bit of Christmas Cheer (in a Ted Danson kind of homage) - this was back in mid-December, 2017. For Nichole I got her a gift card to a sporting goods store where she could buy some fishing tackle, as she likes to go fishing on Sunday, her day off. For her husband Chen, I asked another one of the regulars, Bud, what would be a preferred intoxicating beverage for him as a gift? Bud, who knows these kind of things, suggested tequila.
Thankfully beer and wine have become easy to purchase in north Dallas County as of the last several years, thanks to 'go wet' ballot initiatives; but the harder stuff is still harder to find. But I had tequila on my gift list, so I headed off to the strange little jurisdictional anomaly known as Buckingham, where they have a liquor store about 10 miles from here.
Nichole's gift card fit neatly into an envelope. Chen's bottle of tequila would not be so easy to gift wrap as a non-orthogonal bottle, so I grabbed a nice rectangular box from our supply of used boxes and stuffed the tequila bottle into the box and wrapped it nice and festive for the holidays with Chen's name on it.
All of last week, Yen China had a hand-written sign on the door: "Closed April 14 (Sat.) For Family Reunion".
Come April, 16, 2018 (Income Tax Due Date) I walked into Yen China Cafe, headed toward my usual table and asked, "How was the family reunion?"
Nichole smiles, "You know what we discover? We discover tequila!"
I responded a bit quizzically, "I would have though y'all would've already known all about tequila."
Nichole fills in the story; "No, no! My mother-in-law say she need iron for clothes to remove wrinkles. I tell her, I have a new iron, I will bring it to Austin for you."
"When we get to Austin we open your box that says 'steam iron', but we find it not an iron - it is tequila!"
It turns out that my Christmas gift of a bottle of tequila placed inside a used box was unwrapped by the recipient, but Chen only took off the wrapping paper and thought I had given him a clothing iron for Christmas - and stopped right there. I image some sarcastic Cantonese was then uttered. But, Chen never looked inside of the box. Only after my gift was hauled to Austin for his mother to use the new iron, was it discovered that they had in reality brought a bottle of tequila with them to remove the wrinkles from their clothes.
I suspect Jose Cuervo does a fine job when in comes to laundry. Cheers!
So after all of that it is Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, MLK's Birthday, Ground Hog's Day, Presidents Day, Valentines Day, Chinese Lunar New Year (Year of Earth Dog), St. Patrick's Day, Easter and April Fools! Take another shot and again we all say Cheers!
(I could have lost face over that one - pass me the tequila and some of those steamed dumplings mi amigo)
Nichole and Chen treat me well. They always knock off a buck-and-two-bits from the lunch item I order and I always tip a few extra bucks so it makes a 30-40% tip. I know many of the regulars as well. Not everybody knows my name, but a few do. It is like Cheers - only like Ted Danson is from Hong Kong. As a well treated regular, I was in the mood to spread a bit of Christmas Cheer (in a Ted Danson kind of homage) - this was back in mid-December, 2017. For Nichole I got her a gift card to a sporting goods store where she could buy some fishing tackle, as she likes to go fishing on Sunday, her day off. For her husband Chen, I asked another one of the regulars, Bud, what would be a preferred intoxicating beverage for him as a gift? Bud, who knows these kind of things, suggested tequila.
Thankfully beer and wine have become easy to purchase in north Dallas County as of the last several years, thanks to 'go wet' ballot initiatives; but the harder stuff is still harder to find. But I had tequila on my gift list, so I headed off to the strange little jurisdictional anomaly known as Buckingham, where they have a liquor store about 10 miles from here.
Nichole's gift card fit neatly into an envelope. Chen's bottle of tequila would not be so easy to gift wrap as a non-orthogonal bottle, so I grabbed a nice rectangular box from our supply of used boxes and stuffed the tequila bottle into the box and wrapped it nice and festive for the holidays with Chen's name on it.
All of last week, Yen China had a hand-written sign on the door: "Closed April 14 (Sat.) For Family Reunion".
Come April, 16, 2018 (Income Tax Due Date) I walked into Yen China Cafe, headed toward my usual table and asked, "How was the family reunion?"
Nichole smiles, "You know what we discover? We discover tequila!"
I responded a bit quizzically, "I would have though y'all would've already known all about tequila."
Nichole fills in the story; "No, no! My mother-in-law say she need iron for clothes to remove wrinkles. I tell her, I have a new iron, I will bring it to Austin for you."
"When we get to Austin we open your box that says 'steam iron', but we find it not an iron - it is tequila!"
It turns out that my Christmas gift of a bottle of tequila placed inside a used box was unwrapped by the recipient, but Chen only took off the wrapping paper and thought I had given him a clothing iron for Christmas - and stopped right there. I image some sarcastic Cantonese was then uttered. But, Chen never looked inside of the box. Only after my gift was hauled to Austin for his mother to use the new iron, was it discovered that they had in reality brought a bottle of tequila with them to remove the wrinkles from their clothes.
I suspect Jose Cuervo does a fine job when in comes to laundry. Cheers!
So after all of that it is Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, MLK's Birthday, Ground Hog's Day, Presidents Day, Valentines Day, Chinese Lunar New Year (Year of Earth Dog), St. Patrick's Day, Easter and April Fools! Take another shot and again we all say Cheers!
(I could have lost face over that one - pass me the tequila and some of those steamed dumplings mi amigo)
