Chinese Food

by Levi Eig

“When she moved to the Bay Area, finding a good Chinese restaurant was a must.”

For my mom, Robin, Chinese food is certainly among the top priorities in her life. Growing up Jewish in New York, this was something that she and her family constantly ate. And when she moved to the Bay Area, finding a good Chinese restaurant was a must. After searching and searching, she finally found one that exceeded her expectations, called Eliza's. This restaurant was barely different than the food that she had experienced in New York, yet she found it to be just as good. Eliza's became a staple in her life, and therefore, she wanted it to be a staple in her family's lives as well. To make sure this happened, after each of her inseminations—I have two moms by the way—this is where she ate to make sure her child was immersed in it from conception. Later, she found out she was pregnant with me at a bar on the same block as this very restaurant, so my existence practically began there.

Throughout her pregnancy, she ate there constantly in order to make sure that a love for Eliza's was in my blood. And after I was born, her efforts proved to have been successful. Throughout my childhood, we ate there all the time, driving into the city from Oakland nearly every weekend just to go there. Even after the closure of their location in Potrero Hill, which is not too far from Oakland, we continued to commute every weekend all the way to their location in Pacific Heights. We would go there for birthdays, when we had visitors from out of town, and pretty much any other significant event.

Throughout this time, I have always continued to love it. And when I started high school, I was thrilled to find out that the restaurant was just six blocks away from my school. Since ninth grade, I have taken lots of friends there and turned a lot of people onto it. And every time I go, the waiters tell me to say hi to my mom for them. Even after having gone so many times, it is still always exciting for me to go. And my mom is very proud of my obsession with it.

And this commitment to Chinese food extends beyond just this one restaurant. Across the country in Chinatown of New York city, there is another restaurant called Wo Hop that is considered to be as good as Eliza's in our family, which is really saying something. My mom has been going there since she was a teenager, and makes sure to go there every time she's in New York.

This past summer, I went to a pre-college fashion design program at a fashion school there, and having not been to New York in years, I was very excited to go to Wo Hop. My family came to stay with me for the first week of my program, so of course we had to go there as soon as we could. My mom and I went late one night and she ordered all of her favorite things on the menu. They were all amazing, completely different from what I was used to here. It's a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, underground, with quick greasy food. But still just as good. Then, after my family had left, the first day that I had free, I traveled all the way across the city alone, forty minutes each way, just to eat there. I proceeded to do this about four more times throughout my trip, and every time it was completely worth it.

Chinese food is something that has been bringing my family together all the way back to my great-grandparents from Europe, and it is something my mom and I still bond over. Now every time I go somewhere new, I find a Chinese restaurant, just like her.