On Location: The South Side

I have a confession: my family does not actually live in Seattle. I lived there for two glorious years while I worked on my M.A. The rest of time that I resided in the Pacific Northwest has been spent in Renton. I tell people, "I grew up in Seattle" because most people have no idea where Renton is and I'm also pretty lucky if people know where Seattle is. It used to bother me until I realized that if people hadn't heard of Seattle, then they couldn't move here. More for the natives, I suppose.

After a morning spent drinking too much coffee and contemplating work, my mother, baby brother, and I headed off for dim sum at Jumbo on Rainier, which is attached to the Boss Cocktail Lounge. I first discovered Jumbo when K. was out for a visit and we read about it in the Seattle Weekly The reviewer promised good food, peach walls, and tacky decor. That was four years ago. Today, the food is still good, the walls are still peach, but the decor is slightly classier than before. I guess that gentrification hits everything eventually. We arrived a bit late so we (I) didn't get to eat as many shrimp dumplings as we (I) had hoped to.


Since no dim sum outing is complete without egg tarts and since the carts stopped coming around mid-meal, we were forced to find our egg-tart fix somewhere else. The Great Wall Shopping Mall had been at the bottom of the hill for a while. My parents had mentioned it, my brother has been there, but I have no recollection of it at all. I have now been. The grocery store there can't really compete with Uwajimaya because Uwajimaya is a village and not some mere grocery store, after all. The outing was successful. We found our egg tarts, I discovered a Japanese candy store (lucky, lucky K.), and while my brother and I were making juvenile remarks about the fish balls in the refrigerator section, I saw the most beautiful display of Boone's Farm. Pretend that Boone's Farm isn't some low-class, tarted-up, fortified wine. Pretend that these are exotic fruit drinks from Italy, Brazil, or whatever warm place you fancy. They're vivid. They glow. I think that they're gorgeous. -Zh.