I’m changing this prompt. I’m answering this question instead:

What do you love now, that you hated loved when you were younger, but didn’t realize was unique to your area and is slowly disappearing?

Answer: New England Chinese Food

I spent the weekend with a couple of fellow GenX/Baby Boomers and learned something new.

The Chinese food we grew up loving is not the same elsewhere in the country. It’s unique and when people move away from New England (especially Massachusetts and Rhode Island), they can’t find it and they miss it.

In a nutshell, here’s why and how ours is different:

Most New England Chinese restaurants were established by Chinese immigrant families who adapted recipes to local American tastes in the mid-20th century. Restaurants tended to influence one another, creating a regional style that became its own tradition. The result is a cuisine that’s generally:

• Sweeter
• More heavily fried
• More focused on appetizers
• Less spicy than many restaurants in places like California, New York City’s Chinatown, or areas with larger recent Chinese immigrant communities.

One of my Boomer friends, who is Jewish, grew up in Massachusetts going out for Chinese food on Christmas, so he was especially sad when his lifelong favorite Chinese restaurant closed recently. He brought me up to speed on what everyone else apparently knows already.

You can’t get this stuff everywhere!

From Scorpion Bowls to PuPu platters filled with fried delights, you will not find any of it in modern pan-Asian restaurants with bright lights and sushi chefs.

We had an absolutely delightful meal at Jade Garden in New Bedford, MA which was about as Old School as you can get.

Everything, especially the chicken fingers, were delicious and absolutely glistening in their fried batter. I did not manage to grab one of those classic New England-style Chinese egg rolls fast enough, so will need to return. Barely visible are the sweet, boneless park spare ribs which, according to all reports, are hard to find outside New England.

I am now a member of a very large Facebook group dedicated to the love of New England Style Chinese Food—“a regional Americanization of Chinese Food, which features such things as lobster sauce, pupu platters, and chow mein. This group serves as a place to share favorite restaurants, photos, and memories.”

Clearly Jewish families have many Christmas memories associated with this cuisine, and it’s sad when those restaurants inevitably close. For me, it was the Yangtze River in Lexington, Massachusetts. That was the go to place for my family, but also for the “music nerds” in my high school. We went there after all our musical performances. We could excitedly relive that evening’s performance of The Music Man or Annie Get Your Gun over a pile of fried apps as big as the snare drum from the pit orchestra.

Who knows, maybe the football team went to Yangtze River too, but they weren’t at my table. I was with the band, music and theater kids.