We found a dim sum restaurant about thirty minutes from where we live. I had been missing a dumpling spot we loved back in Seattle, and my wife had been suggesting we find somewhere we could have a proper dinner out like normal adults. This place checked both boxes.
The kids were informed that we were going, and that it would be an adventure, and that they should approach it with an open mind. I may have sweetened the deal with a promise of a special treat if they tried at least one dumpling. It felt like a reasonable request at the time.
They did not approach it with an open mind.
The menu at this restaurant is not a simple document. It is closer to a novel, organized in a way that suggests the author had strong opinions about structure that do not align with how a person actually reads. Most items have pictures. To order, you fill in a form. The form and the menu are grouped differently, with numeric codes that do not appear in numeric order. We stared at it for a while. The kids looked at the pictures.
This turned out to be a correct-ish approach.
We ordered soup dumplings. Xiao long bao - pork, a little broth sealed inside, the kind you have to bite carefully or wear the soup home. I ate one to demonstrate that it was not toxic, and give them a chance to see what was inside.
The first complaint was size. Too big. They were not, objectively, too big, but this is not an argument you win with a six and eight year old so we moved on.
The second complaint was temperature. Too hot. This was fair - the outside of the dumpling was warm. By the time they had finished negotiating about the size issue, the inside had cooled considerably, but this information was not useful to anyone in the moment.
My daughter took two bites and then stopped. She peered at the dumpling. She looked at me. “There’s salad in this,” she said, as if we had tried to sneak something past her.
There was a small piece of green onion visible in the filling. I explained that it was green onion, not salad, and that it was a very small amount, and that she had already eaten two bites of it without noticing. None of this mattered. The dumpling was set aside. She did not stop eating entirely. She just performed quality control between bites, inspecting each one, picking out any green before continuing.
My son, meanwhile, had been eyeing the soy sauce. He did not want to dip his dumpling in it. Then he wanted to dip his dumpling in it. Then he submerged the dumpling in soy sauce long enough to ensure it was dead, extracted it, ate it, and told me I had been trying to make him sick from salt.
He ate three more, thoroughly soaking each in soy sauce.
We ordered more dumplings, and then more after that. Both of them finished those too. I sat back and looked at two children eating food in a restaurant, without anyone crying.
Then it was time to collect on the dessert promise.
Near the restaurant, in a small shack close to the chinatown district, there is a man who makes taiyaki - Japanese fish-shaped waffles, filled with either chocolate or vanilla pudding, cooked fresh in front of you on a cast iron mold that is, unmistakably, shaped like a fish.
I had described this to the kids as a donut. I had not mentioned the fish part.
When they saw it, both of them stopped talking. My daughter looked at me. My son looked at the mold. “It’s a fish,” he said, in the tone of someone who has been deceived.
I explained, again, that there was no fish in it. That it was chocolate pudding inside a waffle, the fish shape was just the shape of the pan. I asked that they trust me.
They did not.
I had to take a bite of one first, and show them that it was indeed chocolate in the middle, and that I was not dying of fish consumption. Both insisted on smelling it.
My daughter ate hers in the smallest bites I have ever seen a person take, turning it over between bites, examining it from different angles, making it last as long as she possibly could. My son had chipmunk cheeks by the third bite and was finished before she had gotten through half of hers.
They both asked if we could come back.
We went back.