Year of the Monkey

Every major city around the world has a Chinatown, or some semblance of one. In San José, Chinatown is apparent from the “gateway arch” that welcomes you to a plaza closed to cars. I can recognize the symbols for “China” in the far right and middle (from my TINY repertoire of written Chinese!).

It was Chinese New Year yesterday, and after a relaxing morning, a workout, and lunch, I decided I should go out and at least get oranges or something to usher in the year of the monkey. An ambiguous search for dim sum landed me with restaurants in NorCal, so I refined my search to “Dim Sum San Jose Costa Rica” and got THREE immediate results, all in downtown! Good thing there were many, because after a bit of meandering, we found one restaurant that served dinner (not dim sum), one that was closed, and somehow missed the third.

Across the street and off to the right of the gate we saw Chinese characters along with “Restaurante Oriental” on a half-fallen window sign through some windows on the second floor of a building. Our last ditch attempt worked!

There were a couple tables of customers already eating. The Chinese staff looked like they were having family meal in the corner while the Latino staff went on restocking and taking care of dishes. Despite it being a little past 2pm, they still had a few items on the dim sum menu available, so I asked for 2 orders of steamed buns (one lotus paste, one red bean) and rice noodles.

The menu was pretty interesting because it was in Chinese and Spanish, and I mostly know how to say the dishes I want in Cantonese as I am, sadly, illiterate. The helpful Latino waiter said he was learning Chinese and told me the pineapple buns and egg tarts were gone for the day. When I asked for “Chow Fun” (thinking of the fat rice noodles fried with soy sauce and veggies) he pointed me to the “Chionfan.” What an interesting adaptation of language. I ordered the chionfan vegetariano so Lucia could try it.

As we waited for our food, we saw dishes come out of the kitchen (MANY orders of fried rice that looked very soy saucy, an order of won ton soup, and a couple large spring rolls), a few more customers come in, and a couple finish their meal. Whenever it was time for the bill, the Latino guy called “cuenta” to the Asian woman who looked like she might be the owner or manager of the place. Seems the hierarchy of every Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been to applies here too.

We waited no less than 30 minutes for 6 steamed buns and a tiny order of cheng fun (alas, not chow fun). Total came out to ₡7300 colones ($15USD). Quite expensive for the amount of food we got, but it tasted alright. I’d grade it a solid average when comparing to what I’d find in the US. My grandma would have tutted at the fact that one of the buns split open.

I tried to speak Toisonese to the woman in charge, but she sorta dismissed me and replied in Spanish until I wished her a Happy New Year in Chinese before leaving. A small smile and that was it.

Next order of business, finding oranges.

Since we’d spent so long finding and waiting for the dim sum (Jon was taking his lunch break from work), we decided to go to the Auto Mercado, the market a few blocks from Lucia’s. The local manadarinas were sorta green, not as orange as we’re used to in the states. They had imported mandarins too, but they were about 3x the price of local ones! Since we are in Costa Rica after all, why not get the local experience? I bought the orangest bunch of local mandarinas I could procure from the pile and we were on our way.

Of course once we bought them, we saw a guy selling all kinds of fruit (including local mandarinas) one block away from the apartment as we walked back. I bet they were cheaper, but I didn’t ask.

Gung Hay Fat Hoi!