Mar 26 2008
Ode to Kam San 金山
First time walked into Kam San, I was pleased: it had meicai 梅菜, dried salted veg that I like to cook with pork. It was 22 years ago. I just arrived from Hong Kong where food was stringently segregated. Cantonese, the Hong Kong Cantonese are very particular about their food. Any place [on the map] above Shanghai are considered northern food, hence were out cast, uncool.
I first lived with Aunt Ling in HK who had a Chinese maid, Luanjie. Sister Luan was very proper. She addressed me Miss Zhang, (Steve Young Master Zhang) of course pronounced it Cheung, the Cantonese way. After a week, one day she asked me if I enjoyed her cooking and if there anything I’d like her too cook. I was only 18, and larger part of that 18 years was spent in canteen in a country that didn’t offer much to consume, except da baicai cabbage. But she pressed. So I suggested meicai pork. I was feeling my way around Cantonese cuisine which I come to adore, knowing meat ranks very low on their food chain. But I really miss the small, strong smell, dried, salty and dark meicai.
The following night when she began to serve dinner, Aunt Ling frown on the pork.
“Luanjie, what’s this?” Aunt Ling pushed up her glasses to inspect.
“Oh, Mrs. Ling, Miss Cheung said she wanted to eat meicai pork.”
Now it’s my turn to frown. “This was meicai pork?” I asked. Why the color was so light and leaves so large?
“It is meicai.” Luanjie insisted.
Whatever. It tasted different, too sweet than my liking. I hardly touched it. Luanjie felt insulted.
She had been with Aunt Ling for a long time, took great pride at her work and cooking. Her soup, at first was like medicine to me - look wise and taste wise - needed 3+ hours to sim with many foreign objects :), like chicken feet .. But very quickly I also came around to enjoy. After Ling’s son left for a prep school in the US, she began to work part time, three days a week. She’s short and pleasant, born in Canton, would teach me Cantonese from time to time - Aunt Ling’s Cantonese wasn’t good. When she came to clean the table after the dinner, she asked if it’s right. When I reluctantly told her it’s not what I expected, she said, that’s the only meicai she knew and told me to buy the right kind and she’d make it again.
So there went my first grocery shopping trip. My Cantonese was almost non exist and the vendors were rather rude. After few attempts, an older man shoved a bunch of long stemmed veg, “here is your meicai.” As I was debating if to buy it or not, he impatiently took it away, “try your luck next door.” If you consider New York second is fast, you should visit Hong Kong. An older woman saw the episode, “why did you have to be so rude?” then turned to me, “miss, try Shanghai grocery stores in North Point.” And confimred to me that thing was indeed meicai, only Cantonese style. My tears dried up quickly.
Not every Shanghai grocery store carried the kind of meicai that were everywhere in Beijing. So, when I saw it on the shelve in Kam San, I just congratulated myself one more time for picking New York as my home.
Back in the late 80s, hot pot wasn’t as popular as it is now in New York, that went with karoke. But Kam San sold hotpot pot, Zhenjiang vinegar, thin sliced meat (when few other stores had it thick), etc. When I first met Golfer, he had never tasted the dark Zhenjiang vinegar nor had hot pot, but loves both ever since.
Recent years (a decade or so), Chinese supermarket scene has been dominated by Wenzhou entrepreneurs. They emphasize on fresh produces in airy spaces with cashiers that are all young women, you see one you see them all. Kam San differs. It felt dated. Dull. But the people who worked there were really long term, you might not know their names but recognized their faces.
Few years ago, George asked me to sub for him at his winter tennis league, that’s when I first met Andy who ran Kam San for 26 years, sold it on 12/31/2007. The Barron’s had profiled him and his brother years back. I joked that suddenly there are lots more cars on the road and shoppers in the stores, :). It’s quite telling when my Friday group came for dinner, ate out of the very same pot I bought from his store two decades ago.
I meant to write this one for few months, finally got to it. There are just too much to blog every day!! I still shop at Kam San, the same parking attendant is nice and able, the food court are still manned by the original people. Even the Quasimodo (Quasi in my mind, is a kind and gentel pleb that led an unfortunately but remarkable life who found his true love but just didn’t get reciprocated) is there - I don’t know his name. I couldn’t help but pad on his arm and said, “hooray, you’re still here.” He looked at me, replied “where else could I go?” Obviously Andy treated his employees well. A little tribute from a happy shopper as well.