Meat on Sticks

After spending a good hour or so playing at our favorite playground, it was supper time and The Boy and I both had appetites. I listed some options in town for The Boy to choose from, a place to get sandwiches, a place to get hamburgers, or Chinese food. To my surprise and delight, because it was what I was hankering for, he chose Chinese food.

We went to China Star, a store-front restaurant offering over the counter service for eating-in or carrying-out. I read the appetizers off the menu to The Boy so he could choose what he wanted. He selected chicken fingers. I looked over the menu for something else and ordered sweet and sour pork.

When our food arrived I was disappointed to discover that despite one being an appetizer and the other an entree, chicken fingers and sweet and sour pork were very similar dishes. The chicken fingers were long cuts of chicken breast heavily battered and fried with a bowl of bright red sweet and sour sauce on the side for dipping. The sweet and sour pork was small cubes of pork heavily battered and fried and served in a plate of bright red sweet and sour sauce.

The Boy reminded me that we had ordered food for carry-out from China Star last year, but that we had beef teriyaki, which he called, “meat on sticks."

The next evening, after watching the Independence Day parade, I asked the boy again where he wanted to eat supper, and again he chose Chinese food, so we went back to the China Star. This time we ordered meat on sticks, chicken noodle soup, and mixed Chinese vegetables.

The meat on sticks reminded me of an incident from years earlier, in better times, of eating Chinese food with The Boy’s Mother. We had met in college and befriended each other. She had a boyfriend from home, but after they broke-up our mutual attraction became evident to each of us. We made plans to get together over Christmas break our sophomore year in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, halfway between our homes.

We had lunch that day at a Chinese restaurant called Dragon Island, which offered a buffet – as a college student I thought a Chinese buffet would make for a good first date. The Boy’s Mother much later confided in me, that she had never had Chinese food before, so she didn’t know what she would like from the options on the buffet. She followed my lead by selecting from the buffet the same things that I did. I remember when we were eating that she didn’t eat much of her food and she seemed perplexed as to how to go about eating the meat on sticks, attempting first to bite off the meat from the pointy end of the stick, then reconsidering before she stabbed herself.

China Star restaurant is located at 11-15 Main Street in Montpelier, Vermont. It is open seven days per week serving lunch and dinner.