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A few nights ago we got Chinese delivered from our favorite take out, Golden Chopstick, on 18th and Spring Garden streets. Not to be confused with, in our opinion, the best Chinese takeout in the city, China House No. 5, at 2123 Oregon Ave. But, China House #5 does not deliver.

You can call ahead and pick up. The owners are a lovely young and growing Asian American family. The family has chefs that cook like they know how and do.

The best part about waiting for an order is to watch the kitchen at work. Besides being very clean, the precision, technique, and pride that goes into their food is evident in the outstanding taste.

I love how a chef takes a box full of green onions/scallions, cleans them over the sink, slices off the root end and hangs them to dry off, before thinly slicing them.

you can sometimes see the owner himself sitting at a small table, folding and making dumplings for won-ton soup. Clean and fast, like an up-close magician doing tricks.

His smiling wife answers phones and takes orders from customers. She is dilligent in making sure you get what you ordered.

Everything is good here, everything. My favorite, though pedestrian choice, is Gen Tao’s Chicken. It is crunchy in all the places it should be. The broccoli, fresh and tasty. The sauce is a rich thick brown sweet and tangy….Ohh! So good. Just the best you will ever have. I love their chicken fried rice and lo mein dishes. Their food just seems to have more taste then others.

To our tasters, this Chinese to go, is the very best.

But, they do not deliver. The best we have found, that delivers in more ways than one, is Golden Chopstick at 18th and Spring Garden. They never get the order wrong and the food is very good. A very close second to China House #5.

Some of us think the shrimp with lobster sauce is better at Golden Chopstick. It is very, very, good. Many of the other dishes are also very good. We order from them often.

The bad news is, when you get to be my age your fortune cookie fortune takes on a different meaning than when you were twenty.

From our last order from Golden Chopstick there were a couple of fortune cookies. I put them aside.

Tonight, looking for something sweet besides your company, I opened two of them and enjoyed the brief crunchy sweetness they offered.

The stiff white paper with blue printing foretelling my future said, ‘A new wardrobe brings great joy and change in your life’

Translation:
Oh No! I am gonna die and my family will have to buy me a new suit to be laid out and buried in.
But, I guess I am going to heaven, which would be the joy and change.

The second fortune said, ‘There are many unexpected and thrilling surprises in store for you!

Translation:
Oh No! I am going to hell, which was unexpected, and I guess fire and pain can be thrilling in a perverted sense.

Then again, I am a glass half filled kinda person. So in going past my first morbid, fatalistic, neurotic responses I have settled upon….this translation.

Fortune #1
‘A new wardrobe brings great joy and change in your life’

Translation:
I get new underwear, my wife is filled with joy and pleased, I move with more confidence, less chafing. I get change from my purchase.

Fortune #2
‘There are many unexpected and thrilling surprises in store for you’

Translation:
Yes there are!