Jury Duty

I had jury duty yesterday and today. I was called for a case, but long story short, they didn't like me. So I spent two days doing NY Times crossword puzzles and reading The Gastronaut.

The weird thing about jury duty is lunch. You are in the land of suits, surrounded by the courts, City Hall, Wall Street, and the southern tip of chinatown. So rather than eat in weird corporate delis, sports bars, or McDonalds, I headed east into chinatown.

One of the nice things about New York City is ethnic restaurants. If there are a bunch of Chinese people eating at a chinese restaurant, I feel good about it. Same as take out curry with Indian cab drivers lined up outside. They should know their own food, right? Especially since I had researched jury duty lunches on Chowhound the night before and then forgotten my notes.

To vastly generalize, Asian cultures have a much vaster base of vegetarian cooking in their history, from India to China to southeast asia to Japan. Much of this can be based on accommodating the Toaist, Hindu, and Buddist religions. Look at me be racist.

Yesterday I ate at a place with a sign saying Shanghai Style, and I'm still not sure if it was the name of the restaurant or just the style of food. I ate Shanghai Style Tofu in Hot Pork Sauce. The pork was used just as a flavoring, and it was delicious. And there were a million things on the menu J. could have eaten. And today I went to a Thai place and had Pho, which is rice noodles in broth with endless possible additions. I had the beef mix, which had about five different cuts of meat, including tripe, which I've never had before. It was good.

The funny part is that at both restaurants I sat at a big, communal table, half filled with other jurors, all doing the same neighborhood lunch tour this week.