Sul Long Tang Revisited

I haven't yet decided if this is going to become a weekly ritual, but I'm back at Sun Nong Dan for their breakfast special. Today I'm going with the Do Ga Ni Tang. Same milky-white broth, but with noodles and ox-knees. We're talking sizable chunks of tendon and all things gelatinous. I love the range of textures;  it can be cooked so that it dissolves on the tongue, it can be spongy,  it can be chewy, almost like an al dente pasta. It occurs to me that tendon covers the range of textures of  many western comfort foods: macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, yet many westerners find the idea of eating tendon just too odd for them. To each their own.

I consider the container of ground black pepper among the condiments. I normally use kimchi juice to spice up my soup but today I add a heaping spoonful of that pepper into my bowl, with only soup spoon full of kimchi juice, and I notice an appreciable depth to the sense of spiciness. It's a lot like the kind of sound you get from a nine foot grand piano.

The soup has come to the table still simmering in the bowl. As I retrieve bits of meat and tendon from my bowl and leave them in the small bowl of dipping sauce, it occurs to me that the dipping sauce is as much about cooling down the meat as it is a flavoring agent. Either way, I'm grateful.

There's been a general murmur of sorts from the other patrons that I've blocked out, but I suddenly note that I'm hearing the Mandarin dialect of Chinese being spoken. OK, I'm in the SGV; the Chinese demographic is being targeted by the new Japanese/Korean restaurants. I take a quick look around trying to identify the speakers, and I'm in for a surprise; the people speaking Mandarin are the staff - and they're speaking among themselves. As the person who's been waiting on my table passes by, I wave her down and I mention that I notice that she's been speaking in Mandarin. She seems surprised that I'm able to identify the Mandarin dialect and asks me if I speak Mandarin. After I tell her yes, she explains that the owners want the staff to be able to speak Mandarin since they get so many Chinese customers. This serves to support my supposition that the Chinese demographic *is* being targeted.

The black pepper that I added has settled at the bottom of bowl and that amount has not changed while the volume of soup is now less than half of the original, and the soup is now noticeably spicier, and I find myself perspiring quite freely and I ask the waitress for a few extra napkins. I choose to forego the remainder of the bowl and I ask for the check. I'm done in only forty five minutes today. But it's all good even though today is noticeably overcast compared to the week before.