A Million, Billion, Trillion Tiny Feelings Pt. 18

Notes from a father's first pregnancy

November 1, 2017

It’s far below freezing in Chapel Hill as I sit across from Emily at one of our favorite restaurants in town. A piping bowl of stew sits between us as we wait for the rest of our order to appear on the table. The weather app on my phone reads fourteen degrees. For those local to North Carolina’s central Piedmont region, we might as well be living on Hoth.

But we love this restaurant and are happy to brave the occasional New York-ian winter day for a lunch date over a bowl of the beef noodle stew.

At first, though, we weren’t sold.

In the weeks and months after we moved here, everyone kept chiding us, “You have to eat at Gourmet Kingdom. It’s unreal.” Its legend grew as we passed the unassuming building time and again, wary of Chinese food outside of New York. Finally, we tried it.

And we were pissed.

“That was fucking terrible,” Emily said after our first dinner there. “What were those people talking about?”

 “No, no, no,” a friend told us several weeks later. “You guys did it all wrong. Let me guess: you ordered New York Chinese?”