You know that feeling you get when you realize you’ve lived without something you love since packing everything you own and driving across the country? No? There were something things I realized I’d have to live without, like Dunkin’ Donuts, Del’s Lemonade, and Corn Chowda.
It wasn’t until one of those very infrequent LA rainy days that I remembered a favorite east coast pastime of mine: Getting drunk on scorpion bowls at a Chinese restaurant on a rainy day. Remembering my old rainy day tradition must be comparable to remembering your own name after a bout of amnesia. Yeah it’s that big.
That’s when I had to think to myself, do Chinese restaurants in LA even have scorpion bowls? ..or is that just a nothing-better-to-do-suburban-life thing? I hit the Google and saw a recommendation for Fu’s Palace on Chowhound. I called to confirm that they did in fact have scorpion bowls, and the man on the phone laughed and said “Oh yes! We are famous for our scorpion bowls, best in LA!” As the clouds began to give way to LA sunshine, I raced my car to Fu’s in order to celebrate the last gloomy moments of a SoCal rainy day.
Fu’s Palace is pretty spacious inside, palatial even. There’s the requisite table of employees eating lunch, the little kid running around with a toy airplane, and the giant magical bar where my scorpion bowl(s) would be born.
Let’s skip to the point here, I don’t remember anything about the food. There were veggies, things were fried, these fried things were dipped into a sauce that I hope is not actually made from ducks, I tried like a jackass to use chopsticks but quit after probably 2 attempts.. WHATEVER. I ordered the scorpion bowl.
Now a big part of the back story here is that the girlfriend had never experienced the bowl of scorpions. It blew my mind when I heard this, really it did. That’s why so much urgency was placed on our visit today. So when she was presented with her first scorpion bowl, it needed to be perfect. Maybe the waiter could breath fire or bang a gong or something and really step it up a notch, but if they just stuck the regular routine and presentation that would do the job. What I was counting on was the round ceramic, volcano looking container where the middle part is filled with a dash of alcohol and then lit on fire. That had been my experience to date, and I really didn’t think this part was optional. What I got was the plastic half clam shell looking thing that you’d find for 5 cents at a yard sale after an elderly person passed away. They attempted the pyro aspect of the presentation by lighting the alcohol on a floating piece of lime, but that just made the drink taste like charcoal.
How did it taste? Well I can’t say that I ever really paid attention to the taste in the past. It was more about splashing booze onto a fire and getting really drunk while thunder crashed in the background. While these scorpion bowls probably tasted just as good as the ones I’d tasted in the past, they didn’t have the same magic. In fact they made me really anxious and I really just wanted to go home and not do anything else for the rest of the day.. pretty much how I feel on rainy days anyway.
So here it is: Do I even like scorpion bowls? Maybe I hate scorpion bowls. Maybe I actually love rainy days and I’ve been ruining years worth of rainy days by drinking sugar booze out of a flaming volcano. I have some thinking to do.
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