n

On Ruby Foo's circa 1940s menu (above),

wontons are defined as "kreplach."

highly carbonated supermarket soda

water, rather than old-fashioned

seltzer from a siphon bottle, to make
the beverage.
"This, of course, has gotten me
into trouble with MV friends, the
seltzer men of Brooklyn," he says.

WHY CHINESE?
If the egg cream has dwindled as the
preferred Jewish soft drink, the
tribe's love of Chinese food has con-
tinued to thrive in the past six
decades.
"It started because Jews could go
into a Chinese restaurant and feel
safe," Schwartz says.
Until the 1970s, only three types
of restaurants existed, besides Jewish
ones, in New York: French was
reserved for fancy occasions, Italian
was intimidating due to the
Madonna over the cash register, but
Chinese was cheap, tasty and non-
threatening.
The Chinese, after all, weren't
Christian; the statue of Buddha
looked like a decorative statue, or
perhaps your fecund tjncle Moe,
and Jews were one step up the
socioeconomic ladder from the
Chinese. "As Philip Roth points out
in Ponnoy's Complaint, to a Chinese
waiter a Jew is just another white
guy," Schwartz says.
And while the treif (non-kosher)
drew Jews who wanted to rebel
against kosher parents, the minced
meat and lack of dairy ingredients

m

C

a

(.2

c.

Spring
Sale

20% off all new orders

floor models available for immediate c elivery

Continued on page 42

JNPLATINUM •\1,\R( II

2006 •

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