THE rain was beating down, the children were busy with their social lives and there was a parking space right outside Mr Chow's Chinese restaurant in Parkgate.
How often in the last 13 years had my husband and I dreamed of a lazy Sunday, just the two of us, and now we had one a feeling of melancholy had rolled in like a fog. Lunch was needed to lift the mood.
'Where is everyone?' I asked as we parked and peered across at the mist-shrouded Welsh coastline.
'Spending the day with their families,' said my husband.
Before you could say 'Deng yi deng' or even 'wait a moment', we'd jumped out of the car and into the restaurant, knowing that a nostalgic Chinese banquet was just what we needed.
'I'll have to ask for the table back at 7pm,' said the nice, but precise, English waiter.
And looking around we suddenly realised where everyone was - they were sitting in Mr Chow's. Only they'd managed to bring their children with them.
'I'm not sure I can eat to a deadline,' I said turning page after page of Chinese delicacy. Familiar words kept leaping out to greet me: hot and sour, ginger and spring onion, egg fried, Tsing Tao... and the surroundings touched a nerve too: red, black and gold, parasols, bamboo. I felt a shiver of happy memories.
In a peripatetic - and low flying - career, my husband and I both spent time working in the Far East and managed to sample all sorts of familiar Chinese food - and some not so familiar. At Mr Chow's, neither deep fried locust nor muntjac tendons were on the menu, but it was still easy to conjure up some of the most memorable meals we'd ever had.
Article
