Stories from China Beach

We had to run errands this week, errands that took us further afield than usual. Still unfamiliar with Los Angeles, we missed a critical turn, and before we knew it, found ourselves near the coast. Which was all right with us!

We decided to use the serendipitous wrong turn to our advantage, and eat somewhere on the beach. Traffic jams in Santa Monica convinced us to keep driving south. We exited in Venice Beach, new to us. A beach is a beach, right? Surely we could find something here.

But that boardwalk was barely half a step above totally disgusting. The air hung heavy with the stench of drugs, cigarettes, vomit, nastiness that would have made it impossible to enjoy a meal, even if we had found a decent enough diner. And we did not find a decent enough diner.

As we were giving up, about to head inland in search of an In-N-Out hamburger establishment, we spied a fellow carrying a load of fresh vegetables into a tiny eatery. Abundance of flowers hid the entrance. Without the vegetable man, we would have thought it was part of the liquor store next door.

China Beach Bistro. Vietnamese cuisine. Not something I am familiar with. How does it differ from Chinese, Korean, or other Asian menus? I didn't know. And didn't care. It was clean, pretty, food!, and at 2 pm on a Thursday afternoon, that was all that mattered.

For the next couple of hours, we were treated to more than a delicious meal. Hiep Thi Le explained La Lot, why lemongrass is considered healthy, and showed us how to use her homemade (not housemade) dressing on the rice noodles. We learned that housin is a sweet soy sauce, nicknamed Asian molasses. And that housin doesn't taste like Kikkoman soy sauce or molasses, but that it's exceptionally good when mixed with Hiep's dressing.

Hiep's mother helps her run the place, and she sat with us for a while, asking how my mother could look so young for her age ("I love you!," said Mom), hinting at life in Vietnam before the war ended there.

We heard the two women tell an impatient diner that China Beach is in Vietnam, not China, and that they did not serve sweet-and-sour sauce. We listened to young Vietnamese voices as they chowed down on Bun Bo Hue and Com Chien Ga, disappointed not at the lack of sweet-and-sour, but at the absence of a WiFi connection. The war in Vietnam was not part of their vocabulary, as it had been for Hiep Thi Le and her mother.

Despite a good two hours eating and listening, we left that tiny restaurant aware that stories abounded behind the smiling faces of the two ladies who cooked and served. Happy stories, and sad, and stories of homelands lost and new ones gained. Was America the Goldene Medina for them that it had been for immigrants of centuries past? I wish I knew.

We should hear all of these stories. They are all part of our wonderful American dream.