June 22, 2005 - Chow Mein For Ed

Ciao. This story is mainly about prices. It’s about the price of something you chow down on for dinner when in New York, Santa Barbara, or Maine. You eat it with chopsticks, while your Chow-Chow Dog sits underneath the table waiting for you to mess up and drop pieces on the floor. This story is about Chow Mein – Chicken Chow Mein, to be precise.

The biggest migration of Chinese into North America came in through the West Coast. A lot of Chinese were recruited to California to work on the railroads. Some others ended up in Vancouver. Ed has always wondered why people in New York City seem to have more access to Chinese food delivery than people in California. It seems like on TV and in the movies, New Yorkers are always ordering take-out Chinese, and having it delivered. Sometimes, they eat it in bed. On Seinfeld, the delivery person who was run-over by Elaine and sued her, was named Ping.

This week, the dedicated staff of edhat.com called up for some Chinese – not for delivery (gung hey, fat chance), and not even to get some food for pick-up. We were calling to see how much they charge for a plate of Chow Mein.

Now, you may be wondering … what is Chow Mein? How does it differ from Lo Mein, and Chow Fun? According to many knowledgeable websites, Chow Mein comes from the word Chow (or Chao) meaning fried and the word Mein (or Mian) meaning noodles, specifically flour and egg noodles. So, Chow Mein is just fried noodles. Lo Mein is tossed noodles (where the noodles are not mixed with the rest of the stuff in the pan). Chow Fun is made from fried noodles, but the noodles are made of rice.

Before we announce the prices, we must first say a word about the names of Chinese restaurants. It seems that many places are not called restaurants at all. Instead, they are called Gardens, Palaces, and Pavilions. They sound more like places where people play basketball than drink tea and eat with chopsticks. Of course, the Chinese aren’t the only ones who eat in gardens – the Dutch Garden serves German food on Hollister, and of course, the Olive Garden sells something that resembles Italian food, from Tucson to Tonopah.

The cheapest place in the area to buy Chow Mein (the Low Chow Mein) for dinner is Little Asia in Isla Vista ($4.85). The most expensive Chow Mein is the Szechuan Restaurant on the Mesa ($8.25). The average price of all places is $5.93 for lunch and $7.06 for dinner. In our contest we didn’t specify lunch or dinner, so we averaged these two averages to get a super average of $6.50.

The winner of yesterday’s contest was Carol, a self-proclaimed chow mein lover with a hotmail email address. Carol wins an Edhat t-shirt. She can pick up her t-shirt any morning at Edhat Palace on 2027 De La Vina. Chow.

As usual we have posted a table showing what each chinese restaurant charges.

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