dante's dumplings

for one dollar you can feast on 5 tasty dumplings from a small chinatown kitchen although on a hot day it'll feel like eating dumplings in dante's inferno.

i've been playing tour guide this week since my father is visiting. on friday we went on a quest to find a dumpling place. first, traveling with an out-of-town guest through unknown streets on a blaringly hot day is no small feat. especially when your guest is your father (who is not a huge fan of the heat, direct sunshine or walking). by the time that we reached our destination i didn't even care that they only served one type of dumpling -- pork -- i was just happy to spy a few empty chairs at the meager counter where we could sit for a while.

the best part of the experience was eating at the counter, wiping away sweat from our brows and dipping the dumplings in hot sauce. while we were dreaming of air conditioning a woman who had ordered 50 dumplings asked the owner for some containers of hot sauce to take back to the office with her order. the owner shook her head but the woman insisted. when she continued to ask for hot sauce the owner started speaking to her in chinese knowing full well that the woman didn't speak chinese. so the woman would say "hot sauce" and the owner would shake her head and speak in long paragraphs of chinese, then the woman would say "hot sauce" and there would be more head shaking and sentences in chinese…