aspoonfulofstories

I have searched for gua bao ever since I had my first bite at a noodle bar in Connecticut. Crispy chicken fried tossed in gochujang, tucked into a fluffy pillow with pickled daikon and carrots, kewpie, and dressed with a single sprig of cilantro.

I searched.

At a weekday farmers market in San Diego for a midday snack before being lectured about the supernutrients in brazil nuts by a vendor. As an appetizer preceding dumplings, noodles, ramen, or pho across the Emerald City. From several non-distinct food trucks at Seattle’s Saturday (and Sunday) Markets May through September. From a food stall at a Christmas market in Bryant Park where a New York vendor practically harassed me with her curiosity over the white bundle that cradled brightly colored vegetables in a small brown tray. Each bao sufficed as a filling snack but never as lively as my first experience. Why could I find mesmerizing xiao long bao, hom bow, and buns, but never the gua bao that my mouth longed for?

So I returned to the Mecha that introduced me to gua bao whenever I went home to Connecticut. Multiple visits to their original location in Fairfield, once or twice to New Haven. I heard they expanded to Hartford since I moved away. I wonder when I’ll get tired of filling up on the orange-stained dough, so much that I have to force another swig of hot sake and strategize how I’ll take even a bite of pho. With my tongue, I catch the orange juices that drip down my hand between my thumb and forefinger before it stains my thigh. I don’t mind going into each meal being overly optimistic of having an appetite for both gua bao and pho, as it is rare for me to long for a meal from my small home state. I leave every visit from Mecha stuffed, sedated, but full of love.

Today I visited Kauai and on the first morning, for the first time in a very long time, I felt at home. Cloudy skies and warm humidity greeted me and asked me to walk along the bluff at sunrise. Porous basalt offered grips for the skin on my hands and feet as black crabs scurried under rocks in nearby tide pools. After a seven-mile sunrise hike, it only seemed natural to get an early lunch at a food truck in Koloa. 

Dim ‘N’ Den Sum sat along a grassy field with a few other food trucks, accompanied by a few ground-bound avian families searching for grub between green blades. A friend told me that if I visit Kauai, I should buy fish from food trucks or local markets as much as possible. Dim ‘N’ Den Sum offered an assorted seafood plate- crab salad sushi, shrimp tempura, and ahi tuna. I ordered it for $12. But right above it on the menu read “pork belly bao”. 

No, that’s way too much food. My aging body and slow metabolism has never been able to tolerate the fullness of pork belly. And regardless of how fluffy and soft the bun, will the innards even satisfy me? I’ll just end up much too full but still wanting more. Unfortunately for my wallet, I typically take my indecisiveness to order food as a challenge.

I’ll take the bao too.

For here or to go?

For here.

A few minutes later, I’m handed a blue tray with what is definitely too much food. It holds a full white paper plate with a crab roll, 3 pieces of shrimp tempura drizzled in sauce, and a small plastic cup of ahi tuna. I fill up a condiment cup with hoisin sauce. So much to eat, but I am elated nonetheless. By my morning, by the warm yet cloudy weather and delayed rain, by this blue tray filled with beautiful food. Eating at one of the picnic tables doesn’t feel right, so I find a spot on the dense grass.

I start with the shrimp tempura, which I’ve eaten a million times before yet a bite of this one makes me dance. An old man passes and eyes me as I sit eating on the ground. I think he thinks he’s judging, but I think he wants to sit on the bare grass to eat too. Then I go for a bun, cupping one hand and pinching the top of each side together. The dough just slides between my fingers. Not a single centimeter sticks to my greasy skin! I turn the bun on its side and sink my teeth into the dough and cannot identify where the bun ends and pork begins. Each ounce of bread, muscle, and fat blends together with every bite. I can taste the pickles, but their fibers disappear. This defies science. For each large structure of macromolecules to all dissolve on a mouth at more or less the same rate. How? And I bought this from a food truck? Not even restaurants could get this texture right. 

Neither the brine of the dark thinly sliced pickles nor sweet and savory hoisin sauce coating the pork drips on my hand. Yet the flavor of each is still clear. The small cup of hoisin sauce is neglected as I smile and wiggle my shoulders after each and every bite. A curious mother hen approaches me with her chicks following close behind. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but this gua bao is mine.