Living in Little Saigon but craving old-school Cantonese

Just give me a torn red-vinyl booth, a plastic lazy susan with sticky bottles of soy sauce, and a dim room full of hanging lanterns.

One of the very few downsides of living in an area that's been blessed with zillions of fairly recent Asian immigrants is the slow death of the old-school, Cantonese-inspired, inauthentic, risky Chinese restaurant. Gone (largely) is the day trip to Chinatown for a family lunch of won ton soup (sizzling rice soup $1.00 more per person; hot-and-sour soup $2.50 more per person), sweet-and-sour pork, cashew chicken, and all the rest of those interpreted dishes that end up being about as Chinese as I am. Honestly, the food our more recent immigrants have brought is better, while improved transportation has allowed the marketplace to accommodate them with things that are a lot closer to what they had at home. I'm grateful, for both the food itself and the opportunity to learn.

But still. Once in a while a craving comes up for a gaudily decorated restaurant with lazy Susans on the tables, sticky bottles of soy sauce, and SOMETHING on the menu that says "chop suey." Every now and then, the heart yearns to journey back, back to Grant Street and Broadway, back to Daddy and Uncle Mel arguing over the check, back to Aunt Lady helping a little girl figure out what the fortune in her cookie really meant. On such occasions, the food needs to reflect the nostalgia, and that's getting harder to find around here.

Enter Fu Wing Low, unobtrusively tucked away in a strip mall in Fountain Valley. It has everything I needed -- enormous round tables with lazy Susans and bottles of soy sauce, lucky bamboo plants in every corner, red vinyl chairs, and an old couple arguing loudly over whether or not she should care if the kids come home for Thanksgiving. (Spoiler: Yes, ma'am, you should. Your daughter-in-law can't be THAT bad. )

Herewith, vegetable egg foo young, cashew chicken, and of course, the obligatory almond and fortune cookies.

Every cliche in the book. I am happy.