The trigger was the wonderful mixed seafood with tofu soup 海鲜豆腐汤 from the Amazing Wok in San Carlos, a couple weeks ago (and then several times since). which sent me back to lunches on my own in Reading PA roughly 75 years ago, after I was finished with the program of Saturday morning for boys at the Reading YMCA. I was then on my own in the city (browsing in stores, just walking the city, sometimes going to a movie, mostly ransacking the Reading Public Library), until late in the afternoon, when I went to my parents’ store on N. 5th St. — the Memo Shop, high-end costume jewelry — and the family did a little grocery shopping and my dad drove us the 4 miles home to West Lawn.
The lunches were sometimes sandwiches or other diner food at one of the lunch counters in town, but usually were Chinese (American) or Italian (American), at two little restaurants that I remember as being in basements on S. 6th St. (but these physical details are quite likely to have been altered in memory). There wasn’t room for a lot of menu adventure at either place. Typical lunches:
Chinese: egg drop soup or hot and sour soup; plus beef and broccoli, chow mein, or egg foo young
Italian: spaghetti and meatballs most often, sometimes veal parmesan or fettuccine Alfredo or a lunch special of the day
I had money from my parents to cover these cheap lunches, plus a 15% tip.
I don’t remember the decor at the Chinese place (probably minimal), but the Italian place had an impressive painting of what I recall as the Bay of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius in the background.
The madeleine moment. The Amazing Wok’s mixed seafood with tofu soup — shrimp, fish fillet, and crab meat [and calamari tentacles] in a thickened chicken broth with soft bean curd and white egg drop — which I immediately recognized as simple egg drop soup that has moved from a rural village to a seaside metropolis. From Wikipedia:
Egg drop soup, also known as egg flower soup, (Chinese: 蛋花湯) is a Chinese soup of wispy beaten eggs in chicken broth. Condiments such as black or white pepper, and finely chopped scallions and tofu, are commonly added to the soup. The soup is made by adding a thin stream of beaten eggs to the boiling broth in the final moments of cooking, creating thin, silken strands or flakes of cooked egg that float in the soup.
And that took me back to the Saturday Chinese lunches. And then along S. 6th St. for the enchantment of the Bay of Naples and the solid pleasure of spaghetti and meatballs (which I am, by the way, still fond of, though with more interesting pasta (like rotini), much richer marinara sauce, and better-grade meat).
Cuisines. From Wikipedia:
American Chinese cuisine, also known as Sino–American cuisine, is a style of Chinese cuisine developed by Chinese Americans. The dishes served in North American Chinese restaurants are modified to suit customers’ tastes and are often quite different from styles common in China. By the late 20th century, it was recognized as one of the many regional styles of Chinese cuisine.
And also from Wikipedia:
Italian-American cuisine (Italian: cucina italoamericana) is a style of Italian cuisine adapted throughout the United States. Italian-American food has been shaped throughout history by various waves of immigrants and their descendants
From that entry, on spaghetti and meatballs:
A dish based on Neapolitan festival dishes involving much smaller meatballs as well as other ingredients, iconic in the United States. The dish as served in the United States is unknown in Italy. Meatballs (Italian: polpette) are not served on top of pasta in Italy.
The Bay of Naples. The visual madeleine. From Wikipedia:
The Gulf of Naples (Italian: Golfo di Napoli), also called the Bay of Naples, is a roughly 15-kilometer-wide (9.3 mi) gulf located along the south-western coast of Italy … It opens to the west into the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered on the north by the cities of Naples and Pozzuoli, on the east by Mount Vesuvius, and on the south by the Sorrento Peninsula and the main town of the peninsula, Sorrento.
(photo from Sightseeing Tours Italy site)… The islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida are located in the Gulf of Naples. The area is a tourist destination, with the seaside Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum at the foot of Mount Vesuvius (destroyed in the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius), along the north coast.
August 20, 2025 at 7:00 am |
My family had similar Chinese-American meals in New York City when I was a child, but hot and sour soup in 1950 strikes me as improbable; I can’t recall encountering it until the late ’60s/early ’70s, when Szechuan cuisine started appearing (in the Boston area, at least) as an alternative to the standard (Americanized) Cantonese.
August 20, 2025 at 7:10 am |
The thing about memories is that they’re constantly being reshaped by later experiences; sometimes this produces entirely fabricated memories, but very often it mixes more or less accurate memories from different times. My recollection of hot and sour soup is vivid, but as you note, it surely can’t be from ca. 1950 in Reading, but no doubt is from the Boston area in the early 60s.