My culinary birthright wasn’t a box of yellowing recipe cards or a firm opinion about the best way to make deviled eggs. What I inherited from my parents was a Chinese food-on-Sundays habit, a tradition my husband and I uphold on an almost weekly basis.
Since my husband and I have very different food tastes, we typically get takeout from the International District, where we don’t have to agree on a restaurant. But our trips are always complicated by my not calling in an order beforehand, because – as I’ve many times explained to my Kau Kau-loyal husband – it’s impossible to know what I’ll want until I look at a menu.
Even though the city’s now eliminated evening parking fees in the ID, I’d still much rather peruse a menu at home and swoop in for pick-up than stand around while my order’s prepared. My hunch is many other eaters feel the same way, which is why a few weekends back I gathered every take-out menu in the neighborhood and posted them online at idmenus.com.
I don’t pretend to know anything about web design, so I’m sure there’s plenty on the site to make the tech-savvy scoff. As you’ll see, it’s pretty skeletal (although I’m not sure what more can be expected of a site assembled during the Oscars’ pre-game show.) But if you can pardon the amateurishness, you’ll find PDFs of menus from more than three dozen restaurants. And the site looks pretty good on a mobile phone too, should you decide to make an ID stop on your way home from somewhere else.
Honestly, I have no idea whether folks will find the site handy. But knowing I’ll be able to feast on 663 Bistro’s pork stomach with XO sauce, Fu-Lin’s vegetarian goose or Fortune Garden’s pea vines with dried scallops while my husband’s enjoying his Kau Kau roast pork makes the project feel worthwhile. (And who knew Hong Kong Bistro sold borscht?) Enjoy.
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