I grew up convinced that pursuing your dreams was the most important thing you could possibly do with your life.
And part of that had to do with the massive expansion of the coming-of-age genre during my formative years. I was raised on films, books and TV that valorized passions over professions; “Orange County” (2002) and “School of Rock” (2003) both written by Mike White and starring Jack Black, were especially memorable..
Friend of the newsletter Machiko recently recommended “The Big Year,” an charming, utterly sincere film in which Jack Black again fights the man, this time to realize his dream of becoming the number one-ranked bird watcher. The protagonists of these coming-of-age films were indie record label founders, architecture students, flower shop owners and aspiring chefs, writers and journalists. Following your heart and going broke for art was repeated as a character motivation so many times in so many mediums that it accidentally became a kind of vernacular gospel.
Now Mike White makes “White Lotus”, a show where art exists to signify status and anyone with any aspiration is the butt of the joke. AI has every creative industry at knifepoint; Anthropic’s CEO is calling it a macroeconomic problem so large it will require re-hauling the tax code to redistribute revenue from AI tokens and products. When I hear word “dream” during my daily short-form video scroll, I flinch, assuming it’s a preamble to an order form drop or subscription link. These days it’s harder than ever to be “obsessed men in pursuit of friends with feathers,” as the above-linked NYT review’s headline puts it.
And yet here I am. And down there, that’s my subscription link. But dreams aren’t really the goal here. I’d like to grow Lunch Box into a community that can support the adventurous food and cultural reporting that local publications can’t pay for any more. So if you’ve ever learned something interesting or useful from this newsletter, please support me however you can. You can also vote on the next direction of Lunch Box (details below).
I recently rewatched some of those old movies and I still love them, even that means making peace with the uncomfortably large influence that Jack Black roles have had on my life. The music and fashion choices are of course dated, but they’ll be cool again in a few years if we just wait. If your generation has to be associated with a cringey idea, it might as well be pursuing your dreams. How else are you going to pass the time?
These are the turnip cakes at Crystal Palace at the Marriot Courtyard in Monterey Park. It’s one of two hotels that have added dedicated dim service in the SGV; the San Gabriel Hilton houses a dim sum operation branded as Five Star Seafood, the same name of the restaurant that used to occupy the top floor of Focus Plaza across the street. Technically it’s called Tawa Plaza now. Also, Tawa Gateway, or according to Google Maps, “Tawa (99) Gateway - Plaza.” It’s good to know the new ownership is preserving the tradition of making everyone confused about the name (long live the San Gabriel Square).
Crystal Palace’s name is more palatial than its settings, though it is a recently-built, naturally bright space that doesn’t get too loud. At 27 items, the selection of dim sum is very modest, and the service is slow, especially for a restaurant with around 100 seats. But the dumpling work was clean the day I went and the kitchen did an excellent job with the snow pea leaves entree we ordered. And of course if you come for dim sum here, you will never lack for micro-greens.
Fancy dim sum usually means sneaking gold foil, black truffle and micro-greens into places they don’t belong. But in steamers these formal ingredients wilt like tuxedos and ballgowns at the sauna. The only upside is the opportunity to complain about the spectacle of the price.
David Chan recently commented on Threads that dim sum isn’t really a strength of San Gabriel Valley Chinese dining. The scene has definitely lost a lot of heavy hitters over the years - my favorites were King Hua and Elite, which never reopened after the fire. Orange County Asian strip malls continue to siphon a lot of buzzy international chain openings. And Chinese tourism, study abroad and investment in the area have never recovered from their pandemic downturns. The hotels built during the boom years must search for new sources of revenue. At the San Gabriel Hilton, Five Star Seafood is advertising a 3.99 per-plate special on the weekdays.
It’s facing the tracks in a fenced yard north of Los Angeles State Historic Park, so I couldn’t get closer to it. I assume it’s art because the world “liminal” is being used. It’s certainly art when I use the word liminal.
If you say hello, I’ll give you a sticker, while supplies last.
I’m always generating ideas and executing an infinitely shrinking percentage of them. So it would really help to know what my readers would be most interested to see. Paid subscribers can vote below on four different editorial themes, each with some branching story ideas. And if you sign up for a paid subscription, it also comes with my blessing if you decide to steal (use!) any of these ideas in addition to voting in the poll. It also comes with this fold-and-staple ekiben zine I designed.
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