Mark Pis China Gate.  

So I have to talk about a local place,  well sort of local.  Growing up my mother made a lot of LaChoy chop suey, I hated it. My mother somehow got it in her head that I liked it, and when I would come home from college that would be our Friday evening meal. Finally I had to put a stop to it because I love my mother and I love her cooking but I did not love her chop suey.  

As I got older I absolutely refused to eat Chinese food of any sort. I wasted a lot of years avoiding Chinese restaurants, probably really good Chinese restaurants. Then I lived in St. Louis for a while and we had  been invited to go for Chinese after work with some friends however because I didn’t like it, the answer was no thank you.  The friends said why don’t we try family-style and maybe there’s an opportunity to try different kinds of Chinese food. Which we did.  I tried Mongolian beef and loved it. That began my love affair with Chinese food.

However, I have to admit I am not fond of some of the little mom-and-pop places ,which is unusual for me, but I feel like the little smorgasbordsy places cook their food in the same fat until you can taste everything that’s been cooked in that restaurant all in one bite.   Just up the street from where I bought my first condo was a restaurant called Mark Pis I went there a lot at that time because lunch was affordable, and over the years it became my main place for Chinese.  I lunched there for years,  about 20 years.  Then one day I went for lunch and there was a “closed for business” sign in the door. I was devastated.  

Thus began a desert of Chinese food for me. I ate at PF Chang, but their food is REALLY not regular Chinese food, I ate at little mom-and-pop places, never really quite happy, and have searched and searched. Then one day a friend of mine who lives in Columbus Indiana told me that there was a PF Changs down there. I was ecstatic, soon after that my friend Laura and I planned a date to go down for dinner, and wouldn’t you know, I had a patient show up late enough that it almost canceled our dinner, but Laura was patient and we ate late that night and I got to taste delicious Mark Pis Chinese once again.  Hot and sour soup, sweet-and-sour chicken. Mongolian beef, garlic chicken, and Crab Rangoon all of these are delicious at Mark Pis. So last night my friend Laura and I drove down to Columbus, and met up with our friend Diane, we had a delicious meal and  fabulous company.  After our bellies were full, we were sitting around just gossiping as we women do, and the chef came out and talked to us.  He is very passionate about cooking,  food talking about how to cook broccoli properly rather than send it out yellow and limp.  About how you have to be present to the food.  It was very fun to talk to him.  Laura mentioned that we had driven down from Indianapolis, we continued chatted after he left and all of a sudden he came out wheeling a cart with this beautiful desert just a perfectly beautiful little goodie at the end of our meal.  Clearly he had taken and inordinate amount of time pleasing us with this beauty!

We left with full bellies AND full

hearts!