foodtogo – The Waiting Room Project

Maureen — Somewhere in New Jersey. April 2017 ©2017 Aviva Russel. All rights reserved.

The Waiting Room Project is open to anyone. I have posted several photos here taken by other people. Some were sent to me, and some I have discovered. I was cruising my Facebook page the other day and came across this one. It is a friend’s family caught in automotive waiting room hell. Here’s the story:

“Hi Ed, so here are the details. We were driving (from New York City) to Maryland with our daughters to spend the 2nd Seder with My Brother and his Family. We had Tupperware bowls filled with homemade chopped liver, egg noodles and tons of deserts ( hard for my Bro to get in MD). My SUV started making strange noises so we found a mechanic and waited 2 1/2 hrs for car repair. We did not make it to Maryland but went out to dinner with the girls and after a martini and fries we felt a little better but still very disappointed that our Seder Plans got waylaid.”

I expect from the look of these folks, this photo is somewhere around hour 2. It perfectly captures the resigned desperation of uncertainty. How much longer will they be there? No one knows. Thank you, M. for letting me share this.

If you have a photo you want to share, please use the contact form, and I’ll be delighted to do so. That’s what makes this Project everyone’s.

I don’t know what happened to the chopped liver and the egg noodles, but knowing how delicious they must have been, you can only guess.

Waiting_select_007 — Empress Pavilion, Downtown. April 3, 2013

This is the waiting area next to the bar at the Empress Pavilion, what was once our go-to Dim Sum restaurant. We would often go there with Jake on a Sunday for lunch. It is a huge place with a cavernous dining room that was packed with noisy diners nearly every day. On a busy Sunday, you might wait an hour for your table. Red-jacketed ladies pushed steaming carts, laden with towers of gleaming silver steamers filled with translucent dumplings, to and fro between the tables. Har Gow, Chicken with Pine Nuts, Gai Bao, Rice Noodle with Fish, Sticky Rice in Lotus Leaf, Chicken Pies, Fun Quor, these were some of our favorites. Many of our best times with Jake revolved around food and eating.

In our family, food is more than just something to eat. It is a creative expression, an act of love. We cooked with Jake from the earliest age, and there are some wonderful stories that involve Jake and the kitchen. He ended up going to culinary school and worked in some of the best restaurants in Venice for a while. Sadly, the Empress closed a couple of years ago due to rising overhead. It has re-opened recently but is only a shadow of its former glory. Its closing propelled us on a quest to find a replacement. We traversed the LA area from Redondo Beach to the San Gabriel Valley, and finally found our new favorite, Ocean Seafood right down the street from the Empress in downtown L.A.

Tag: foodtogo

On the Road, Interrupted.

Empress Pavilion