Reflections On A (Currently Closed) Chinese Carryout

This article is written by my friend Katherine Zhao, a tea lover and traveler who is glad to call Washington, D.C. home for a second time. She first lived in the District’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood from 2007 to 2008 before spending time in California, China, and Chicago, among other places. When she moved back in 2017, Mount Pleasant was still home to Latinx and African-American communities with family-owned eateries, a bodega, and local shops, alongside new additions and communities reflecting gentrification. 

Katherine enjoys discovering food gems new and old, like China Town Carryout. She can’t remember if she knew of the restaurant the first time she lived in D.C. “Time has a way with memories—they appear as moments, and snapshots of those months are filled with sunny days at Dos Gringos cafe, pizza from RedRocks, and DVDs of Arrested Development that arrived via Netflix,” she writes. “There were also walks around Mount Pleasant, past Colonial Revival homes and tree-lined rowhouses bordering Rock Creek Park, and a main street that evoked small-town America.”

Photo of author.

On rainy evenings or when the hour is late, I find myself craving Chinese takeout. That’s how I found China Town Carryout last September, recommended in a tweet. Nestled within rowhouses in Washington, D.C.’s historic and diverse Mount Pleasant neighborhood, China Town can be easy to miss. The outside is grey-blue with a red “CHINA TOWN” sign. Metal grates guard a bay window. Inside, mustard yellow and white-tile walls enclose two tables and a few chairs. The menu board has long faded, but leaflets of the latest offerings line the counter where orders can be placed.  

Family Owned For A Quarter Of A Century

The family that opened China Town about 25 years ago still runs it. Most winter days you’ll see Grandma—or “Ma” or “Mom” as some customers call her—wearing a brown hat and speaking English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Fuzhounese. Her son and daughter-in-law are often at hand to help, while her husband cooks in the back. Ma and I struck up a running conversation in Mandarin shortly after my first visit; she often called me “little sister” and reminded me of my mother. I learned that Ma had moved to New York from China’s Fujian province when she was in her 40s. She resettled in D.C. three years later. Over the years, she picked up some English and Spanish, learning from customers who came to the restaurant. 

Ma said that opening China Town with her husband improved their lives. She found living in America to be difficult at first, in part because of her earlier jobs. There was the “bitterness” of cleaning in cold winters, and of cutting grass—with allergies—in hot summers. According to Ma, though the restaurant hours are long, the work is more enjoyable. She says the restaurant has seen three generations of customers. She recalls a family who used to come to the restaurant with their young daughter, now a mother of two. The oldest is eight or 10, she beams, gesturing the child’s height. And some customers who have left the neighborhood still drive from Virginia and Maryland to order food from her.

Mount Pleasant neighborhood
China Town Carryout is on an unassuming block in Mount Pleasant.

The Not-So-Secret Dish That Keeps Customers Coming Back

I continued to order from China Town as fall became winter. A January night while waiting for my order, I overhear a guy tell his friend, “I used to come here when I was a boy. When I was seventeen, man. Can you believe that?” 

They’re here to pick up wings with fried rice. Recognizing a customer who walked in, they exchange greetings in Spanish. When I ask whether the wings are any good, his friend replies, “Fuck, yeah. It’s the best.” 

The guy chimes in, “You don’t understand. We’re old. Well, I don’t know about that guy [pointing to the newcomer], but we’ve been coming here for 25 years and getting the same order: wings with fried rice.” To his friends, he adds with a smile, “I love it when parts of the fried chicken fall into the rice.” The guy requests eight hot sauce packets (“I will pay extra”) and mumbo sauce (“Heavy, please”). He asks Ma’s son, “Anyone try to offer you money to buy this place?” 

“No, so far,” Ma’s son replies. 

“Good,” the guy says. “Don’t do it. You have to stand your ground. We need you.” On his way out, the guy says to me, “You have to try the wings one day.”

American-Chinese Fare Plus D.C. and Maryland Specialties

Before that January night, I generally stuck to a few favorites: hot and sour soup, dumplings, and the China Three Delicacies. The latter contains beef, chicken, and shrimp, all stir-fried with vegetables like carrots and snow peas in a “chef’s brown sauce.” Ma herself recommended it. A companion once described the sauce as a “nice combination of tangy and sweet,” and was impressed with how the shrimp was prepared—lightly breaded and fried in a way that retained its integrity. I found the beef to be tender. The chicken almost melted in my mouth, and the vegetables were fresh and crunchy. (Not every dish is a hit. The scallops and beef with oyster sauce had a muted flavor that made the dish timid, though still enjoyable.)

China Town’s menu skews Americanized-Chinese and lists 170 items. More, if you include lunch specials and combo platters that duplicate menu items but add rice or an egg roll. To try the wings is like asking the tea lover in me to “pick just one” at a tea shop; it means skipping other untried options—General Tso’s Chicken, Fried Chicken Box, and Half-Smokes, a local spicy smoked pork and beef sausage often served with onions, mustard, and chili. Then there’s the red-orange mumbo sauce, a D.C. staple with similarities to ketchup and barbecue sauce but spicy and sweet. Usually paired with fried chicken wings, French fries, or fried rice, it goes with pretty much anything. Eateries, including many Chinese carryout places, have their own versions, which can vary in hue and consistency.

Chicken wings over fried rice
Chicken wings with mumbo sauce on fried rice are delicious.

Shared Joy Over Wings And Mumbo Sauce

One sunny afternoon, I decided to try the wings (piping hot!) over fried rice with mumbo sauce. The wings were perfectly fried—crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. The sauce, a deep reddish color, was sweet and sour, with a tinge of heat. When the crispy bits fell onto the rice, it was a small miracle. Both because of the randomness of each descent and because of the play on textures: the wing’s crunchiness subdued by the softness of the rice. So, too, it was a delight when a sliver of meat landed on the rice—the aroma of the chicken and tanginess of the sauce balanced by the rice’s fainter fragrance. Afterward, I regretted ordering only two. 

Come here often, and you start to see the mixtures of food and society that comprise D.C. One night, a man asked a police officer picking up a sub if he could be transferred to a different group home. Another afternoon, I sat across from an older Latino man who meticulously ate his wings with mumbo sauce, lost in reverie. And perhaps you’ll come to see what I love about this place—that it could represent Ma’s dreams, be the food that binds three generations, and still be a darn good takeout place, in its own right. China Town’s Chinese name translates to “Big Joy,” and for a neighborhood—nay, a city—steeped in immigrant history, that is exactly what it brings. 

China Town is currently closed. But I hope its closure is temporary, for the food and memories yet to come. 

2 Comments

  1. Looks like China Town is permanently closed. I miss them.

    1. Author

      Good news — Chinatown is reopen as of September 2020. Several people have gone and said the food is still good.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *