Soy Sauce.
At some point or another, perhaps during dinner at your neighborhood sushi restaurant, you might’ve wondered how us Asians could ever survive a meal without our delectable, umami filled soy sauce.
And, who could blame you? I can say with confidence that those curvy glass bottles with unmistakable red and green caps are literally everywhere across America, serving as the Asian staple du jour, perhaps more recognizable than Sriracha itself. So commonplace that neither the late Anthony Bourdain nor celebrity chef David Chang could ever think of anything more representative of Asian cuisine.
But seriously, I wanted ketchup when asked if there was “anything else” we needed. And he immediately apologized for not having soy sauce.
That’s just fucking wrong.
Ketchup!
At first blush, it does sound like the prototypical storyline for a Fresh of The Boat episode or maybe an Asian-inspired Seinfeld, if something like that existed. But the unfortunate truth is — it happened to me, about twenty years ago, in real life. And I’m sure the same shit has been repeated many times over since then. Likewise at uninteresting breakfast tables all over America, overflowing with hot coffee and scrambled eggs, crispy hash browns and a side of, well, good old…
