Chinese food at Christmas is a Jewish Diaspora tradition that anyone can adopt

Last Christmas a lot of people ate at the R&G Lounge in San Francisco, but not that many – that’s fine, as a Jew I can say this – Jewish people as I expected.

American Jews have been celebrating the birth of Jesus over egg drop soup since fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century at Ellis Island. Eventually they ended up on the Lower East Side, living alongside Chinese immigrants in search of peace and prosperity.

“Celebrate” isn’t quite the right word. More like… a meeting? Pass time? Eat, essentially in the only businesses open at Christmas.

Today, Jews ordering beef and broccoli at Christmas is as much of a holiday tradition as WASPs glazing a giant ham with honey. It’s an almost Rockwellian (or Rothbergian) cliché. Every Christmas Eve or Day, or often both, Jews — just 2.4 percent of the U.S. population — flock to institutions from the Twin Dragon in Los Angeles to the Shun Lee in New York in the name of nutrition to the Golden Temple in the Boston area. Chinese restaurants in cities and towns across the country, functioning as de facto JCCs (Jewish community centers), help create community on an otherwise quiet, lonely day filled with multigenerational families. old camp friends and new best friends; Toddler-carrying parents and similar-looking sorority sisters; Hebrew school love and serial J-dates.

It seems that every Jewish family has a tradition about Christmas dinner. My cousin Dave Rubin’s favorite anecdote comes from the now-closed Chinese-Japanese-influenced tempura house in Boca Raton, Florida: “People were screaming and fighting and storming the hostess reception area as if to say, “We’re next! We’re next!‘” he said. “(The host) couldn’t maintain control. She just… left!” It was the first time his new girlfriend Ricki met the family. And the Rubins, like everyone else craving Boca’s best kung pao chicken, were hungry. “It was anarchy! Lord of the Flies! There was no one running the show!” Suddenly Ricki spotted an empty table for ten people. She just sat down and took it. “My mom was impressed,” Dave said. Chutzpah. (Ricki and Dave are now married and have a two-year-old child who recently discovered his love for “lo mein.”)

So when I walked into Chinatown’s R&G Lounge, I expected a sea of ​​alike (as a Jew, I can say the same) loud Jewish families create their own memories. Families with scarcity problems are inherited like heirlooms. Families who have no qualms about complaining about the inevitably epic, hectic wait for Christmas. What I saw instead appeared to be… non-Jews. In other words, more dangling Santa Claus earrings than Stars of David.

As an East Coast native who usually tows to Florida “on vacation,” I had to admit I had no idea about this. Turns out Chinese food at Christmas isn’t just for Jews. “That doesn’t really exist here,” said my Jewish friend Lauren, born and raised in San Francisco. I asked her: What was your family’s favorite Chinese place at Christmas? “We didn’t have one,” she said. Well, what would you do then? Do? “Sit around,” she said. Today they trim a tree with their wife and son, exchange gifts and maybe watch a movie.

San Francisco Jews were among the first Jewish-American users actually Christmas. In 1896 the local newspaper appeared Emanu-El published a version of a 19th century #hottake titled “A Jewish Opinion on Christmas.” (The opinion: Jews do it.) Some 130 years later, they’re still doing it. According to a 21st Century commentary in J. by Frances Dinkelspiel, fifth-generation San Francisco Jew: “Jews celebrate Christmas: It’s a California thing.” The first sentence read: “When I was growing up in San Francisco, almost every Jewish family I knew celebrated Christmas. “

Perhaps that is Why I met so few Jews in the R&G Lounge last December. They must have been busy singing Christmas carols.

Instead, I met a group of guys dressed in matching red plaids. And a single woman in a Santa hat and sparkly 6-inch boots. And a goatee-bearded professor named Peter, with a stuffed pocket square for the occasion. He and his wife Kate hit the road this year to show their love and support for San Francisco. “We are so tired of the spiral of terror,” he said, referring to the negative media coverage. “We love squeezing the juice out of this city! There is so much here! All our friends say, “We heard what’s happening in San Francisco…” I ask, “Would you rather visit Pittsburgh?” NO? Philly? NO? So, shut the fuck up.” For Christmas 2022, they visited Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, the local groundbreaking “pot sticker and show” that has sold out every Christmas (except during COVID) since 1993. “We’re not Jews,” Kate said. “We just went because we could!” She added additional credibility. “I actually worked at Hillel House in college.”

I also observed a trio of older women sitting on a bench in pants and surgical masks, chatting in Cantonese. And a beefy guy with slicked-back hair who had never been to R&G before. His usual tradition? “I avoid my mother,” he said. “But don’t print that out!” There was a young man with a keffiyeh around his neck writing in his name. And a blonde mom from Marin sipping a Mai Tai and pushing hard. “I just told everyone, ‘This is me not cooking this Christmas!’”

I approached a rowdy group of paper-wreathed Australians who were leaving beers and platters of salt-and-pepper crab. “The Lazy Susan is always a good time!” said one expat, unfolding his fortune from a cookie. “Your leadership skills will soon shine.” He beamed. “I’ll put that on my resume!” His date with the aforementioned Santa Claus earrings chimed in: “Our Jewish friends always eat Chinese at Christmas. We thought we would give it a try.”

As the sky darkened, the crowds on the sidewalks grew. A fire flickered on a flat screen in the bar. NFL football flashed on another. A waiter pushed past with a tray of martinis.

The R&G hostess summed it up here In. She stood at a plexiglass-protected podium, wearing a blazer and a headset, typing madly on her iPad and shouting names and numbers into a microphone, unfazed by all the faces approaching her.

“When I see so many people, I worry,” said Ben, a nice, graying Jewish boy visiting from Manhattan. “But then it occurred to me: It’s okay. We have a reservation.” Ben, a complete stranger, seemed different from almost everyone else I spoke to (or, okay, portrayed) in the crowded, three-story establishment over the next four hours. He felt familiar. Family.

Like a needle in a haystack, I found a lonely one Bubbe from Long Island. And a short-brown-haired mother-daughter duo tasked with “controlling the wait time at R&G,” while father and son scouted the scene around the corner at Z&Y, a local Szechuan institution since 2008. I also met Adam, a dentist – “but only half-Jewish” – armed with his girlfriend and a BYO bottle of Peter Michael Pinot 2017. (“It goes really well with the Peking duck.”)

Otherwise, there were locals and tourists of all ethnicities and ages: from newborns in strollers to children home from college to seniors from the outer suburbs who have come here their entire lives. Or at least since 1985, when co-founder Kinson Wong first opened R&G on Kearny Street with just 50 seats in the basement. It has now grown to 200 seats and is considered one of the country’s most popular Chinese restaurants, frequented by royalty such as Anthony Bourdain, Padma Lakshmi and SF-raised Ali Wong, who celebrated her wedding reception here and often drops by unannounced with her family.

And then there was me and my family and my sister and her family who agreed to go west for a visit. We have always been of the religious belief that this is not the case Where You eat Chinese food at Christmas, that’s it The People eat Chinese food at Christmas. But this year: rejoice! Instead of devouring pink boneless spare ribs dipped in duck sauce at my parents’ dinner table in Delray Beach, we were in San Francisco’s Chinatown and feasting on the real treat.

I looked around the downstairs banquet hall and saw the white plastic take-out bags stacked on the counter. at our sweet waiter in a starched white shirt who has been at R&G since the first Bush administration; at all the round tables busying themselves with their Dungeness crabs. By the end of the night, more than 1,000 guests would come through. I wondered how many were Jewish. Then I realized: It doesn’t matter.

It turns out Even in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas – at least in secular San Francisco – Jews are still, well, what Jews Are: a minority. A minority that communicates with people, if not our people. For a second I missed Boca. But then my sister walked past the Peking duck.

Rachel Levin is co-author of the cookbook eat something, This makes a great gift for Hanukkah or Christmas. (Like her other books! Look big, Subduedand her first children’s book: Who ate what?)
Copy edited by Laura Michelle Davis