Golden Dragon

I walked into Golden Dragon with a little bit of concern and a whole lot of curiosity. This place is DEEP in the South Bend hood. Westside baby! Golden Dragon is not trying to impress you with reclaimed barn wood, a mural painted by somebody named Skylar and a $17 cocktail with rosemary sticking out of it. Nope. Counter service. Five or six old tables that look like they were liberated from a Burger Queen or Dairy Fair sometime during the Reagan administration. Everything is well worn. Not exactly dirty. Not exactly clean. Just…seasoned. Holy shit was it hot in there. Easily ten degrees hotter than outside. The kind of hot where you sit down and immediately wonder if you should order General Tso’s chicken or start looking around for a fire extinguisher. Let’s just say I understand why it’s mostly counter service and why the dining room was empty except for our party. At this point my internal restaurant warning system was quietly going, “Bruce. Bruce? Hey buddy. You sure?” But the lady and dude behind the counter were upbeat, friendly as hell and genuinely welcoming. More importantly, the smells coming out of that kitchen smelled EXACTLY like the smells I wanted coming out of a little neighborhood Chinese joint. That bought Golden Dragon some credibility. I started talking to the lady and she told me they’ve been there for 23 years. Twenty three years! You don’t accidentally stay open for 23 years. People have clearly been walking through that door, handing them money and coming back for more for over two decades. I felt even better when she walked over, grabbed a portable fan, put it on a chair and pointed it directly at us. Now THAT is hospitality. No climate control? Fuck it. We got a fan. We’re back in business. I ordered beef with garlic sauce and some cream cheese rangoons. I need everyone to understand something important here. These were CREAM CHEESE rangoons. Not crab rangoons. Not shrimp rangoons. Not lobster rangoons. No mysterious ocean creature was involved. Just crispy little fried envelopes filled with molten cream cheese and accompanied by that nuclear red dipping sauce Chinese restaurants have somehow convinced America is a completely normal color for food. They were GOOD. Light, crispy, airy, cream cheese molten inside. I wrecked those little bastards. Then came the beef with garlic sauce, .... eerrgghm.. this is where our story takes a turn. It was advertised as spicy. It was not spicy. That alone I could forgive. I couldn't really expect them to understand what level of heat this round eye appreciates. The bigger issue was that the beef had a look and texture that caused my primitive monkey brain to immediately sit upright. My mouth said, “Huh.” My stomach said, “Bruce.” My Spidey sense said, “PUT THE FUCKING FORK DOWN.” There was something about the sauce too. I took a couple bites and my tummy tum immediately started making noises like somebody had fired up an old diesel generator. Not pain. Not sickness. Just that very specific internal rumbling that makes a grown man suddenly start calculating the distance between himself and every available bathroom. Now, I cannot tell you anything was actually wrong with the food. I have no laboratory. I have no microscope. I am not the CSI of Chinese beef. Maybe everything was perfectly fine and my digestive system was just being a dramatic little bitch. But...I have managed to survive more than five decades on this planet largely by listening when the tiny caveman living inside my brain starts banging two rocks together and screaming. So I stopped eating it. Possibly too late. Ask me tomorrow. I wasn’t about to pitch a fit or start interrogating the nice people who had just pointed a fan at me either. I ate my rice. I ate the rest of those glorious cream cheese rangoons. I accepted that sometimes when you explore the culinary landscape, Magellan guides you into gastrointestinal uncertainty. That’s the game. I am NOT telling you to avoid Golden Dragon. Hell, they’ve been holding down that little corner of the west side for 23 years. The people were friendly. The smells were right. The rangoons slapped. There’s something wonderfully real about the whole place. Just a neighborhood Chinese joint that has been doing its thing since flip phones were technology. I respect that, and I would absolutely try Golden Dragon again. I’d just order something different. You have to trust your gut.