what's danny's favourite home-cooked chinese food ??? ok and how does he feel ordering at chinese restaurants in front of asian friends vs. non-asian friends ? does he do it in mandarin or does he get embarrassed about accents/for some other reason do it in english ?
outside of a few scattered basic dishes like congee danny can’t cook for shit . it still works out because danny loves the shit out of congee ( for anyone not in the know , it’s basically a pretty thin unflavored rice porridge ; easy to cook and cheap , makes an easy staple diet for a kung fu school ) , especially topped with salted duck eggs & pork floss . it’s taken a long time for danny to adjust back to the fairly greasy food that’s standard in nyc , so he’s started eating them with yóutiáo , or those fried butterfly - shaped breadsticks .
overall he likes his food sort of light and sort of bland so a surprising amount of food in chinatown and flushing , e.g. sichuan style or dim sum , isn’t really his taste . he usually sticks to noodles and ( an unhealthy amount of ) roast meat but also kind of has a soft spot for stuff that’s fermented , sour , or vaguely medicinal so misty’s had the misfortune of throwing out some real weird and smelly shit from their fridge .
as in restaurants , it kinda depends . with people he knows decently well ( not necessarily just asians thought it does help ) it’s straight mandarin or his really terrible cantonese . i think the less he knows someone , especially on the business side of things , he usually reverts back to english because , well , rich folks get all weird when they know he’s able to speak it . those ‘ wow are you chinese i thought you looked chinese i know a little bit of chinese my son is marrying a chinese girl chinese culture is so nice wow ’ conversations are pretty darn uncomfortable and i’ve been the target of them from time to time , so i can get where danny’s coming from .