Neighborhood watch - Chinatown

Neighborhood watch - Chinatown

One day at work, we got talking about food in Chicago; supposedly the restaurant capital of the country. Everyone raved about Chinatown; the hole-in-the-wall shops, the cheap goods, and the brilliant, open late at night, restaurants.
So I met up with a couple of friends to celebrate 4th of July at the immigrant neighborhood. We went to Lao Sze Chuan; probably spelled in Indian as Lao Schezwan. The place was quite busy; a half hour wait at 8.30pm. Once we were seated, no one came to take our order for 15 minutes, supposedly since the kitchen was too busy to accommodate all orders! Of course, we hadn't expected great service. The server simply said No to most of the requests that my vegetarian freind made! After he finally did take the order, we waited another half hour for the food to come.
Upto this point, our expectation of Schezwan sauce was that of a red, hot, sour-ish sauce. The Sze Chuan gravy turned out to be transparent, bland, sweet-ish. It is only then that I realized how Chinese food for me, was still the Indian-Chinese that I ate at Mainland China!