TOM

Tom Huang is an indie filmmaker, as well as paying his bills as a writer, director and producer. His latest feature, Why Am I Doing This?, a multi-award-winning film about an Asian-Am guy and a African-Am guy failing in Hollywood, is now out everywhere on DVD, including amazon.com. The Boston Herald called it “a raucous look at life in Los Angeles for an actor,” while Tom’s mom said, “I don’t get it.” He is currently working on Unusual Targets with Harry Shum, Jr. from Glee, and is also trying to catch the first season of Mad Men on DVD because everyone says it’s so good.

Being American, and being Asian, I love seeing things that have fused the two, that shows how our increasingly diverse cultures in America have had sex and made a hapa child that is Asian in background, but totally American in it’s design. In this case, what do you get when you mix Asia and the American spirit? No, I’m not talking Keanu Reeves … I’m talking about the all-you-can-eat Asian food extravaganza.

I’m talkin’ the all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ experience, where, for a set price, they give you all the various Korean marinated flesh from four different animals you can ask for (no sharing or take-outs, please), and then make you cook it all yourself on a table-top grill (who thought that up scam up? You pay so you can cook?). Or the Hong Kong buffet, where you pick from about 500,000 trays of Chinese food (including the real shit like chicken feet and rubbery cows parts), poorly prepared sushi made by a Chinese immigrant in a karate outfit, and a soft-serve ice milk ice cream machine that you can top with nuts, chocolate sauce and lychees.

People say hamburgers and hot dogs are All-American, but really, these Asian stuff-your-stomachs-until-you-pass-out kick it up a notch, and really reflect today’s America. I mean, what’s more American than gluttony, with the idea of “hey, let’s not just eat until we’re satisfied, let’s eat until it’s really unhealthy and not natural for bowels to convert.” America is where the eating contest was born and now can be viewed on ESPN live.

And when I think it about it, this idea of all-you-can-eat goes against the sensibility of the Asia my immigrant parents and ancestors came from, which was to work hard, save money and don’t overindulge, because it’s not proper and wastes money. I mean, hell, my parents and grandparents would never have been able to have the comfortable middle-class lifestyle if they hadn’t had stuck to those principles. But it all changes when you move to America and actually get yourself a good job.

Because you know what America is? America is like college for that freshmen girl from Kansas who had grown up all their lives being told what to do and suddenly is now free to party and drink all she wants, so she gets a little out of control, goes drinking every weekend, then becomes a Beta-house Little Sister and ends up making out with a few asshole guys she normally wouldn’t have because she thought playing beer mini-golf would be really fun. Okay, so that was a long way to go, but you get the idea.

The idea of the all-you-can-eat Asian food place is a little bit Vegas, a little bit Sizzler, a little bit Asian-diner, but really, what it is… is the American dream.

If you think about the wording of it technically, if you indeed eat all you can eat, that means you’ll never go hungry, and isn’t that what people that want to move here think of America? A place of magical dreams, where you can become anything you want if you work hard, where you can say whatever you want, and where you can eat as much as you want for the price of a couple of DVDs on sale at WalMart. Eating all you can eat before 10pm is just like America… both beautiful and ugly. And for me, really ugly about two hours afterwards, but we probably don’t want to go into that.

So for people like my parents, eating at the Hong Kong buffet is saying, “I worked in an office 9 to 5, commuting two hours a day so I could send my sons to college so they can become doctors (unfortunately, the doctor part didn’t quite work out for my parents, but whatever, mom. WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LOVE ME FOR WHO I AM? Uh… I digress), so you know what? I am not just going to eat, I am going to EAT ALL I CAN EAT (even if the sushi is kind of subpar and they kind of undercook the crayfish). Because now I am TRULY AN AMERICAN.”

For me, it’s just an opportunity to eat a lot of good food until it doesn’t really taste good any more. It’s a challenge, really, something you have to prepare for if you really want to get your money’s worth. For the Korean BBQ places, don’t let them distract you with the potful of souffléd egg or “Korean Miso soup.” Those are fillers to distract you from where it’s at, the marinated meats from four different animals. I’d even ignore the flavorless sliced brisket. Focus, grasshopper, on those foods that will please you (and ultimately constipate for days to come).

The Hong Kong buffets are worse… you get a little dazzled by the hundreds of thousands of dishes they put on display in an area about the size of a Trader Joe’s and feel the need to put everything you see on your plate, filling you up with things that are not always good and throwing off your game. I recommend strolling down the aisles to see EVERYTHING that’s available and then targeting those dishes that truly look good. There’s always messed-up bastardized American-Asian cuisine at these places that really seem like bad ideas… like they have this shrimp dish, where they cook up shrimp, then smear it with mayonnaise, have you seen this? It’s like the typically American cooking tradition of, “how can we take a perfectly good and somewhat healthy food and make it dripping with fat, calories, and sodium?” I mean, seriously, what’s next, a pot sticker filled with bacon, nacho cheese and cigarettes? (and if you guys from the Kogi truck decide to make this potsticker, I better be getting a kick-back, yo).

So next time you’re at some place chowing down on a whole lot of grilled Korean-marinated pork belly, or perhaps finishing off a plate of steamed mussels in ginger sauce, (cue: “God Bless America”) take a moment and be proud. Because what you’re doing is Asian (eating Asian food). And American (eating too much Asian food). It’s a culmination of a grand experiment, where people of all races, religions and backgrounds have come together to live, and accept each other’s cultures, to the point at which we don’t know where the Asian starts and the American ends. It’s a thousand points of light heating a thousand pans of General Tsao’s Chicken. It’s the audacity of hoping you can eat all the BBQ meat you can and still fit in a bowl of kimchi fried rice. By god, this is America… at its best. So eat… and eat proud.