18 Arhans, Never Enough
Okay, let's start with the Buddhist Nun today.
For years, I had passed this little storefront on Centre Street -- vegetarian food, a few people inside, rumored to be a shrine of some sort. I wrote it off as Hare Krishna and headed down to Excellent Dumpling House for my lunches. A few years back, though, I accompanied a couple of friends to 18 Arhans and was Totally Blown Away. No dish cost more than five dollars, the food was great, and the small Buddhist nun who ran the place sold this great bottled honey green tea that I could never find anyplace else. What's more, after I went back twice more, she had remembered my name.
Now that I go there about twice or three times a week, I've begun to notice that she remembers everybody's name, though a lot has changed about 18 Arhans since I first ate there. She and her partner had to raise prices to about $6.50 a dish, which is still way cheap, as far as I'm concerned. There's more seating, and a wider selection of beverages (I think I actually saw cases of Pepsi there the other day), though she now makes her own green tea drinks and stopped carrying the delicious bottled stuff that I still can't find. Business has soared lately, and I'm not sure whether it's due to the subtle changes in the decor or just the gradual exponential growth from word-of-mouth advertising. Still, the nun takes everybody's order and continues to make little jokes about the total ("Eight... Hundred... Dollars") as she shuffles back to her seat in the back of the room, across from the giant iron axe at the shrine to the warrior bodhisattva Guan Gong. I don't really ever see anybody at the shrine, but I always look over at Guan when I'm done eating my mock kung pao, if that counts for anything.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I am in love with 18 Arhans. It's one of those places you wish would branch out to other locations but that never will, if only because it's too hard to replicate a bunch of little nuns who know your name.
Posted by tangentialist at January 24, 2005 06:41 PM | more tangentialism
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