Ethnic Friending

My wife and I don't fight a lot.

OK, last week we had a doozy and there was cursing, there was yelling and there was the dumping of the bowl of fresh pasta into the garbage disposal, but generally we don't fight that often.

At least not as often as my parents did. Nor, I'm told as often as her parents did.

Of course, when my youngest daughter leaves for college in September, and it's just the two of us, the battling may involve small arms and tactical nukes.

"How many times have I told you I like the plastic garbage bags with the red handles? The red handles, not the blue ones."

When we do fight, it's usually over stupid stuff.
Picking a restaurant is our personal Maginot Line.

You see we've eaten everywhere in Los Angeles. We know all the good places on the Westside. And can recite Yelp reviews word for word. So now, in what could be viewed as politically incorrect browsing, we turn to a new source of culinary expertise: Facebook.

Allow me to explain.

Let's say by some freakish accident my wife and I will agree that we want ramen. Well who knows ramen better than people in the Asian community.

And so I will start poking around the pages of friends who fit the profile. I have close to 1500 friends on Facebook, which I find odd because almost on a daily basis I give people reasons not to like me. And I know my wife will agree me on that.

Turns out I have a significant number of Asian Facebook buddies.

So the search never lasts long. Within seconds I will typically find a photo of a ramen bowl, accompanied by a picture of one or more people of Korean or Asian descent enjoying the ramen and if I'm lucky, a personal recommendation regarding the ramen.

"Get the triple spicy Tonkotsu with extra boiled eggs. And don't leave without trying the chicken katsu, it's just like the katsu my grandmother used to make."

That's the krakken.

By the way, this little trick works for all ethnicities. My Hispanic friends know the locations of all the good divey Mexican restaurants. I might even stumble upon a place that serves up good grub from El Salvador.

I can always count on my fellow Members of the Tribe to point me in the direction of the best pastrami and knishes.

And if I get hankering for Chicken Tikka Masala or some Himalayan Yak Stew, I simply comb through my list in search of a surname that would feel at home in the Mumbai White Pages.

Maybe you do the same thing.
Or maybe this is not something people speak of publicly.
But I did and it's done.

That reminds me, I love good soul food and BBQ,  I need to get some more black friends.