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Indochine, as Celia and I have found over many meals there, has delicious food, but it does challenge your standard American table manners. The restaurant specializes in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. Thais eat with a fork and spoon. Vietnamese eat with chopsticks. What would Emily Post say when confronted with a dish called Vietnamese Wraps, a platter that included skewers of grilled chicken, shrimp and beef, lightly pickled carrots and daikon, rice noodles, fresh herbs, and three different types of sauces? Luckily, Celia Rivenbark said, “Use your fingers. Dig in.” We did. The wraps are almost a meal in themselves, like their own little table-top buffet. Ideally, you pull the meat off the skewers, arrange it with herbs, noodles and vegetables on a rice paper pancake, then roll it up like a tortilla and dip it in sauce. Celia compared the rice pancakes, which need the moisture of the sauces to soften them, to “the roof covering my convertible when I had a convertible.” I was more patient than she was. After a few seconds, my wrap softened, making a perfect vehicle to transport this spicysweet-salty combination to my mouth. Celia watched me, but she still wasn’t convinced. “Too much work,” she said, preferring to concentrate on just the grilled meat. “But the flavor of this chicken is wonderful.” Indochine, with its effusion of Asian art and antiques, lush garden views, and attention to aesthetic detail that extends even to whimsical murals in the bathrooms, is probably the most beautiful restaurant in Wilmington. For new diners, the décor is a conversation piece itself, but Celia and I have had that conversation already and, frankly, we had come for the food. In front of us sat a clay pot of mussels in a coconut curry sauce. Here’s something I never knew about Celia Rivenbark: She loves mussels and she’s adept with them. Eating a mussel out of its shell, as you probably know, can make you feel like Gollum eating fish in Lord of the Rings, but Celia managed with finesse. After one bite, her eyes closed. “Oh my God. Holy Lord.” She sighed, savoring the flavor. “I know I sound like one of those Iron Chef judges but there’s a party in my mouth right now. This has heat without being totally obnoxious.” In between bites, we talked about the things that women talk about when they finally have a moment alone — a friend’s recent breakup with her boyfriend, our work, our husbands, teaching our kids to drive. And is there a polite way to find out the name of the person (or persons) with whom your
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child is so compulsively texting? Not according to my son or Celia’s daughter, who finally said to Celia, “Mom! Would you please stop asking me that question? That’s the most irritating thing that you do,” to which Celia (reasonably) responded, “Oh, Hon, I got a lot more irritating stuff to show you, then.” I didn’t know Celia when her daughter was a newborn, but I got a glimpse of her philosophy when the people at a table behind me got up to leave the restaurant. Celia stopped eating. “I’ve never seen a child that young in public,” she sputtered. I turned around to look. A woman held against her chest an infant that was so tiny the mother could secure it with the palm of her hand. People with good etiquette do not stare, so I turned back around, relying on Celia’s extended narration: “They are just back from the hospital, I can tell. I know you’re thinking I’m a nut job, but that child still has amniotic fluid on it.” She seemed to be eyeing one particular member of the party now. “I’m sure that’s the MeeMaw there and she’s old enough to know better. That child is so young they must have done the episiotomy out by the cash register.” I thought of suggesting that the newborn’s mom was just getting the etiquette lessons in early, but I knew that Celia would not be appeased. Eventually, the offending family pulled their diaper bag out from under their table and left, allowing me and Celia to return to our meal. We went through so much food, not just the wraps and the mussels but a Vietnamese crêpe filled with sautéed vegetables and tofu (“My lord, that’s as big as Texas”), crispy dumplings called Gold Bags (“I love anything that’s fried”), and a spicy Thai salad of herbs, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and chunks of tender beef. Even Celia’s sweet tea met her exacting standard. “This is K&W level,” she said. The good thing about meeting for lunch is that it gives you a break from the chaos of the day. The bad thing is that you have to rush back to it. Eventually, our kind waitress, Tam, started boxing up what was left of our food so that we could take it home, but Celia, announcing that mussels don’t keep, decided that we should finish them off immediately. “I am so glad I got off Weight Watchers,” she told me, savoring the last one. “It was totally pissing me off.” b Dana Sachs’ latest novel, The Secret of the Nightingale Palace, is available at bookstores throughout Wilmington.
June 2013 •
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