Barbara Tropp and China Moon, part one

What now closed restaurant from your past would you want to revisit?

I recently found out that Barbara Tropp, owner of the China Moon Café, and author of the cookbook of the same name, passed away eight years ago, in November of 2001. I was reading another cookbook, and it referred to her as the “late Barbara Tropp.” It shook me up. I never knew her, but she was important in my life.

As a senior in High School, living in the far east bay area, I used to read the restaurant reviews every week in the San Francisco Chronicle. You can basically insert your usual cliché here—it was a window into a more exciting world is the one that works for me. But the review of China Moon was the first review that led to me acting on my fantasies. I went there, and for the next year or two, it was my date restaurant. It made me feel urbane, not fancy and fake. A narrow restaurant off of Union Square, it had a split level kitchen, and you could see the cooks assembling dishes on the top floor. The other quirky thing I remember is that they had a mineral water list. For someone below the drinking age, this allowed me to feel sophisticated. I’d pick Levissima—a water from the north of Italy, not because of its quality, but because I knew it and it seemed an exotic choice that would reflect well on my tastes. I wasn’t your ordinary customer, satisfied with Perrier or Pelligrino or even Romerquelle.

One of the sad things looking back is the knowledge that I have forgotten certain things. I never really kept a diary; it never seemed important. But now, I would love to be able to look back and see what exactly I had ordered and who I had gone with. I remember a few things: the spicy beef stew almost too spicy, the orange flavored noodles, the salmon cooked in parchment with cilantro pesto (one of the cleanest tasting dishes I’ve ever had), and the key lime-rum tart with chocolate sauce (or was it ice cream?). The service was also, to my teenaged mind, perfect—friendly, not ingratiating--it made me feel urban, not suburban.

Years later, it was rereviewed in the Chronicle. I had now finished college, and was living back home. The review was less than positive, saying that the place had gone downhill, the food greasy, geared to tourists. A few years later, it closed down. At the time, the review came as almost a relief—I hadn’t been there in a couple years, and knowing that it had gone downhill made me feel better about not going. I wish I had gone—I wish I could go—back, walk through the door, to one of the booths, order a bottle of Levissima, a plate of appetizers, and that salmon.