Eating Chinese food in D.C.’s Chinatown is frequently an exercise in disappointment. The English menus offer Americanized Chinese fare, and few of them do it well. In this sea of mediocre Kung Pao and General Tso, there is a shining light: Fried Good Dale.
With no explanation on the menu of what a “Dale” might be, the diner is left to ponder the options:
1) Some sort of fish?
2) The unfortunate demise of Chip’s furry life partner?
3) A regular customer named Dale who popularized a dish enough that they named it after him?
4) Lake-men?
5) A roundabout tribute to Roy Rogers’ fried chicken and his sidekick and lady friend?
The first time I took the plunge, I tried consulting my waitress (at Jackey Cafe, 611 H Street NW), but the language barrier was too strong for me to figure out why it was named so oddly. After several trips back to the kitchen, she finally returned with the description, “flat noodles with curry, shrimp, and pork.” After a bit of investigation, it turns out that the dish is actually an adaptation of a Malaysian dish called Char kway teow. The Malaysian name was translated into Chinese words that sounded similar (perhaps “chao guai diao”). It’s available in Malaysian form under the name “Char Kuih Teow” at Malaysia Kopitiam. The literal translation, “Fried Expensive Wicked,” makes absolutely no sense, so an enterprising D.C. restaurateur must have have transliterated it into English as “Fried Good Dale.” Which makes a little bit more sense, apparently.
In addition to the spectacularly convoluted name, the dish is a wonderful thing to behold and eat. Due to its Malaysian roots, it is more punchy than most Chinese fare, and D.C. spots tend to add green peppers and onions to kick it up a bit further. At both Full Kee ($8) and Jackey Cafe ($9), you are greeted by a heaping plate of oily, curry-crusted dense noodles with shrimp and little bits of pork interspersed. The dish can be found at other places in Chinatown, but an ever-expanding waistline means trying them all will take some time. I can’t stress this enough: it’s a ton of food.
The quirky name seems to be a D.C.-only bit of engrish: the only occurrences of the phrase on the great internets – aka: a cursory Google search – are from D.C. Chinese restaurant menus. In an age when every major city has its own culinary claim to fame, it may make sense to take the over-hyped half-smoke out of the limelight just a bit and send Fried Good Dale to the annual “famous city foods” convention. If England is allowed to make chicken tikka masala their national dish, why can’t we also co-opt a dish from another country?
