Dragon house

A Chinese restaurant called The Dragon House in my area has closed. We all saw it coming. When you would go there in the past year, most of the tables were empty. The food wasn’t very good, but the portions were always enough for a leftover lunch the next day. 
The staff was sweet. Once, when my son was very young I took him there and asked for a bowl of won-ton soup with nothing in it. By this “nothing” I meant no won tons or onions, and not realizing the waitress spoke no English, it was a little surprising when she placed an empty soup bowl on our table, and smiled at me.
It was just that kind of place, where the familiarity outweighed the taste. You could bring a book, when you were dining by yourself, hunker down in one of the booths and read with no one bothering you, except to refill the tea pot.
But in the 20 years or so, I went to this place, lots of other Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood opened. All charged just about double the price for a meal. Some were much better in the way the food was prepared, no question about it, but none have ever matched the cheerfulness of the owner of the Dragon House. On hot summer days, I had a ritual of buying a blended virgin pina colada with my take out. Since they didn’t have a liquor license, a non-alcoholic drink was your only option. But this drink, in its extra large cup took a Slurpie to a level that only the gods could make.
I’m sorry to see it go, sorry that there really isn’t another place that moves through a meal with no thought to making you hurry up for waiting customers. I thought lots of times to writing to Gordon Ramsey, to see if there was anything he could have done to make the place more viable, but never did.
So goodbye to my old friend the Dragon House, I hope you all do well, and I for one, will miss you.