By Kiran Jayasinghe
July 31st was our grandmother’s birthday. I’m not going to tell you how old she turned, but I can tell you that we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate. We went to PF Changs, at the Pike, in Long Beach. The restaurant is right by the water, and you can see boats go in and out of the little harbor. The Pike is a very busy place, so it’s best to get Valet Parking. After the car was taken, we met our uncle inside. That was one of the highlights, because our uncle is almost always out of town, or at work, and we never get to spend time with him! The restaurant wasn’t crowded at all, and we got a table quickly. To drink, we three (Kiran, Simran, and Svara) had water, and so did our uncle. Our mom, grandpa, and grandma had virgin Pina Coladas, and our dad had a beer. Since we love Pina Coladas, we each had a few sips from our mom’s. We all agreed that there was a little too much coconut, and we’ve had better. While we were tasting Pina Coladas and talking like food experts, our dad was ordering food. We had white rice, noodles, firecracker chicken, sweet chicken, garlic beans, and Mongolian beef. Although we expected the firecracker chicken to be spicy, it wasn’t spicy at all, and it was delicious. The Mongolian beef was great, and our mom and dad just loved the garlic beans. All of us cleaned our plates, and we had to order another dish of Mongolian Beef, firecracker chicken, and noodles. But there was still something to come, even after all of that – dessert! The staff served our grandmother a scoop of ice cream with fried banana. None of the other adults had dessert. The three of us had a “great wall of chocolate” , a huge slice of chocolate cake with 2 scoops of ice cream and raspberry syrup. It was very rich, but we finished almost all of it! We all loved our visit to PF Changs (as we always do) and I think you will too!