Eating Oberlin City I: Bingo is Dead, Long Live Sunset Asian Cuisine
by Sebastian Cruz, Skinny Fat
Illustration by Eila Duncan, Layout Editor
The Warner smell is back. I have a not insignificant amount of nostalgia for it and the related grid of associations, chief among them the sewagesque tang of the Ratskeller’s Buffalo Chicken Sarnie, an Umami bowl that’s really just rice with the worst sauce ever over it, Decafe mistakes. In College years, as a lame duck Senior, I’m basically already dead, not long for this hotshot melting pot. I could tell because Decafe became another chore to do, because whenever I went to Stevenson this Winter Term I felt estranged from my oldest friend by their truly terrible food, because for the first time in my life possibly ever, I discovered my learned helplessness. There was a way out that only involved myself, my company’s credit card, and the fascinating niche of the City’s Fine Dining.
You thought I was gonna suggest home cooking? In the era of the Woodland Hall Center for Fulfillment and Mold Farming, one kitchen and four-hundred podlings scrambling for the greasiest stove in Erie? Pshaw, I declare, I taste a new world of twenty-dollar meals and craft beer hoppy beyond perdition. One could characterize the food culture of Oberlin City (Downtown Oberlin, the City of… etc.) as “premature” to “non-existent”, but it’s difficult to deny the pull it has on ye sick and hungry.
I want to treat this column more so as a philosophical exploration of food rather than a food review, and if that sounds contrived, it’s because it is. Consider the position any student may find themselves in: AVI’s new Rodent Killer Agent is not exactly a hit, a drive to McDonald’s is embarrassing enough to warrant a faked death. Ipso facto, they turn to overpriced mediocrity to save their sorry sorry soul. As such, the quality of the cuisine will be automatically inflated by the mere fact of its serviceability, its ability to be in any way different from the Industrial-Grade formalities of campus dining. Who’s to say the food’ll be good? Assuredly, the food’ll be human and, if one is so inclined, full of love.
Today’s philosophical exercise concerns the downfall of downtown staple Bingo. In the clockwork of the City’s faithful storefronts, Bingo’s shuttering cannot come as any surprise to anyone who has clocked the restaurant’s tacit function as Comfort Food. American Chinese Food is an entire pyramid unto the larger, more perverse “American” Food pyramid we all loathe and ascribe to. The possibilities are indeed endless to get one’s ethnic thrill all hopped-up on MSG dream machines, steamed vegetables and inordinate amounts of stomach-ballooning rice. As such, though I’ve experienced Bingo once and only once before, I feel as though I’ve been eating at Bingo all my life.
It concerns me slightly that there was no mourning period for the place. It’s possible that no one had truly connected to the establishment beyond the abstract knowledge of its existence, as another link in the chain of East Asian Cuisine in the City of Oberlin, boxed off by the variety of Kim’s, the home-cooked expressiveness of Oberlin Xoi, the consistency of Ying’s or whatever the fuck the Mandarin is doing at all times. The differences between Bingo and what incarnated in its place, Sunset Asian Cuisine, remain superficial. As far as I am concerned, it’s just a new paintjob.
This is all extremely uncharitable to the ill-fated Bingo; I am a somewhat firm believer in disrespecting the dead. But on the flipside, this is all extremely charitable to Sunset Asian Cuisine, allowing for full blank-slate good will to fill in the gaps. Bingo was and is not beloved, not as far as I can tell. This is an opportunity to tease out any Bingo diehards from the woodwork, since Sunset Asian Cuisine is, honestly? Pretty nice.
Truth nuke, my dear cuisinarts. As is my duty as well as my (technical) job as a reporter, I’ll state the facts: the space itself is a luxurious contemporary balm of velvet seats, smartly understated minimalist decor, booths as far as the eye could manage. I managed to slurp down around half of my dry pot chicken, which was appropriately drizzled with Deepwater Horizon-levels of chili oil. The woman that I have to assume is the manager warned I’d break a sweat; nay, this white guy left the place with only a scorched tongue and upset bowels (sorry mom). The depth of flavor is around what one’d expect from an American Chinese sit-down place, peppery and full of pop. Their classic black boba tea was very fruity and light; I’d recommend it as a safe harbor for any spice-related sojourns. Service is possibly the warmest in the City. The prices are Oberlin City Cuisine fare, as in low-key exorbitant. But in this column, we take that as read.
Why do we eat? Because we are hungry. Why do we eat out? Because every restaurant has character. Each establishment’s stultifying there-ness, their ontological need to exist because that’s where they have to exist, in the downtown of a small college that demands novelty whether it knows it or not. Bingo had to die to get Sunset Asian Cuisine to live, and it can only live if it is remembered. Who you are to yourself is always fascinating, but would mean nothing if we didn’t have someone else to say “hey” to. Sunset Asian Cuisine’s mediocrity is immaterial to its function: to serve food to you. I want to be able to strike up a conversation with someone, in this case an inanimate eatery for which they won’t remember my name but my debit card info, with the knowledge that we’re not really strangers after all.
