On the resurgence of fried rice

I won't want to write too much on this because I don't want this to be a hill I could die on.

Fried rice has made a come-back, and in a big way. There was an era, that lasted perhaps upto several decades in America, until early to mid 2010's, when the fried rice was the most basic, boring, and lame thing you could order at an Asian restaurant. If you didn't want to take any chances, and/or also wanted to order the cheapest item on the menu, you'd get the fried rice. If you didn't really want to be there but had been dragged by your friends, family or partners, the fried rice would be the thing to order. It would be a way to show the restaurant that you didn't really care for them that much, but were buying the rice anyway because it was a social obligation and you'd pay them the monies but not give them the respect for the craft of food that they deserved.

I discovered the changing wave in maybe 2013/14. I don't know where it started -- like all things these days I wouldn't be surprised if it had started in modern Chinese cuisine and made its way to America. I discovered in several Chinese restaurants as well as the Thai place in Cambridge that shut down recently (I'm so mad about that). The Fried Rice was suddenly not the most basic thing on the menu. Rather, it had started costing as much as anything else. Restaurants had begun experimenting with throwing in an interesting combo of meats, vegetables, and other sauce and additives in there. My favourite was the Indonesian Fried Rice in the aforementioned restaurant that served with a well-fried egg with an option of one extra. The rice was well fried, garnished and served, and it was pretty clear a lot of work had gone into that.

And thus started the trend of 'house fried rice', which was now not only as expensive as any other entree but rather actually more expensive than them. They put in a bunch of extra items in there -- sometimes sampler plates, sometimes ingredients that were rarer and harder to come by, and thus fried rice came to be the food item that we know now: the way for the chef of the restaurant to really show her creativity and talk to the customer. The rest of the menu is the restaurant owner talking to the customer : I know what you want, you know what I want, our prices are such and such, either you'll like these, or you're not meant for this place. The fried rice is the chef talking to us: this is quite unreasonably priced for fried rice, I know, but I've spent a lot of my time and energy coming up with this recipe, and the ingredients are different than what you would find elsewhere. I know this is not going to be a moneymaker for this restaurant, but if you like this, you'll keep coming to this restaurant for all eternity. If there's a connection in fried rice, there's a connection with the restaurant, and you will keep coming back even if you like nothing else in the menu -- because you can feel the work of a master in the rice and its accompaniments, and enjoy the experience. If the fried rice experience of the house is bad, you know that the owner doesn't give the chef any leeway, and either the chef is a boring hack who's in it just for the money, or the owner doesn't care about your experience or flavor, but thinks only in terms of profit and loss, and the next thing on the chopping block could be your favourite item. Time to rethink your orders and presence here!