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The Memory Maker

A year later, my family and I meet up for dim sum at a local Chinese restaurant, where the only thing missing is my mother

Hoang Samuelson
6 min readJun 24, 2024
Waiters and customers inside a Chinese restaurant
A very busy day at a Chinese restaurant.

The first thing I notice is the lack of parking. On a recent Sunday morning, we enter a jam-packed parking lot, many spots taken by SUVs. My husband drives around for a few minutes, passing several confused drivers before saying, “Let me drop you guys off.”

My kids and I exit the car while he goes off in search of a place to park. We walk toward a small, strip-mall style building, the words ‘Excellent Cuisine’ emblazoned above us like the star of a Broadway show. Surrounded by small, Asian-owned businesses, including a bubble tea shop and an acupuncturist, Excellent is the kind of place that offers the best of both worlds: cheap, fast and excellent Chinese food, banquet style, in a convenient location just minutes from a freeway exit in southeast Portland.

Excellent is also the place that we went for dim sum exactly a year ago in April, ten months before my mom died. As we sit and wait, my sister-in-law jokes, “If Mom was here, she’d have gone to the bathroom three times by now.” I laugh because it’s absolutely true. Like me, my mom could not go for a single hour without a potty break.

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Hoang Samuelson
Hoang Samuelson

Written by Hoang Samuelson

Features Editor @ Chowhound. Former lead editor @BooknBrunch.com. Writer of food, family and fiction. Based in Portland, OR. More at hoangsamuelson.com

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