We were at Forbidden City, the culinary capital of my childhood. I was around 12 years old. I’d just finished a bowl of steaming hot Sizzling Rice Soup — the only vehicle through which I’d willingly eat vegetables — and was about to tuck into a plate of Mongolian beef. Despite years of effort on my dad’s part, I’d been ordering nothing but Sizzling Rice Soup, Mongolian beef and Red Pop at Forbidden City for about a decade.

Dad usually had either mu shu pork (my brother, step-siblings and I always crowed in horror when he applied the “poison sauce”), the palace beef (“It’s almost just like Mongolian beef!” he’d tell me. “Just try a bite!”) or the Mandarin Jumbo Shrimp. That visit, it was the shrimp.

I don’t know what was different about that day. Was I hungrier? Was I maturing? Was I just trying to prove that I really didn’t like anything?

I suspect it was the latter, and the first taste of Mandarin Jumbo Shrimp proved me wrong. The shrimp was crisp and juicy, coated in a sweet and tangy sauce with a little bit of heat. It was heavenly. I almost wanted to try something else, just to find out if everything on the table was as revolutionary as the Mandarin Jumbo Shrimp.

I did not try anything else on the table. I don’t know if I even admitted that the shrimp was delicious. I went back to the Mongolian beef that night, but that single bite of Mandarin Jumbo Shrimp had changed the way I looked at food.