I was wondering: It is claimed that (most) Chinese restuarants in the USA do not serve authentic dishes. If this so, how is it that they all seem to serve the EXACT same menu??? Like, is there some secret Chinese cooking bible the cooks all secretly share, or what? One would expect tremendous variation in menus. And, while the ingredients vary slightly from place to place for any one dish, they’re virtually the same. Heck, NIST (i.e.: Bureau of Standards) could not have done it so well!
Well since you specify this as a “different” Chinese restaurant question, you saw the recent, related thread.
Someone mentioned there that Chinese restaurants are often run almost like a franchise, with not just the recipes, but often the ingredients, menus, etc. coming from a central distributor.
I don’t know how much I can contribute here, but I have eaten at Chinese restaurants in the PRC as well as Hong Kong.
The restaurants I’ve eaten at in China itself have not done buffets. They do meals that you order off of just like the USA, for the most part. And, for the most part they also have combination meals…that is, a meat, rice, etc. at a special price.
They also had forks available upon request.
The food was delicious; at least in Shenzhen and Beijing.
Only thing I had to get used to was having to specifically request ice in our drinks.
Hong Kong absolutely ruined me for sweet-and-sour pork. I still look for a USA restaurant that does this as well as the Crystal (…um, I think–>Pier) restaurant in HK.
I just spent six weeks in China, my seventh trip there, and I can confirm filmyak’s friend’s opinion, to a point. You can actually get some really nice food there (like the noodle guy in the street in Chengdu who did a big bowl of very tasty chow mein for 10c!), but what people eat normally is, to my taste, pretty gross. Limp vegetables and/or unidentifiable pieces of tasteless steamed meat in a phlegm-like gravy.
And it’s absolutely nothing like what you get in Chinese restaurants anywhere outside Asia. Each country has its own favorites that it thinks are Chinese. American Chinese food is nothing like British, which in turn is nothing like, say that of the Netherlands, which in turn is nothing like that you get in Australia.
I’d say that someone setting up a restaurant (they don’t seem to be franchises over here) tends to do a lot of research and copies the dishes and techniques of competitors and colleagues.
If all you go to is the little family-owned, stripmall-located Chinese restaurants then American-style Chinese is pretty much all you’ll get. If you would like to try authentic Chinese food, go to a largerish Chinatown, (New York, San Fran, DC, et al.) and look to see where all the Chinese people go to eat. THAT is the way to find a good small family owned Chinese restaurant. Otherwise you will need to find a larger and more upscale restaurant. Larger restaurants will have the budget to buy the more exotic ingredients needed to make some of the more authentic dishes. I have eaten at a number of authentic resturants and the key is bringing someone who reads Chinese with you. Or be ready to eat whatever they bring out if you go with the Point & Pray method. IF a restuarant makes authentic style food those will be on a different (seperate) menu, and that menu is almost invariably in Chinese. If you are a picky eater (like most Americans, as noted by a couple of previous posters) you probably wouldn’t want to try some dishes like “Spicy Beef Tendon” or cold tripe appetizers, barbeque chicken necks, or my FIL’s stir fried kidney, liver and heart. My MIL makes a homemade kung po chicken that makes local The Great Wall look like a Micky D’s. Some of our MADopers can vouch for my wife’s homemade eggrolls. I have actually become pretty profecient at making Peking style duck too.
I’ve been to Asia many times, and I can tell you that there are authentic Chinese restaurants in the US… at least here in the SF bay area. But much of what is authentic here is what would be pretty high end over there. You’ll also find that some places have a “regular menu”, which your typical non-Chinese folks get, and a “special menu” that Chinese (or in-the-know) customers get.
True, most Chinese places here serve the same old crap, but if you live in an area with a sizable Asian population, you should be able to get the real thing. Here’s a hint: if most of the customers are non-Chinese, it’s probably not authentic.
Never been to Asia, but I am friends with an ethnic Chinese family who own a small restaurant. The food that’s on the menu is the nomal stuff you see most places in the USA. Kung Pau Chicken, Yu Shan Chicken etc.
But the food they serve at their family gatherings I’ve been lucky enough to attend is somewhat different. I don’t know the names of the dishes; they might not have names for all I know! But good stuff. If you’re the only non Chinese in a family group of 25 or so I’d say it was home cooking.
Filmyak’s friend must have been eating in the wrong places. Either that, or they’ve got about the same culinary flexibility as my 8-year-old, but I won’t go there.
I spent a month in various parts of China, eating in more peoples’ homes and at more restaurants than I could count. I don’t think I had the same dish twice, and every single one of them was wonderful. I came to the conclusion that there’s absolutely no bad food in China - I’d rather eat at the worst hole-in-the-wall in Beijing than at a Denny’s in the US.
But your friend’s view does pretty much answer the original question. Basically, “Chinese” restaurants in the US serve what they do because it works. That’s what Americans expect, and that’s what brings in the customers.
To get authentic Chinese food in the US, you need to find an area with a sizeable Chinese immigrant community and get someone to guide you to the good restaurants. I suggest starting out with some pork dumplings - authentic but also something that most Americans can enjoy.
I’ve got pretty much the same experience. There used to be a restaurant around here we’d go to all the time (my dad would end up there for lunch multiple times a week with some of his friends from work I think), and we got to know the family who owned it. They invited us to a small birthday party for their daughter (who was turning 9 at the time I think), and John cooked for us all.
It wasn’t anything bizarre or exotic-seeming, but it was nothing I’d seen on menus before, and was all very wonderful.
Haven’t been to China (although I see that possibility coming up in my occupation) and I can positively say that yes, I will be very close minded when it comes to the food there. I’ve been to a “real” Chinese restaurant full of authentic Chinamen – I was accompanying two colleagues from Tawain that wanted “real” food. They absolutely loved it, even though it wasn’t quite their normal island fare. The menus were exclusively in Chinese, and the coworkers order in Chinese, and the place was just like being in China. Oh, yeah, it was pretty upscale too, especially for the area.
I’m usually very open minded, and I’ve travelled a lot of the world, and I’ve eaten bits and pieces and hunks of anything. But this was not at all to my liking. Okay, there was one thing that was really delicious: the duck. But I don’t know how to order again, so I’m SOL.
All the large Chinatowns in the US and Canada have different Chinese restaurants. They have Cantonese, Mandarin and Hunan/Szechuan places with much different dishes and seasonings.
People have their idea of what Chinese cooking should be like, and how specific dishes should taste. Places who don’t meet those expectations just won’t stay in business long.
But that’s true of most cooking styles. Nearly every city in America must have dozens of places where you can order a T-bone steak & baked potato, and get nearly the exact same dinner. Or lunch counters: you can get a ‘beef commercial’ (open faced sandwich with sliced roast beef, mashed potatoes & gravy) almost anywhere. That’s what people expect.
Heck, one of the selling points of McDonalds is that everywhere in the country, you’ll get a meal that is just what you expect, nearly identical to what you get in your hometown.
Restaurants all over the country offer similar items on their menu because of 2 reasons:
Chinese cuisine in China is varied and generally very good. If you don’t eat well in China it’s because you don’t speak the language, don’t know what to order, or just have banquets.
Chinese food in China has little in common with that in the US. Sweet and sour pork, egg rolls and the rest of the doo doo platter is much different and IMHO much better here in China.
Please note that what the Chinese consider “great food” is often what Westerners don’t. Either wierd stuff like birds nest, shark fin or lots of organ meat or “starvation cuisine” (scorpions). I also think that most of the banquet meals are pretty repititious and not so good.
However, you should be able to go most places and get really good food.
Chinese say “eat everything with 2 legs except parents, everything from the water except submarines, everything with 4 legs except a table, and anything with more legs.”
The overwhelming majority of Chinese resteraunts outside of China are of the Cantonese cuisine. Having been to various parts of China and Taiwan, I think it’s important to point out that there are many many many different cuisines and eating styles, many of which you’ll rarely see in the states. A strange stereotype the rest of the Chinese have told me that they have about the Cantonese is that “they’ll eat anything.” I totally disagree with that one. Personally, the stuff from the north like Beijing and even all the way down to Shanghai is pretty gross to me, like bug-eating, which seems to be a Beijing/western China thing. And the quality of the cooking is rarely up to my standards.
Most of the items on the menu in a Cantonese menu here in the states looks pretty authentic to me. There’re a few stuff that probably isn’t in China, and obviously things have been geared for the western audience depending on the resteraunt. But some of the best Chinese resteraunts down here in Southern California have BETTER Chinese food than stuff you’ll find in China, even if some of the visiting Chinese have a hard time admitting it. A big reason is that a lot of the resteraunts down here often invite big name Hong Kong chefs and the like for extended stays.
I was reading a book a while back, might have been “Riding the Iron Rooster”, and the author talks about all the different foods eaten in China. He said that someday the Chinese people would be asked about the species that disappeared from the earth and the response would be “They were delicious!”
But that’s true in the USA, also. And probably most countries.
I’ve worked on a state-wide political campaign, and went to a whole lot of banquets, all across the state. The food was certainly NOT the high point of these banquets.
I’d hate to think that people were judging American cusine based on the food served at banquets!
IF a restuarant makes authentic style food those will be on a different (seperate) menu, and that menu is almost invariably in Chinese. If you are a picky eater (like most Americans, as noted by a couple of previous posters) you probably wouldn’t want to try some dishes like “Spicy Beef Tendon” or cold tripe appetizers, barbeque chicken necks, or my FIL’s stir fried kidney, liver and heart. My MIL makes a homemade kung po chicken that makes local The Great Wall look like a Micky D’s. Some of our MADopers can vouch for my wife’s homemade eggrolls. I have actually become pretty profecient at making Peking style duck too.