I grew up in Montana of all places and my town had a few different Chinese restaurants and the Egg Foo Young was definitely a specific style. I can’t find it anywhere else.
The stuff served in Boston-area Chinese restaurants was definitely not Chinese stuffed buns (I’ve had the Japanese equivalent often enough). It was good ol’ Italian bread, and they even served it with plastoc containers of butter – the only dairy product I’ve ever seen in a Chinese restaurant. I have no doubt they were catering to clentele of Italian ancestry.
I haven’t seen the loaves and butter at a Chinese restaurant in years, so I assume the pracice has at long last died out.
I grew up near there, and have lived in Boston for 15 years now. Some dishes have a subtle difference, but for others it’s huge. The Mongolian Beef I get here is not even remotely like the Mongolian Beef in Seattle. (Well, they both have beef in them.)
Every time I’m back in Seattle I make a trip to my favorite Chinese restaurant. The woman there still recognizes me.
Chinese food varies in cities all over China. Why would it not vary in cities in other countries ?
Chinese food found in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong can vary greatly, it is not all the same.
Both the best, and the very worst, Chinese food that I have ever eaten have been in Shanghai.
Chinese food, in China, varies from city to city, and from restaurant to restaurant.
It seems silly to me to expect Chinese food to always be the same no matter where you go.
Not just Boston, all of MA. When my brother was very small he called it “Chinese bread” because that was the type of bread you got when you had Chinese food! BrianJ, it was definitely italian bread like CalMeacham says. Or maybe “was” is the wrong word for it: we got free italian bread with our take out order from a Chinese food play just north of the MA/NH border last Saturday.
One thing I miss a lot about no longer living in southern MA is that you can’t get a strained chowmein sandwich anywhere else. They created them in the town my dad was from, and their popularity didn’t really spread too far beyond that, less than 50 miles as far as I’ve ever been able to tell.
I’ve never seen white bread with an a la carte Chinese meal but I have seen Doritos as a side at an Italian restaurant.
However, I have seen garlic bread at a Chinese buffet. It’s really good for dipping into chinese soup (I mix won ton broth 3 to 1 with hot and sour and put in some noodles from the buffet.)
And THAT’S why the god of food slapped you with an EF-3 tornado. That recipe had to be destroyed at all costs.
And people make fun of British cooking. What New England does to everything except lobstah and chowdah makes Britfood look cordon bleu. I think it’s the increasing failure to stay within traditional bounds that makes it so much worse… “Let’s open a __________ restaurant and serve ________ that Connecticutters like!”
in cities with a Chinatown.
go to a restaurant with Chinese as customers. likely not storefront if at ground level. look for second story places.
Sensible and possibly accurate, except that… if a city is large enough to have a Chinatown, it’s not likely a backwater town. Some of the comments above indicate that even Chinese-for-Chinese cooking varies by region and city.
I’ll take West Coast/SF style, as that’s what I grew up with. 
Charging extra for rice has nothing to do with authenticity, and everything to do with making money. All restaurants in the Bay Area I’ve been to do it now.
And let me second the observation that the bread I got in Boston had nothing to do with steamed buns.
BTW, I went to a Chinese restaurant in Corpus Christi quite some time ago, which had coffee on the menu - for $1,000.
The more expensive the city, the more likely it is to charge extra for rice. Heck, the more expensive the Chinese restaurant within a city, the more likely it is to charge extra for rice. And to not have soy sauce on the table.
I’ve had some very good Chinese food in Connecticut and some that I couldn’t finish. There must be hundreds of Chinese restaurants. Who can go to them all?
I’ve also had some of the worst pizza I’ve ever tasted in Connecticut. In a so-called Italian restaurant. But I don’t think it proves much about pizza or Connecticut.
I grew up outside Chicago and moved to the east coast. They chop their vegetables different and rice didn’t come with the meal. I’ve now moved south and the Chinese food is vastly inferior to both places. Although it does come with rice.
This is what I was going to say.
Go to 10 diners in the same city and order the meatloaf (or pot roast, etc.) and you won’t get 2 completely alike.
Well, then there’s Hakkasan in NYC, which I believe charges by the grain. 
Half a dozen Chinese places so far and not a one I’d go back to. The family groans if anyone suggests trying another. (And yes, the last four came HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, you MUST try them!) The only one we sort of liked closed the next week. (It just reopened… as yet another fucking pizza place.)
Connecticut doesn’t do food. I try mightily to avoid chain restaurants at all costs, but we’re actually *planning *a trip to Olive Garden this weekend so we can get some tasty, well-prepared food at a reasonable price without shitty or snooty service. And that isn’t pizza… white, red, Napoli, Chicago or “special.”
The food I had at restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown was bland and nothing special. However, they were recommended by a fellow of British heritage who was born in India and grew up in Australia, so his tastes ran to bland and nothing special.
Out in the burbs we had couple-owned restaurant that was…interesting because he was Chinese and she was Polish. Chinese-Polish fusion works rather well; maybe it was something Genghis Khan had in mind.
So perhaps somewhat off topic, but I don’t recall any of the Chinese restaurants back east loading their veggie dishes with broccoli. I can’t stand broccoli, but the first time I ordered Chinese, and it was Colorado at that point, it was loaded with broccoli. Here in AZ as well. And where the hell is the bok choy??
That’s pretty impressive. There’s some fantastic regional Chinese food to be had in Chicago’s Chinatown. Either you’re ordering bland dishes or really are somehow finding bad places. I’m not saying every restaurant in Chinatown is good, but every one I’ve been to has been better than the typical local Cantonese influenced joint
ETA: Next time, go to Lao Sze Chuan and order the boiled beef. You must like spicy food to enjoy this. If you find this bland and ordinary, I give up. Hell, I’d go there just for the free spicy cabbage appetizer/amuse bouche.
I have found Chinese food to vary from place to place.
I have been curious lately about shrimp toast. Is it Chinese?
I just wanted to add an observation – I’ve seen two chinese restaurants in the North Shore of Boston in the past month that still give out Italian bread with their meals. Incredible – I thought this was a dead practice.
I live around Chicago, but visit the Boston area for a week or two yearly. I can speak to at least one Chinese restaurant (North Shore area) still serving bread (no, not steamed buns) with their food, and to one in the northwestern suburbs of Boston having a simply amazing dim sum spread, one that a Chinese-born member of our party praised.
And bok choy… well. A seafood/Italianish restaurant in the North Shore had bok choy (out of season) as a vegetable in their vegetarian pasta dish. Bok choy. It was as terrible as you’d expect.