So … the incredibly beautiful SO and I were kicking around Northern New Hampshire the last couple of days when we decided to stop in for dinner at a local Chinese restuarant. It was the greatest thing since chopped liver, which we decided not to order since there were other things we wanted. She had the Chicken Chow Mein; I had the Roast Duck (and the Egg Drop Soup … ohmigod … with just a touch of peas and carrots and so thick with egg and ohmigod it was the best I’d ever had) and both were insanely good!
The next morning we were raving about it to our hosts, comparing it to another Chinese place we used to frequent here at home. The story we told (and this actually happened to us) was that as the waitress was refilling our water glasses she was dripping condensed water from the pitcher right onto our bread!
And this is where the question hangs. When we said we had bread with our Chinese dinner here, our B&B host looked at us like we had six arms and baseball bats for legs. And it occurrred to me that in New Hampshire, we had not been served bread with our meal; something that happens in pretty much any Chinese restaurant that you go to in Rhode Island. He said that in NH, he had never been served bread with his Chinese dinner, nor could he remember it anywhere else.
So, I put it to you, hoping we can find some sort of nationwide idea of whether this is strictly a Rhode Island thing or not. Is having bread with your Chinese dinner something that is common in your neck o’ the woods or is it something that you’ve never heard of before?
Are you talking standard American restaurant bread roll or white bread with pats of butter on the side? In that case, no I have never ever seen that in a Chinese restaurant. Northern Chinese cuisine uses a lot of wheat in the form of noodles, pancakes and flatbreads but those are menu items you would pay for in my experience.
Generally around here it would be almost like Italian bread (yes … this is Rhode Island) with pats of butter on the side. I don’t recall ever having rolls served. I’m wondering now that you mention it if it’s a pidgin Chinese / Italian thing.
I’ve never had bread with a Chinese meal, and it seems very odd to me – rice serves the same function in Chinese meals, although at banquets in China, they tend not to serve rice, apparently because it looks cheap.
(I’ve eaten Chinese in various parts of the US, e.g., Ohio, Washington DC, and in Australia, Hong Kong and Beijing.
It is very peculiar. But there used to be a chain of Chinese restaurants called China Coast that served a sort of sweet yeast bun with meals. They came with honey butter. I didn’t like them, and the chain (I think they were owned by the same people who own Olive Garden) went away pretty quickly.
I have no doubt that I have eaten thousands of Chinese meals. I have never seen bread and butter served with a main meal. However I have eaten about a billion steamed buns both savoury and sweet at dim sum.
That’s been my experience too, from authentic Chinese-in-Chinatown restaurants all the way down to rural Quebecois village dives. They serve rice as the starch, not bread, unless you’re talking about filled buns.
Someone mentioned this on the Dope once, and I was really confused. No, they don’t serve bread with your meal in Chinese restaurants here like Italian or American restaurants do. The closest I have seen is the local mediocre (okay, mediocre is being generous) Chinese buffet which has these light fluffy rolls which have been deep fried and then rolled in white sugar, much like a yeast donut without a whole. They taste like they might be Pillsbury refrigerator rolls or something. They’re quite yummy in a Lutheran sort of way, and I expect they’re some bastardized attempt at a sweet mantou or something. This is the same buffet that has “pizza” (which is terrible) and “tacos” (which are oversized empanadas which are actually very tasty.)
I think you’d be much more likely to find bread with Chinese food in China. They do have bao, and mantou and bing and manti - wheat is traditionally the staple grain in the North, rice in the South.
au contraire. Chinese like butter and dairy product consumption is sky rocketing.
to the OP, western/american style bread or buns and butter is an *abomination * for Chinese food.
A sizeable percentage of the Chinese population eat wheat/bread type products as a staple instead of rice. But it’s not oven baked bread. Steamed buns, yeast stovetop breads, baked flatbreads, yes, but a white roll no.
This is interesting! Apparently, just from the consensus so far, it is just a Southern New England thing. It’s got me wondering now if, because of the high concentration of Italian-Americans we have here, if the Chinese restaurants felt some sort of pressure from customers to serve it.
