I’ve lived all along the West Coast and I’ve never seen bread served at a Chinese restaurant.
I would leave a Chinese restaurant that served bread or dairy.
Audrey K, if you hold tradition sacred, then you miss the creed.
Damnit, I wish we could ask the Rat Pack if they ever had Bread with authentic Chinese, I got 100 on it, that they had.
I have eaten really damned authentic Chinese in a an upstairs, backalley, Toronto Chinese only Restaurant. I felt so white, I felt like a ghost. The server didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand that it was Chinese only, so I sat down anyways. Seriously, the feeling that white boys have in bigoted atmospheres should be called “ghosting”. I know it’s not PC but there are times when white folks feel out of place. I ghosted up that thug party…
It was excellent food and was similar to what I had been eating at home. A delicious Hainanese meal, with or without bread. We also have a remarkable Laotian, Korean, and Vietnamese population with accompanying Restaurant culture.
This is Toledo (Rossford’s contribution to chinese food)…eat rolls, eat delicious chinese food, eat onion rings, have a beer, play pool or pinball, Revel in Mickey Mouse… I don’t care, just eat and be merry.
I’m not a big stickler for authenticity or tradition. Heck, I’m sure the Chinese food I like is far from authentic or traditional. But I still have an idea of what defines Chinese food, and what qualities and ingredients it should and should not have. When something sharply deviates from that, red flags go off in my head.
I don’t think it’s likely that a Chinese place that serves bread with the meal will have good Chinese food. It strikes me as so wrong that I can only imagine what else they will get wrong. I don’t expect all Chinese food to be rigidly-defined and uniform in taste. Variety is good. But bread… that’s wrong. And if they get that wrong, to that degree, I’d have little reason to think they’ll get beef broccoli right, or chow mein right, or orange chicken right.
I took a look at the review, and I’m amused that beef teriyaki and fried onion rings are considered Chinese food. If that’s how they define Chinese, I hope you understand why I’m skeptical their food is any good.
The rolls are optional. You don’t get rollls automatically at the Wayward Inn, but I think they have them if you request them. I’m not really sure, because I haven’t been there in years.
…but something eclectic doesn’t deviate, it incorporates. Chinese cuisine is probably the most practical and diverse cuisine in the world. Bread is not something that the Chinese have never eaten or heard of. Supplying bread is just good business sense in parts of America…Serve what your customer wants, wherever you are.
However, these ubiquotous American chinese buffets aren’t a shining moment in chinese culinary history. I’d much rather go to the Wayward Inn for good chinese.
They have about 135 Authentic Hainan-American dishes that include Cantonese, Szechuan, and Mandarin styles of cuisine. The quality is very high. I liked it …but that was a couple of Chefs ago, so you never know. I’d give them a 6.8 out of 10 for taste and authenticity on my chinese food scale. I think they’d do a good job on the three basic and generic American Chinese dishes that you mention. (Again, that was a long time ago and I don’t know what it’s like now.)
Beef teriyaki and Onion Rings are just part of their American and Chinese Menu. I think the teriyaki beef inclusion told more about the reviewer than the restaurant… It’s pretty good Chinese and I guarantee, you can’t recreate the atmosphere and decor.
Chinese has never struck me as eclectic. Distinct, yes; varied, sure; and yummy, definitely, but not eclectic.
If you are saying that I should give differing interpretations of Chinese food, then I hear you, and I agree. But I’m not about to be a slave to the notion of trying something different or accepting of whatever a restaurant throws my way. I’m going to still have expectations about what I’m getting. And if anything strikes me as being too different, too weird, too obviously a measure implemented to make locals happy, I’m gone. If this makes me closed-minded or unadventurous or a food snob, so be it.
My favorite Chinese restaurants, incidentally, are not buffets or trendy haunts like P. F. Chang’s, but beat-up, family-run places where you’re waited on by cranky Mom or Sister while Dad or Aunt cooks old tried-and-true recipes. The kind where no one speaks intelligible English and they’d sooner kick you out than adjust the menu for you. 
My suspicion would be that if they’re serving bread to cater to American tastes, they’re probably also “dumbing down” the rest of the food for middle-of-the-road American tastes. Which is fine, if you like that sort of thing. However, authenticity is somewhat important to me when I eat ethnic food, and I do want to experience food in as unadultered a state as possible. I mean, hey, it’s certainly possible they serve bread rolls and otherwise don’t tweak the food too much to American tastes, but I’d consider it unlikely.
You don’t really think Beef Broccoli or Chow Mein are Chinese dishes, do you? That’s just Chinese eclectic cuisine in action.
The fallacy here and the thing that you fail to grasp about the bread thing is that it’s not like the bread is part of the dishes. It’s not an ingredient, it’s an adjunct that is optional and part of American restaurant tradition. It’s not like the restaurant decided, hmmm let’s see… let’s serve crappy chinese food and bread. The chinese food isn’t somehow inferior because they decided to serve bread with meals. That crankyChinese Mom and sister and the Dad and Aunt were making old tried and true recipes- They just realized that inflexibility and throwing customers out might make them feel better, but it doesn’t help the bottom line- “The European immigrants in my neighborhood like bread with their meals, you say? Well then, let’s give them bread.” It’s the original fusion cuisine.
I also can’t help but think of the old Eddie Izzard saw, “Cake or Death?”, reading some of the irrational responses in this thread.
“Erm, Cake please.”
I’ve never been to a P.F. Changs, and I’m not too keen on the quality of the Chinese buffets, but I’ve been to a few because I’m poor and hungry.
I just wanted to unzombify this thread for a quick postscript and then I’ll let it die.
A couple of weeks ago we went out to a local Chinese buffet which I noticed had, as one of their offerings, yes, garlic bread. Just out of curiosity, I took a random sampling of what others had taken and to a man, every single customer had taken garlic bread with their dinner.
On the other hand …
Twice we went out for Italian in the last three weeks; once at just a local diner and the other at a more upscale Italian restaurant. At neither place were we served bread with our Italian meal!
Rhode Island … it’s like a whole 'nuther universe. :rolleyes: