North of Boston is an authentic Sichuan restaurant, Sichuan Gourmet (Billerica, MA). I learned of this place from a number of Chinese colleagues/friends. The food is amazing, and per these colleagues, authentic.
When we would go there, we would get menus in Chinese and I’d defer to my friends who would do the ordering. They knew I’m pretty adventuresome and I’d defer to them. They told me repeatedly that the English menu was different from the Chinese one.
We used to get something that was translated to me as “Dry Braised Mushrooms with Pork Bellies”
This is the best thing I’ve ever had, but I’ve never found it anywhere else, and I’ve moved away from there.
It came in a metal bowl with a sterno-like flame below. The dish was a variety of mushrooms with bits of pork (like unsalty soft bacon) in a brown broth. Very heavy on the sichuan peppercorns. F-ing amazing.
I’ve never seen it anywhere else, and I’m not sure on the actual name of it. But I want it, I want it, I want it.
Make sure you go to a Sichuan restaurant, because the Sichuan peppercorns are featured prominently. Other parts of China use significantly less or none of these, IMHO, devil spawn spice.
Ask one of your old colleagues to send you the name of the dish in Chinese.
It’s pretty rare for a Chinese restaurant to have separate menus in my experience. Usually the menu’s are bi-lingual and identical. Chinese speakers can always verbally check if different veggies are in season or there is a dish not on the menu.
It was actually fairly common in the Seattle area when I lived there years ago. The English menu would have General Tso’s Chicken and such, and the Chinese menu would have things like “tofu of unusual order” which were not offered on the English side. It’s been a long time since my relocation outside the US, so maybe things have changed, but it was a normal arrangement back then.
That’s not quite it. Definitely a relative, but this dish has many different types of mushrooms, and due to the sterno the broth is simmering when it’s delivered to the table. I probably should have noted that it isn’t very attractive to look at.
Then your experience is different from mine. Or maybe things have changed in the last ten years since we’ve stopped going to Chinese restaurants regularly. But in the heavily Asian areas of Atlanta, Washington and Boston there were lots of restaurants with Chinese menus that were different from the American ones.
Same here in Chicago. Not just Chinese restaurants, but Thai restaurants, too. (And I would assume some other ethnic restaurants.) The local foodie board I used to visit regularly would have pictures of some of these menus with English translations so everyone can order off the other menus. (Now I’m not saying every or even the majority of Chinese/Thai/etc restaurants have a separate menu – just that it is not uncommon.)
I, too, have often run into Chinese-only options. I used to go to a place in Boston’s China Town with my father, and they had the specials posted on the wall in Chinese. Those never made it to the printed menu. He would order by pointing (randomly) at one of the signs on the wall. So we’d get some dishes we expected, and one surprise.
It’s very possible that dish is only made that specific way at that specific place. Other places may have similar dishes, but you’re likely never going to find it exactly the way you remember it.
Chinese cuisine is highly variable from cook to cook; you could visit 10 different sit-down Chinese restaurants, order the same 3 dishes at each, and unless you went to 10 PF Chang’s, you’ll probably receive 30 entirely different dishes.
That’s not my experience at all. Hell, Calvin Trillin has written numerous columns over the decades about taking a personal translator with him when he heads into Chinatown because when he asks a waiter about an interesting dish that is untranslated, all he gets is “You no like.”
I was told something similar by my Chinese colleagues. I have to tell them “Make it like you would for a Chinese person.” I always feel weird saying that, but the response is always a knowing smile and a nod.
Oddly enough, if I go to an Indian restaurant, I sometimes tell them to make it like for an American (I’m South Asian) because I can’t handle the spice level of “will not be spicy for you, sir”
Ditto. I’ve learned to try and sneak a “pet pet” (“spicy spicy/extra spicy”) as well as “Thai spicy” out there to help get the point across. Most places undershoot the first time I visit. However there have been two that spared no heat on my inaugural order, and are my favorite (well, the one that is still around, at any rate. They overall are just one spice level higher than most othe Thai restaurants, so a medium there is like a hot mist everywhere else.)
The first time I went to a Thai restaurant with a group of friends there was literally nothing on the table other than the bowl of white rice that I could eat. Everything was too hot for me. Yeah, I don’t do spicy. Most Indian restaurants can do a “mild” that I can eat, but I’m still suspicious of Thai places.
We have tried cooking Indian and Thai at home. Indian dishes have become some of our weekly staples. Indian cookbooks give you a list of 12 spices to add, and it’s easy to just leave out the red pepper and asofetida. Our Thai cookbooks started with things like “red spice #3”, and if you leave it out, you are cooking something totally unlike the actual recipe, and there’s kind of no point.
(And I don’t love sweet peanut sauces on my meat, either. Mostly, I just don’t do Thai.)
