Getting a decent plate of Chinese food in the burbs (I’m in NC, right now) has become as improbable as getting a rickshaw ride on the Moon.
The wonton soup I find seems poured from a Campbell’s soup can and the noodles are old, hard, and tasteless.
Hell, most dishes swim in oil, the rest in sugar. Gen. Tso’s chicken has officially passed into dessert territory, while finding a decent kung pao chicken–which ain’t exactly authentic, of course–is impossible. (And what’s with the chicken? I’ve NEVER seen chicken with that flaccid consistency in my kitchen.)
Does this represent the dumbing down of the American palate? Have the Chinese chefs sold out and gone Suburbia?
Not that I’m a connisseur, but it seems most Americans will eat most anything shoved near their mouths.
I agree wholeheartedly. Fine ethnic cuisine is among the best things about living in a large city. Interestingly enough there are suburbs of CHicago where great food can be had, you just have to follow the migration patterns. For instance, there is a sizable Tibetan population in rural NW Indiana and you can find food there that you cant get in London or New York.
My rule of thumb when it comes to Chinese food is to avoid places that have a buffet. I’ve had a lot of problem finding decent Chinese food in Little Rock. When I ordered chicken at some of these places there was so much fat I sometimes thought they’d given me pork. There’s only one place in LR I like to go for Chinese food though there’s a decent Vietnamese place in town.
I’m with ** MikeG **. It all depends on who lives in the suburbs. You’d be hard pressed to find better Asian food than in the West Houston suburb of Alief. Indian food too.
Granted, my example is a big city suburb. I doubt you can find much good ethnic food in say… the Kansas City suburbs, if only because there probably aren’t many ethnic suburbanites there.
What’s y’all’s opinion of Panda Express, the ubiquitous (in So Cal) Chinese fast food chain? Tastes fine to my relatively uneducated palate. Not the best I’ve had, obviously, but nice for the price, and quick.
I’m beginning to believe that Chinese food sucks, period. I love Thai and Vietnamese, and Japanese food rivals French in terms of finesse and presentation, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a memorable Chinese meal.
And in other breaking news: Sky is Blue. Pope Believed to be Catholic.
You’re not going to the right places.
My favorite Chinese restaurant is the House of Nanking in North Beach in San Francisco. Presentation: not so much. It’s kind of a dive, it’s always crowded with a line out the door, and the staff can be kind of brusque if not downright rude. But the food is so good it makes you wish you didn’t have a digestive tract, just so you could keep eating it forever.
Try Chinese food in China(where I am now). You will truly realize that quality Chinese food is not available outside China. The “Ding Ding Chow Mian” I eat here weekly makes me never want to leave here. The food is phenomenal.
So true - here in the UK there’s ‘chinese’ food as it’s expected to be by the undiscriminating masses and proper chinese food as served in good China Town type big city restaurants.
In my experience the two have almost nothing in common.
I’ve got two words to help explain the sorry state of Chinese food in general circulation (so to speak):
La Choy. “The Chinese food that swings American” Make-it-yourself chop suey. Ah, two other words that have screwed things up. Don’t go looking for chop suey in Chinatown, mkay?
Awful stuff. Just awful. Yet, it’s what middle-America finds in the grocery store, so it has warped countless perceptions.
As for Panda Express, they’re McChinese food. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Their food is quite decent, considering most of their locations seem to be shopping mall food courts, and it’s not swimming in oil. They make it in small enough batches that it’s not been sitting out for three hours getting gummy and foul.
Aren’t you in Denver? And I assume you’re not eating Chinese at places other than south Federal, right? If not, there’s a great little dim sum place just west of Federal and Alameda. Can’t remember the name right now, but it’s on the south side of Alameda.
Dim sum is fine, but nothing fantastic. It just seems to me that Chinese food in general takes a back seat to other Asian cuisines. When Chinese is good, its good, but when Thai is good, its great. And Japanese sushi and sashimi has no competitors.
I have gone into numerous hole-in-the-wall Thai or Vietnamese places and had great meals of fresh food with tasty spices and great presentation, but even the good Chinese places serve a lot of gloppy mess next to rice.
Plus, the worst restaurant I have ever been to, by far, was purportedly Chinese. It is in Ogden, UT, and I cringe even thinking about it. God, did it suck.
Dude, there is some GREAT Chinese food out there. 99% of the “Chinese food” served in the U.S. is Cantonese: that bland blah gooey stuff. There are as many different regional variations of Chinese food as Italian food; probably more. Look for a place that serves Hunan Chinese food. The. Best. Spicy; Thai-ish but darker, richer, smokier. The best Chinese restaurant I have EVER eaten in, anywhere, is Little Hunan, on Lincoln at about Devon in Chicago. If you’re within a hundred miles, go there now. If not, get within a hundred miles.
Chinese food in most small-to-midsized towns sucks, but only because it’s bland and unhealthy. It’s pretty hard to go too wrong, in my experience, but only if you revise your expectations to something not much better than McDonald’s.
I don’t think I’ve ever had really good Chinese, either, and I’ve been to Chinatown in San Francisco. (No, I’ve never been to Asia. But if SF can’t get good Chinese, we might as well write off the whole American supercontinent.) I’ve had good Thai, and I still go nuts for a spicy peanut sauce. (I’ve also had fast-food Thai, because the novelty of a Thai lunch counter in Worthington, MN was too much to let slip by.) Sushi is a very rare treat, and one I enjoy at every chance. I haven’t had anything more exotic than that, mainly because Montana and the Midwest didn’t get too many Asian immigrants interested in opening restaurants. (Well, not the parts of the Midwest I’ve lived in.)
The good restaurants in most places I’ve lived have been steakhouses (locally-owned, not chain) or, interestingly, locally-owned Mexican restaurants.
