I have nothing to back this up, but I’ve heard that some of the best Chinese food in the Western Hemisphere can be found in Mexicali, Baja California, where a significant Chinese community has existed for generations.
Has anyone checked that out?
Yes, but you aren’t Cantonese food. Or are you?
Derleth, I’d say you were in the wrong part of Chinatown. There are places all over the city with killer chinese. Stay away from the tourist traps, and get a local’s recommendation.
My rule of thumb for great ethnic food: No large restaurants. The more hole in the wall the place is, the better the food. A large dining room, table cloths, etc; these are all bad signs. There may be a few good places that have a “real” dining room, but the best ones have a counter, a couple tables with plastic chairs, and paper menus. A scarcity of English is a good sign, too.
Suburbs? Check.
America? Check.
Chinese Food? Quite acceptable.
Watch where you’re slinging those generalizations, buster.
More, I’d think. China is a huge country with significant differences in climate and topography between regions. IIRC, Florence Lin discusses 4 distinct regional styles in her book on regional Chinese cooking–Cantonese, Hunan, Szechuan, and I’m blanking on the fourth. (FWIW, her books are written for American cooks.)
We’re just more familiar with Italian food, and we are more likely to be able to get “authentic” Italian food here. I suppose that’s why we are more attuned to the fine differences between regional Italian cuisine.
As far as Panda Express–around here it’s known as Agita Express. Foul foul stuff.
To follow on from that, If I can find a Chinese restaurant that the Chinese eat in then I reckon I stand a good chance of getting some very good and authentic food.
Of course this applies to Italian,Thai, Indian etc.
I don’t see why you believe this to be true. There are plenty of good places to eat in suburban America if you’re just willing to try new things. I live in a rural area and even we have at least one good restaurant. (Though the Chinese one is horrible.)
That’s a factor but I think most buffet places just buy cheaper materials. I used to work at a pizza buffet and we generally didn’t have anything left over from lunch or dinner for the next shift. It’s just that the materials we used wasn’t as good as other places. I certainly don’t trust a lot of the chinese buffets I see with sushi, raw oysters, or crawfish on their spread. Especially when the crawfish have straight tails.
Marc
I’d second this. One thing to look for is a separate menu, or at least a separate section, for the more “authentic” dishes.
F’rinstance: A Chinese place opened up in my neighborhood a couple of months ago, and they went around and put a little welcome package on everybody’s doorknobs with takeout information and a couple of fortune cookies. There are actually two takeout menus: One has the standard lineup you’d expect, black bean chicken and sweet and sour and almond fried and that sort of thing. The other menu is bilingual, the English somewhat more broken, and includes “seaweed pig snout in blood cake” and “ostrich cloaca hotpot” and “garlic butterfly anus in yak snot” and such.
Now, I’d be unlikely to order anything from the second menu, but it at least serves as some indication that the kitchen knows what they’re doing, and that the items on the first menu will be better than average. And sure enough, we weren’t disappointed when we tried them for the first time a few days ago.
I don’t know if this is a universally effective identification method, but it’s worked for me so far.
*I made up garlic butterfly anus.
I pretty much agree with these sentiments. Unfortunately I think bad Chinese food is so widespread in many parts of the US (with notable exceptions, of course) that it is becoming the expected standard in a lot of places. Gooey, gummy sauces, General Tso’s chicken that may as well have chocolate syrup on it, flourescent pink spare ribs, grey fried rice that has been sitting in a warming pan all day…
I think this phenomenon afflicts Chinese more than other foreign cuisines because it has been widely available in this country for a longer time and so has become much more mainstream. Thai and Japanese and Indian and such are only beginning to make inroads into middle America. By way of comparison I have had excrutiatingly bad Italian food (including pizza) in such locations as Salt Lake City and Vermont. Italian, like Chinese is more mainstream than the others and has been around longer and so has been messed up to a similar degree.
On the other hand I worked with a woman from China a couple of years back and she told me (somewhat to my surprise) that several of the restaurants in Boston’s small Chinatown served quite good food, by her standards.
I swear Utah has the worst food in the United States. I spend a lot of time there and there is only one restaurant that I enjoy eating at (Thaifoon).
OK, I had good food at Landry’s in SLC, but that was at a Master-of-the-Universe type dinner, which I hate.
I hear there’s some good stuff in Park City, but I don’t get up there too often. Even the chains’ food tastes worse than other places. The second worst meal (The worst I mentioned before) was also in Utah, at the Olive Garden in Provo across from BYU. Soup, salad, and breadsticks are the only things you should ever eat at an Olive Garden. I’d describe the meal, but its getting close to dinner time.
Next time, go here:
My dear, dear Green Bean, I’ve been to dozens upon dozens of American suburbs and, yes, I can assure you that the Chinese food in Suburbia is 95 percent garbage. It has been Americanized, homogenized, bastardized, and run through an ad hoc focus group of know-nothings to emerge as the dreck it really is.
Yes, I generalize, but this generalization has merit. While some posters can point to the rare exception, fact is, excellent Chinese food in Suburbia is as rare as a virgin leaving the Laker’s locker room.
I’m talking gelatinous, gooey, sugary, swimming in oil or sugar or both. When I taste Japanese or Thai cuisine, I can discern finesse, nuance, artistry perhaps. But what I sample of Chinese in the burbs makes me burp.
Maybe I need to move to Jersey? 
The Red Banjo in Park City on Main Street has the * best pizza you’ll ever eat*. Check it out as soon as possible, tonight if you can.
I haven’t lived there for five years, and I still dream about it. In fact, when I go to Utah in two weeks, I plan on visiting the Banjo several times.
As for Chinese food…well, you’d expect So Cal would have some decent Chinese food somewhere. I’m sure there’s some decent Chinese food somewhere. I haven’t found it. Though Tasty Goody is a fast, cheap, easy, decent place to get Chinese food. Not the greatest on the planet…or in town…but it’ll definitely do in a pinch.
I don’t think this is quite true…at least, not since around 1974. The Hunan/Szechuan boom started in the '70s on the coasts, and had filtered through to the flyover states by the mid-'80s.
I’ve had quite acceptable Chinese food in Chicago…mind-bending stuff in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and (of course) right here in Noo Yawk. Even the joint on the corner dishes up fine grub, let alone the GREAT places around Sunset Park, Brooklyn; Canal Street, Manhattan; and Flushing, Queens.
What are you doing eating in the suburbs, anyway? Next time, bring along a lunch.
Christ, Ukulele Ike, you’re eating in some of America’s dining hotspots. If you ever deign to eat McChinese food in the 'burbs sometime, make sure your cell phone’s speeddialer is programmed for Amnesty International’s hotline. I’d rather have a fatwah declared against me than eat another plate of suburban kung pao chicken. Not to be an elititist, cause I’m certainly not, but I think too many Americans shovel food into their mouths without really experiencing the full sensory event. (Green Bean, notice how I said “too many.” Better?)
I think pepperlandgirl and many other posters above have hit on something: Chinese food generally seems to have captured the budget rung in the great American food ladder. I mean, when you’re served a satellite dish full of food for $7.95, you can’t exactly expect it’s from Mr. Iron Chef himself.
Frankly, I sometimes wonder just how much of the stuff I’m served nationwide is pre-prepared at a central location, shipped out frozen, and then re-heated or quickly stir-fried. That said, I have been to a few metropolitan Chinese restaurants where the cooking is delicious and nuanced. Nice presentation too, though I suspect the radish-turned-floral garnish wasn’t done onsite.
Another point: One Chinese waiter–poised to open his own restaurant–told me that if Chinese cooks prepared their dishes authentically, business in the 'burbs would tank. McDonalds didn’t sell billions and billions for nuthin, baby.
I suppose this is an obvious point, but check out the patrons before you sit down. How many Asian diners do you see?
Also, if the decor is very impressive, the food tends to be crap. The best food I’ve had in NZ was on the outskirts of an industrial area; the place was run down and the service was non-existant. They were so good, customers came to them despite this. It’s a useful rule of thumb, but you can get great (or terrible) places that contradict this.
Oh, and avoid any place that has 3 or more varieties of black-bean, and sweet and sour dishes.
Nope. That’s a large (and, anymore, not so good dim sum place) east of Federal on the north side of Alameda. This one’s sort of diagonally across the Federal/Alameda intersection and then west just a bit.
Fenris
I know a local Chinese buffet that’s just fantastic. They don’t leave the food out too long, they don’t cover everything in sugar, and they don’t speak any English. Well, three of the ~20 who work there do – the cashier, the drink girl, and the host. In addition, most times I’ve been there around half of the patrons were Chinese too, which is strange, because we don’t have a large Chinese population. Lots of Hmong, Thai, and Lao, but not many Chinese. When I’m on my pre-vacation cheat on my diet week, I’ll probably eat there 2 - 3 times.
The other great Chinese place I’ve been to was this tiny little spot off of Canal St in Lower Manhattan. They passed my authenticity tests because they had large live fish swimming around in a tank in the front window and the only other patrons there belonged to a large family at a single round table. The waitress brought the table one of the fish, which Grandpa refused. So she brought another one and he assented, so they took it to the kitchen to kill and cook it. I had the best Chinese food I’ve ever had in that restaurant.
rjung does have a thing for apples, you know. 
Mee Yee Lin Dim Sum?
I’ll second that! And add that I’ve been to most of the US, and been to both northern and southern Utah.
Like others, I also find that the best ethnic food I’ve found has been in hole-in-the-wall dives. I also think that you can’t find decent ethnic food (‘ceptin’ soul food & BBQ, a’course) south of the Mason-Dixon line, and that Asian food will be better west of the Mississippi than east of it.