I assume I’m like everyone else. Faced with a selection of 100 choices, you end up gravitating to the same ones over and over again. Nothing sucks like experiment with a new dish and finding out you hate it.
Lake Tung Shrimp? What the hell is that? Is it good? ::the waiter shrugs::
What are your favorites? Maybe we can expand our Chinese food horizons.
Minced Chicken in Lettuce Cups: Might be a West Coast, or Cali Chinese thing. Minced Chicken sauteed in Hoisin sauce. Wrap it in iceberg lettuce leaves and eat.
Imperial Shrimp: Has different names in different restaurants. Has a sweet & spicy sauce. Tastes like it has a ketchup base. Cant find it here in MS, so it might be a West Coast thing again.
Sweet & Sour Chicken: But only with brown sweet & sour sauce. None of that bright red stuff.
Hot & Sour Soup: Great soup, but hard to find places that do it right
General Tso’s Chicken: Never heard of it until I came to MS. Sweet, spicy. Very important that the chicken is done crisp, before covered in sauce.
Szechuan Spicy Shredded Beef With Carrots & Celery - don’t find it on menus very often, but I almost always order it when I find it. Sometimes it’s ok, sometimes it’s superb. Yum.
Pork Fried Rice
I wonder if Imperial Shrimp is Yu Hsiang Shrimp, which I get sometimes & like. The description sounds similar.
This sounds like my favorite dish in my favorite Chinese restaurant. There they just call it sliced shrimp with sweet and spicy sauce. The shrimp has a crispy coating and the sauce is to die for (not sure about the ketchup base, though). I’ve never seen anything like it in any other Chinese restaurant.
There’s also a sushi place I go to that has a few Chinese dishes, among them a spicy chicken with plum sauce. The combination of flavors is exquisite and this also appears to be a unique dish.
Pretty sure about the ketchup sauce. I’ve played the, “You know that dish with…” game with a lot of Chinese restaurants. When I mention sweet & spicy ketchup sauce they know what I’m talking about. It’s usually a chef’s specialty dish, and expensive as hell. I thought for a while that it was only a Korean-Chinese dish.
Forgot to mention Mongolian Beef. If you have a P.F. Chang’s next to you, order it!
Maybe it’s cause I’m Chinese (or despite it?) but I love Chinese food of all kinds. Authentic, Americanized, I’ll scarf it down.
But I think that some of you need to branch out beyond General Tso’s and Sweet and Sour Pork! By the way, General Tso’s was virtually unknown to me when I lived in the San Gabriel Valley (SoCal- full of great authentic Chinese restaurants). I first heard of it when I came to Santa Cruz, so I don’t know where it really comes from.
Anyway, my personal favorites, and what I would order if I were in the perfect Chinese restaurant with five other people of similar tastes:
Siu Mai Dumplings: Mm mm, I’m pretty sure these only show up in dim sum restaurants, but I love em!
Hot and Sour Soup
Gan Pong Chicken: Anyone else hear of this? I’ve actually only had this here in Santa Cruz too, but it’s delicious. I guess it’s sort of like a sweet and sour/General Tso’s kinda dish, but it’s a little different.
I always get the Mu Shu Pork when we go to Xian and they are the only place in town that I have fiound Steamed Pork Buns. I have had so much trouble finding them I have started making them myself. Mmmmm… Pork in Plum Sauce… Walnut Chicken…really, really good Hot and Sour… ahhhhhh, I need to head out for lunch soon!
Ma Po Tofu and hot and sour soup are great dishes to order at an unknown Chinese restaurant. You can often gage a lot about the resaurants quality from these dishes, and they are almost allways eadible even in very bad restaurants. Neither though tell you if the restaurant can deepfry in batter, and many restaurants make soggy disgusting batter. So in a first order I would stick to just one deep fried dish (orange peel beef usually) so as not to ruin an entire meal if they can’t cook battered food.
When I am used to a place and know they are decent cooks I will try many different things off the menu. I think you should experiment, but only at a place you trust. This is because too often I have met people who say they can’t stand squid or scallops or … because they tried them first at a bad place that cooked them wrong, and then assume that is what those items are allways like.
Oo, Ma Po Tofu is delicious. Unfortunately, I can never get my friends to try it because they have a tendency to want meat, meat and more meat. When I tell them that Ma Po Tofu HAS meat in it, they don’t believe me.
Ah, those are great too. If you have a Chinese market nearby, you can easily find big packs of those in the freezer section. You know what else I like? Steamed juicy pork dumplings, which are great. They have a little pocket of soup that bursts open when you bite into each dumpling.
This is why we frequent the local World Buffet. I usually load up on Pepper Chicken, Chicken and Mushrooms, Kung Pao Chicken, Sweet & Sour Chicken (detecting a trend here? ), Teriyaki Chicken, Sesame Orange Chicken, and Hot & Sour Soup.
Anywhere else, the default order is Sesame Orange Chicken, or General Tso’s.
Spicy chicken dish with peanuts? I think it might be known as Kung Pao Chicken.
This is why I started this thread. Yeah, General Tso’s Chicken kicks ass, but you go out on a limb and order Beef with Broccoli and it’s so disappointing. Or you order Garlic Chicken to discover that it’s Spicy Chicken only with garlic
Hot and Sour soup, made well, is something I’ll even eat for breakfast.
Pork Egg Foo Young
Combination Fried Rice
Crispy Beef
It’s called something different everywhere, but it’s basically shrimp in the shell, coated in salt and deep fried. It comes out SO crunchy and tasty you have no idea you’re eating the shell. I crave that stuff in my sleep.
No no, it’s definitely not Kung Pao chicken. Gan Pong chicken consists of deep-fried chicken cubes in a light batter, much like General Tso’s, and is covered with a brown sauce that is somewhat sour with just a little hint of sweetness. It’s usually accompanied by some wood ear mushrooms mixed in but little or no vegetables.
Well, broccoli with beef is great, but it’s definitely more a dish to be made at home rather than ordered at a restaurant, unless you’re getting takeout or something. I actually like getting it in more authentic Chinese restaurants because they make it with Chinese broccoli, which is different and very delicious. Garlic chicken is really good, but from your description, it sounds like the restaurants you’ve had it at don’t make it the way I’ve had it, which is as a whole roasted chicken.
Oh and how could I forget to add peking duck to my list of favorites? Well-made peking duck is so incredibly delicious and I hate duck!
Crispy Bean Curd: Largish cubes of medium-firm (maybe even soft?) tofu breaded in cornstarch and fried to a light golden color, served with a very simple sauce on the side. Sometimes it’s just rice wine vinegar and minced garlic, sometimes it’s sweetened soy sauce.
I often get this when we’re getting a bunch of dishes to share, and non-veggies initially turn their nose up at the idea of tofu, but when the dishes get to the table, it’s gone like that.
Sometimes I get General Tso’s Chicken, sometimes I get General Tsao’s. I’ve tried General Gau’s chicken, but honestly prefer General Chow’s Chicken. I occaisionally get General Gou’s Chicken, and I even ordered General Maou’s Chicken once! I think General’s Chicken is ocay, but a bit generic.
Seriously though, I haven’t seen Crab Rangoons on this list. I have turned so many people on tho this appetizer I am becomming fearful it is my ultimate purpose in this life.
And Szechuan Chicken is wonderful when served spicy and with peanuts.
), Teriyaki Chicken, Sesame Orange Chicken, and Hot & Sour Soup.