Where I’m from, a Chinese family moved in and opened up their own wonderful, heavenly restaurant: for me, it was a combo #3: **Fried rice, Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls, Delicious Egg Roll. ** 
Though sometimes I’d get the Almond Chicken Soo Guy.
At a buffet, I get a little bit of everything I see, though all the buffets I have ever been to were more “North American” Chinese dishes - where sweet and sour sauce is brown, or is actually plum sauce… and no cherry sauce to be found.
…cherry sauce? What is that? Anything like plum sauce? I can (and have) drank plum sauce. God, I love that stuff.
Chicken Chop Suey.
Pretty much every time, not because I am afraid of new things, its cause I loves it so much.
And the best Chinese I ever had was in DC at some small, down in the basement style, decorated slightly like a dentist office restuarant. Turns out it was a 5 star Zagat.
Back when I lived in the states, my friends and I used to go to Chinese restaurants every week. One of them would always joke that the restaurants we frequented had two menus – the Americanized, “Round-eyes” menu, and the more authentic menu. We would always order from the more authentic menu, and because of that, we became welcome as regulars at a few restaurants.
One of my favorite dishes was “Beef Chow Fun.” (Fun is pronounced “foon”) It’s beef and really wide rice noodles and green peppers, in a black bean sauce. Mmmm…
Now that I live in Japan, there are a LOT more traditional Chinese restaurants I can go to, along with a bunch of Japanized Chinese food restaurants…alas, I can’t read the menus that well, and for the most part I only know the Japanese names, so I apologize in advance for that.
I, too, love mabodofuu (er, ma po tofu), and I was thrilled to discover that you can buy instant mabodofuu at grocery stores.
I’ve also learned to love ramen. Miso ramen with pork, especially (since I can cook that myself with few problems). Although, it did take a while to get over the image of ramen that I had when I was in college (either plain noodles in the 20 cent pack, or the dehydrated stuff in the styrofoam cup).
Also, gyouza (pot stickers), shuumai, nikuman (steamed pork buns)…hm. It seems that most of my favorites are side dishes. Oh, well!
Aside: In Japan, you can buy steamed pork buns (nikuman) 24 hours a day at convenience stores. Niku means meat; the Japanified versions include pizzaman, curryman, sakanaman(some sort of thick creamy fish stew), keema-curryman, cheeseman, and just introduced last week…custardman. eew.
Mai cha ko ro… tangy Pork hot pot… mmmmmmmm
Xiao Long Bao
Damn you people, now I’m gonna have to get Chinese take out for dinner tonight!
What will I get? Well, in the interest of having lots of leftovers, I will get:
General Tso’s (the BEST thing ever, if done right. Oh, and rjung, some places it is basiaclly a slightly spicey citrus chicken, but I usually ask for it to be very spicy, so it’s extra good! 
)
Pan fried dumplings
Wonton soup
Eggroll or two
Maybe some lo mein
And possibly sweet and sour chicken.
The sad thing is, I live alone, yet it will probably al be goen by tomorrow inght. (I mean,. there’s dinner tonight, late night snack, breakfast, lunch, and then maybe even dinner tomorrow night!)
It’s a bright red, sweet-ish type of sauce made from cherries. It’s similar to sweet and sour. I love, love, love plum sauce, as well, but plum sauce, if I remember correctly, is sweeter. (anyone can chime in and correct me if I’m way off, I’m just going by distant memory).
I don’t know. It’s all good. There’s these little packets of “egg roll sauce” I get at some fast food type places, too, and that’s goooooooood. I don’t know what it is, though… it’s kind of a clear, vaguely yellow colour, and has a texture a little thinner than honey. Goooooood.
Damn, I’m hungry.
Game, set, match. Especially with onions, which absorb the thick sauce so nicely. The beef’s gotta be crisp, though.
Barbecue pork buns are good too, and I need to try this Eight Treasure Pudding, just based on the name.
Oh, that does it! I am making these TONIGHT! Even if I have to use left over BBQ chicken…
Hoi sen (seafood) sauce for me. I could live on white rice and hoi sen sauce alone…
Fried egg plant…mmm…
lomein…mmm…
szechuan string beans…drools
I’m a vegetarian, and these are some of the dishes i love. Simple but very very good.
The General and his chicken.
The single best Chinese dish ever made was one that’s now extinct. It was called “Crispy Shrimp With Walnuts”–it’s been replaced by a dish with the same or similar name, but it’s not the same thing*. You could get it at any mid-grade or higher resturant in the early '80s. It was shrimp that had been coated with a super thin batter and flash-fried–the coating just added crunch, no real “breadding” effect. The sauce was a brown sauce (think “Beef with Broccolli”) but a bit spicier and sweeter. The walnuts were rolled in sugar and deep-fried so the sugar carmelized to near the point of burning so they were meaty, sweet and bitter all at once! I’ve tried to find a recipe but I never have and I’ve never gotten the sauce quite right, dammit.
Fenris
*The current version is made as follows: < gag > < retch > < choke > Take heavily tempura-battered shrimp, and pour a hot sauce made of mayonaise and orange juice over them. Then add some raw walnuts to the top. :: barfs ::
I once had a dessert from a Chinese restaurant but I never found out what it’s called: hollow three-inch balls of some kind of tasteless polymer that have been deep-fried and covered with sesame seeds. Inside, there’s a glob of honey.
Anyone?
Sesame Balls—find a Chinese resturant that does dim sum and you’ll be able to get 'em again. If they’re fresh and made well, they’re pretty good!
Thanks!
Possibly because it’s not actually Chinese food. It’s from Trader Vic’s.
Peking duck, Sesame chicken, Kung pao prawn, Rock salt & chili prawns … yummy
I’m getting an MSG high typing this!
Hmm… Well, back in Southern California I could get honey walnut shrimp, which is a cross between the dish you loved and the dish you abhor. I know what you mean by the current version though- I’ve gotten it before here in Santa Cruz, and it was disappointing. Lots of mayonnaise and poorly done walnuts. In SoCal, the dish was made with an extremely thin batter, the way you described, and there was definitely mayonnaise in the dish, but it was difficult to pinpoint the flavor exactly. There’s no sauce; rather, the flavor all seems to be melded to the shrimp itself. And the honey walnuts were delicious. If you need a recipe for those, I can give that to you (my mom and grandmom make it all the time), but I’m afraid I don’t really know what the sauce that you’re describing is.
