Well, we’ve also got to remember that there’s no such thing as “Chinese” or “Indian” cooking. Each region of those countries has its own style of cooking. Food from different parts of China or India can be as different as food in Marseilles and Glasgow. True, there’s a sort of “European” style of food, of which I guess “American” food is a subset. And you can divide European food into two broad categories–Mediterranean and Northern. But even in Europe there’s no such thing as “Italian” food, because the food in Sicily is different than the food in Tuscany.
Have you ever taken an Italian to Olive Garden, Mexican to Taco Bell, Chinese to Asian buffet, etc.?
I asked a Chinese co-worker if anything on the local buffet was authentic. His reply, “Well, we eat rice”.
Heh. If you go to any Taco Bell in Texas, there’s a good chance you will see Mexican Americans in there. I’ve eaten Chinese with ethnic Chinese (but Lao born), Japanese with Japanese, and Indian with Indian. And I’ve eaten at soul food and Jamaican restaurants.
Luckily, with the exception of TB and the Chinese buffets, these places are not “fast food.” They do casual interpretations of pretty decent ethnic food. My Indian friend always recommends the Indian place, for example. And I love a good Jamaican/West Indian restaurant. However, I will criticize the hell out of inauthentic dishes or just plain bad food. I can’t really think of an example, but once I had a beef pattie at a gringo establishment and was royally pissed.
Lemme guess, he got the whale sperm with that? :smack:
My father-in-law, who is Chinese-Thai, takes us to a crummy little Asian buffet place sometimes when we visit him in his small town. I think he’s not picky and there aren’t many places to choose from there. To him, it’s at least somewhat familiar, and the people who run it are Chinese. We’ve learned to try and bring some food now when we visit, if we want to have something good to eat.
That’s even true of smaller countries. My grandmother was born in Rome, and my dad heard about a new Italian restaurant that had a reputation for authenticity, and decided he’d treat her to it. Well, it may well have been authentic, but it was authentic southern Italian, much to Grandma’s disappointment.
Heh. That reminds me. As a kid in Taiwan, I used to love “Western Food” (西餐). It’s not Italian (much less Sicilian). It’s not even “European food” or “American food”. It’s just “Western Food”, as though all edible substances not made in Asia were from an altogether separate planet full of homogenized Westerners. There was a proper French restaurant and even a TGI Friday’s, but they were in an American-dominated area whose inhabitants presumably cared more about, uh, ethnoculinary(?) differences.
Now, decades later, my favorite Asian place has become Panda Express with PF Chang’s as a close second. I guess I just love me bastardized foods – the best of both worlds! But when I take “real” Asians to these places, they always complain that the food is too sweet 
I also know quite a few Mexicans whose response to “I feel like Mexican. Wanna go to Taco Bell?” was invariably “That’s not Mexican!” followed by “Yeah. Let’s go.” 
OK, I gotta ask. If you were in Taiwan, and got a group together to go out for “Western Food”, what would they imagine they’d be getting?
If Americans said “We’re getting Chinese food”, at the most stereotypical level you’d think…eggrolls, fried rice, chow mein, sweet and sour pork, and so on. What would “Western Food” even be? Hamburgers and pizza?
My Aussie friend hated hated hated those Outback Steakhouse commercials with the horrible faux Strine accents. My folks took one of their friends (a true Aussie bloke) out to eat and they went to O.S. The waiters did something odd (bring wine to the table already opened, something like that) and said “That’s how they do it in Australia” earning them an incredulous “No we do not”. I think he thought the food was fine though.
Regarding spicy food, I have a pretty high tolerance. I asked for something as hot as they’d make it at a nice local Indian restaurant and found it to be pleasantly warm. I mentioned this to the waiter who said next time I should ask for it to be “Indian hot, like you’d make for your family”.
I didn’t realize that the characters were a link to http://74.125.53.132/translate_c?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%25E8%25A5%25BF%25E9%25A4%2590&prev=hp&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhjdFXWRizlx23A0z45MtieAGgMCTg
Wow.
Back in college, I remember going with one Mexican-American friend (as part of a group) to a Chipotle or something like it. I don’t think he had any problem with the food. Someone asked him if the food was authentic and I wish I remembered his answer more clearly, but I think he said the word “burrito” was coined for American Mexican food, and they don’t have hard shell tacos.
Not quite true. Mexican food is highly regional, so it may not have been popular in his part of Mexico, but burritos originate from Cuidad Juarez. The American ones are a bit different, though. I’ve had burritas in the Yucatan, but they were much smaller affairs than their Mexican-American counterparts.
Also, tacos dorados (crispy shell tacos) can be found in Mexico. But they are hardly a ubiquitous item, like here.
Ditto on burritos. I had them first in Ciudad Juarez. The crispy tacos I had in Mexico were filled first, then fried. Almost like a poorly sealed empanada.
Heh. Yeah. Sorry 'bout the craptacular translation. I’d do it myself but I can’t really read Chinese worth a damn anymore.
It’d be a weird hodgepodge of foods that were acceptable to the local palate. Hmm. If memory serves, the same restaurant would probably offer some mixture of:
[ul]
[li]Spaghetti served with marinara or some unidentifiable cream sauce that’s almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Alfredo[/li][li]Burger & squiggly(?) fries seasoned heavily with black pepper[/li][li]Fried chicken and fries[/li][li]Grilled/baked chicken drumsticks served with rice[/li][li]Steak served with a black bepper sauce. With rice, of course.[/li][li]Chicken cutlet or chicken-fried beef. With rice.[/li][li]Corn on the cob[/li][li]Localized club sandwiches (as in decrusted toast with a toothpick stabbed through the center) with, typically, ham and egg or some sort of BLT variation[/li][li]Some sort of seafood chowder with a cheesy bread crust on top[/li][li]Pizza. No rice.[/li][li]Dessert is usually a tiny slice of insanely sweet chocolate cake or cheesecake that’s really more like flan[/li][/ul]
This page has a few examples. I guess most of it is what’d you consider generic American, the kinda stuff you’d find at a Hometown Buffet or Sizzler’s but with slight modifications.
Yeah, that’s the kind I’ve had, filled with mashed potatoes. You’ll find them at some Mexican taquerias here in the US, too. The whole shebang is deep-fried. I’m just assuming that this is where the inspiration for crispy-shell tacos comes from.
It’s not like I’m some kind of food snob but jeeze louise it is tough to have lived around good Italian restaurants as a kid and then go to an Olive Garden. The concept of a chain restaurant really hadn’t caught on in smaller towns when I was a youngun.
All the best Italian restaurants in my area today are not part of a chain. Not sure why.
Not Chinese, but a friend of mine is Thai and LIVES for the cheap Chinese buffet.
I’ve taken Americans to the local McDonalds, it seemed to fulfill their expectations exactly…except for the size of the soda that is:)
In Hong Kong, “western food” was a fried pork chop with unsauced spaghetti.
I’ve never taken a Mexican to Taco Bell, but I HAVE taken Mexicans to low-end Tex-Mex restaurants, and they’ve usually liked it.
Remember, Mexico is a big country, and not everyone in Mexico eats the kinds of Tex-Mex cuisine we associate with Taco Bell. To some people from interior Mexico, Tex-Mex stuff is an enjoyable novelty.