Arggh, I hate that crap when they start going “1 way Peking duck”. I ordered a damn duck I expect the whole fucking duck, meat and all.
Also there is a place not too far from me with a big sign that says “New York style Chinese food Restaurant” with no other name apparent. I am some what curious what the difference is, But the building doesn’t give me the vibe that the food produced within, regardless of style, is going to be good, so I haven’t tried it.
I agree with the whole authentic doesn’t equal good. We have a local sushi restaurant operated by a couple from Japan. It’s a little more authentic than other local sushi places (they proudly refuse to make anything with salmon, and no rolls drenched with mayo or ranch), but the food is terrible. The problem is that they overdo the wasabi, and no matter what you order it tastes like you’re eating a plateful of wasabi.
It’s interesting what people consider as “authentic”. The food my Mexican grandmother made was fantastic, but you’d never pay for it in a restaurant. It was mostly potatos, beans, and rice. “Authentic” Mexican dishes like tamales and menudo were saved for holidays and big events. And although no one considers Spam Mexican food, it is much more consumed in Mexican households than the average home and was a staple of Grandma’s cooking. Restaurant cooking in some ways is inherently inauthentic.
The wife being Thai but ethnic Chinese, her family knew all the good Chinese spots in Bangkok. They weren’t shy about declaring a place terrible. But they never said it wasn’t “authentic,” just bad.
Yes, I have only ever seen “chile rellenos” as far as I can remember and not “chili rellenos.” And living in Albuquerque for a spell and spending even more time in New Mexico over the years, the locals go ga-ga over Hatch green chiles, not chilis. Wee this Wikipedia article on New Mexico chiles.
SIGH This thread is devolving into the usual, “I know authentic XXX food because my XXX friends tell me so!”. China has 1.4 billion people spread over 3.7 million square miles. Seafood, beef, chicken, duck, lamb, etc. is not a common denominator for Chinese cuisine anymore than white rice is (which is not eaten in many northern parts of China). As with anywhere else in the world, people eat what’s easiest to cultivate, both plants and animals. To narrow “Chinese food” to even a region, Hong Kong style, Schezhen style is disregarding the dozens of various of other styles within that region and the hundreds and thousands of Chinese cuisine that those not from that region are probably unaware of.
Ever notice that what the workers at a Chinese restaurant looks and smells better than what you’ve ordered? That’s because they’re often cooking “authentic” food for themselves, without the often toned down seasonings they serve to the majority of customers. At a very basic level, I always get “You sure?” when I order steamed pork hash with extra harm ha. Not only because I like harm ha, but steamed pork hash is one of the simplest to make at home dishes for a Chinese person with their Chinese equivalent of salt, pepper and ketchup.
Was Zimmern’s comment insulting and degrading. Yes. But there is a lot of truth that a lot of what we consider “authentic Chinese” food is far from the source. But so is almost any cuisine eaten outside of its place of origin.
Check this out. SFW.
Another barrier to “authentic cuisine” is the fact that the meats, fruits and vegetables we eat today have been altered either purposely or through natural selection. Just because someone cooks with the same ingredients as their great, great, great grandma, doesn’t mean the duck and vegetables used are genetically and flavorfully the same. When the H1N1 virus was initially linked to being carried by ducks, millions of them were slaughtered in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus. What if a certain strain of that duck was the one that made great, great, great grandma’s so good?
I remember in the 60’s, the first time my Auntie whom my Uncle met in Korea, made kim chee, she had chemical burns because she wasn’t used to our Hawaiian chili peppers. She said she had to change her family recipe to accomodate our chilis. She said that the kim chee was good, but the one she made in Korea was different.
Also: The kal bi she made was different from any kal bi I’ve ever had since. She was from Seoul. So was this authentic Seoul style or just something her family made. And ingredients did she have to substitute because at the time there were no dedicated Korean markets.
What is authentic?
Mao on a pogo stick. Zimmerman’s Midwest “Chinese restaurant” serves Sichuan, Xi’an, and Hong Kong cuisine. That is the equivalent of serving LA, Chicago and Green Bay cuisine. WTF might that be? These three places are thousands of miles apart and server completely different food. Hong Kong eats rice and Xi’an wheat derived food. As soon as you see “mandarin” cuisine or some such, you know the restaurant is Chinese catering to the American local. Nuff said. He’s doing the same.
Ya, I agree most Chinese restaurants in the US cater to their local US clientele, and not to authentic Chinese food. While I wish then would make “real” Chinese food, who am I to criticize someone from leaping into the melting pot and selling whatever the locals want?
His “Chinese” menu is covered in super-basic Chinese clip art and includes an image of Japan’s rising sun along side an Easter Island Moai.
I think at this point we have to conclude that Andrew Zimmern is full of shit.
Also, he is unemployed: Travel Channel just cancelled his show.
Being a white American myself, I think we obsess over cultural authenticity so much because we don’t really have any culture of our own, so we vampire off other cultures to try to make ourselves less boring. When your cultural touchstones are the Gap and Jay Leno, you can be forgiven for wanting to jump on to someone else’s culture. The problem is that when we do that, we always feel that we then own it and get to dictate what is and isn’t correct.
A good point, proven by the well known fact that no one besides Americans have ever heard of Mark Twain, the cuisine of New Orleans or the music of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Louis Armstrong.
I have unpleasant memories of eating at Chinese restaurants in Millinocket, Maine and Salina, Kansas. But the worst such food I ever had was at a Chinese restaurant in a small seaside town in Scotland. Blurgh.
As for genuine cuisine, I’m grateful that the Chinese places I get food at now are not “authentic” in the sense of providing a true dining experience like one is liable to get in China.
“China’s biggest meat products company (which purchased Smithfield Foods last year for $4.7 billion), has been plagued by constant reports here in this country of meat infested with maggots, customers succumbing to food poisoning, and random testing that shows illegal levels of bacteria and illegal additives such as clenbuterol in their meat…Anyone who can afford it avoids street food and cheaper restaurants, which are notorious for their poor quality. Food consequently often takes up to 50 percent of the average person’s monthly budget. Food poisoning is extremely common, and the rates of cancer in China are rising. I know personally three people under the age of 40 with liver or kidney failure. Gastrointestinal cancer is one of the most common cancers in China. People largely view this as unavoidable and a consequence of dirty food.”
This. When I was an unhappy sailor at an Army base on Okinawa I had to eat at the restaurant just outside the gate just to keep my tastebuds calibrated.* Besides stuff for locals they offered their version of western food. I ordered strictly off of the left side of the menu. One day the plane from Stateside was late and a new roommate was delivered to my door at about 7pm, long after the chowhall was closed. He was hungry so I treated him at the restaurant. My first clue he was a prat was when, his first meal overseas on someone else’s dime, was a hamburger. It was at best a rude approximation of what he was expecting, I’m sure.
I hope the Vienna sausages in Thailand were better than what Armour is currently offering. One of the Hounds need to take a pill twice a day. We hit upon the idea of using a sausage to hide the pill and bought one of those bitty cans with seven of 'em. Big mistake. Upon opening the can the sausages did not smell appetizing at all and when a spiked one was offered to the Hound, he declined it.
*Everything you’ve heard about army chow is true. It was especially galling because the navy base I’d just come from had won the Ney award for Small Ashore.
I don’t know whether Chinese food in the U.S. is better or worse than it used to be. I would have had to spend all my time traveling around trying Chinese restaurants in the U.S. over a period of decades to be able to make any claim about that. I can say though that one claim in the OP is wrong. Chinese restaurants have not acquired the “fast food mentality” in the past ten to fifteen years. Really, to compare them with how things used to be, you have to think back to the 1950’s. The vast majority of food served in American Chinese restaurants back then was definitely Americanized. Whether Americanized Chinese food is better or worse than the many varieties of food served in China is a different question. You can like whatever you want to like. However, it wasn’t until the 1960’s that a lot of American Chinese restaurants began to serve more of those many varieties of Chinese food. They also became more likely to offer to serve such varieties to customers who weren’t of Chinese ancestry. Supposedly, they mostly quit having a separate Chinese menu.
Now there are Chinese restaurants serving a wide variety of Chinese food in the U.S. For instance, just in the past year I’ve gone several times to a restaurant that does Northwest Chinese food (which means, I think, the cuisine of Xinjiang). There’s a restaurant I’ve gone to a couple of times which does the cuisine of Chinese and Japanese immigrants to Peru. The varieties of Chinese food in the U.S. is much wider than it used to be. Whether it’s better or worse than the Americanized Chinese food of the 1950’s is a separate question.
A few days ago I had a sashimi bowl at a popular sushi / bento place. I knew something was a bit off when I saw that you could order a side of kim chee with your meal. Sure enough, the sashimi in my bowl was coated in sesame oil and seeds and there was a side of Korean style choi sam (mixed with sesame oil and seeds). Was it delicious, yes. Was it an authentic Japanese style donburi (bowl of rice covered with some top of topping), no.
This is common in Hawaii because of our large ethnic mix where food cultures are mixed to create something to meet local tastes. I had a friend from Samoa take me to a Korean owned store that served Samoan food. I asked her if it was authentic and she said it was exactly like what she used to get at home, including the use of New Zealand mutton. So you never know what you’re going to get where!
Korean-owned sushi places are actually pretty standard around here, so I’m not surprised.
You took the words right out my keyboard: crap layout, wrong symbols, tatty colours. 
Hey, he offers genuine Minnesota rums on the cocktail menu, so it has to be good!
The menu reminds me of an upscale/more expensive PF Changs - which is (to me) just a nicer/more expensive version of the generic strip mall Chinese restaurants. Not that there is anything wrong with either PF Changs or generic strip mall Chinese restaurants, because I like both but I wouldn’t consider them to be “authentic” Chinese. After Zimmern’s rant, I would be expecting more obscure dishes that reflect a particular region of China’s cuisine.