i think zimmern has a point about modren chinese resturants

Cafe Society
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There may not always be two menus, but as I mentioned when I order steamed pork hash with extra harm ha, you can often request changes or additions that aren’t offered on the menu.

As for extra ingredients, particularly sauces, oils and spices, there are maybe a dozen of those that goes into the majority of “Chinese” (I put it in quotes to emphasize the numerous variations of Chinese cuisine) cooking. Watch a show featuring a Chinese chef and you’ll see about a dozen containers of sauces, oils and spices. It’s the combination and quantities of these ingredients that makes the dishes taste different.

See, I learned something from my thread about ‘layering flavors’! :smiley:

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Yeah, but the guy there is ordering stuff like “sour cabbage fish soup.” I really, really doubt that my down-the-block American-Chinese place is going to have the ingredients for that.

I mean, just read the comments. People have tried this “hack” and been left mostly disappointed. Yes, if you ask for a rearrangement of ingredients, they’ll accomodate you. I’ve done this in Italian and Mexican restaurants, not just Chinese. One day I was in the mood for a puttanesca, and the restaurant didn’t have it on the menu. So I asked them. They obliged. There’s nothing odd about that. But I think the Youtuber is overselling it a bit here at how much is possible.

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For a very long time, due to racist anti-Chinese immigration policies, one of the very few ways for Chinese to immigrate to the USA (at all) was to work in Chinese restaurants. To be successful, those restaurants had to make food that Americans would eat. No, the vast majority of it was NOT authentic Chinese food. It was bastardized, changed versions that Americans would eat and dishes invented in other American ‘Chinese’ restaurants.

Now we have “Chinese” food in America that is entirely American in nature and Chinese in name only. But you can’t really explain that or sell it as such to your average person, so the labels remain.

Bashing the entire industry for not being “authentic” is epic stupid. It is authentic to what it is.

Edit: Just be glad there’s good stuff out there today. In my youth and before, many were “chop suey restaurants” and horrible Americanized “Chop Suey” was about all you could buy in a store.

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LOL. I remember when Chun King chow mein (which is think is still around) in a can was Chinese food for a lot of people. And I suspect Chef Boy Ardee spaghetti is Italian food to some! :eek:

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Somehow, I never heard of it (La Choy is the brand I’m familiar with), and it looks like the brand was eventually phased out in the late 90s.

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Speaking of chow mein, I’m going to ask a really stupid question. I’ve never ordered chow mein at a Chinese-American place. Lo mein, yes. Chow mein, no. Part of it is because when I see the chow mein noodles in the store, they’re these crispy deep-fried noodles.

Is that what chow mein is? Does it get cooked so the noodles get soft? It looks like something that is supposed to remain crispy. When I google pictures of “chow mein” it just looks like normal soft stir fried noodles, so what is this bag of La Choy stuff? Though, now looking a little more online, it does seem that chow mein is supposed to be cooked to the crispy stage. What’s the deal here?

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I think what irks me the most about Zimmern’s comments was the slam against Philip Chiang:

I’m not offended that he’s opened a Chinese style restaurant. I don’t know if other Chinese Americans feel this way, but I get really annoyed when someone essentially calls me a banana.

If he had just put out a release saying how he had partnered with Alex Ong of Betelnut (awesome restaurant, I miss it) to create fusion/regional Chinese cuisine I doubt it would have created as much controversy.

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I’m probably going to get this wrong, but it refers to different techniques
Lo Mein = Tossed Noodle
Chow Mein = Fried Noodle

Where I live (SF Bay Area), chow mein is noodles that are stir fried a bit first then the toppings are mixed in or layered on top. Lo mein is not often used here but technically I think it’s a style where the noodles are mixed with the toppings at the end of the cooking process (not really stir fried).

The closest style I can think of to the La Choy stuff here on the West Coast would be Hong Kong Style Chow Mein where the noodles are deep fried first, then the topping is placed on top of the noodles.

Growing up my family would make the pan fried version of the noodle; kind of like making a noodle hash brown, then mixing the topping in.

Also, if you are in the US, there’s a slight East Coast/West Coast regional difference between lo mein and chow mein.

This link kind of describes the difference between lo mein and chow mein: The Difference Between Lo Mein and Chow Mein

The chow mein wiki page also goes into the regional differences a bit.

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The strange tale of Chun King Chow Mein.

It was invented by an American of Italian descent named Jeno Paulucci in the 1940’s. He went to make Jeno’s frozen pizza and pizza rolls! :eek:

https://culinarylore.com/food-history:chun-king-chow-mein/

The Chun King brand was sold to R.J. Reynolds in 1966 and passed through a couple of mergers and buyouts until ending up at Hunt-Wesson who made La Choy products in 1995 who finally put the name to rest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chun_King

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My ex’s Dad would let me have honor of making chow mein during bai san (ching ming), the annual festival of honoring the ancestors. One year I put in too much broth and he joked that I was making lo mein instead of chow mein (which is supposed to dry). So yes, to my understanding chow mein is dry stir fried noodles and lo mein is usually dry or fried noodles with a gravy/sauce on it.

FWIW, the noodles at get at Panda Express and most fast food Chinese places if called chow mein.

I never had the puffed fried noodles like those in the Chun King / La Choy Chow Mein, though I’ve seen it in the market. I suspect it’s an offshoot of the packaged ramen technique which is also lightly deep fried to give a longer shelf life. Fresh Chinese noodles go bad within days.

I think it was on Food TV’s Unwrapped that featured the La Choy Chow Mein in one of the episodes.

The closet thing I’ve had to it is cake noodles, which I just found out is possibly unique to Hawaii, or at least not authentic Chinese from any province. It’s really thin noodles (lo mein?) that is formed in a 1/2" circle and pan fried so the outside is crispy and the middle stays soft. It’s always served with something that has a sauce or gravy as it’s too dry and hard to eat alone.

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I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the ‘chow’ in chow mein means to fry (in a wok). So chow mein = fried wheat noodles and chow funn = fried rice noodles. So if you go to Chinatown and ask a noodle shop for chow mein or chow funn you’ll get an odd look, though chow mein noodles or chow funn noodles (though redundant) usually gets the point across.

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This reminds me, for some reason, of Chinese Lemon Chicken. You know, the quintessential Chinese-American dish that’s ubiquitous at Chinese carryouts and Chinese buffets. It’s batter-fried chicken, some veggies, and a lemon-starch sauce with a bit of sugar that gives a nice sweet and sour tang to the mouth. Definitely a type of “Chinese” food that the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t object to.

The best lemon chicken I’ve ever had in my life was a small restaurant at the bottom of the Yellow Mountain. It was completely authentic, well made, properly balanced, and delicious. The menu was only in Chinese, but my coworkers told me the name of the dish from the menu: “American Chicken.”

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I think that is the point. American Chinese food resembles nothing that you would actually get in China, and there is nothing wrong with that.

So along comes a guy who opens a restaurant claiming that he will serve “authentic” Chinese food. Whether he has or will do so successfully, or even if the term cannot be defined because there is no generic “Chinese” food is not the point. It is also possible that very few Americans would enjoy dishes as they are prepared in China, but again that is not the point.

The point is that like many entrepreneurs, he has found what he believes to be a gap in the market and advertising that his food is the real deal—not like that fake shit you get everywhere else. Now you, or anyone else, are free to go to his restaurant and voice your disagreement by saying that this is not authentic Chinese food or that there is no such thing as authentic Chinese food. You can post a negative Yelp review and tell everyone to go to the American Chinese places. You can refuse to go or anything in between.

The term “authentic” is sufficiently vague enough to be puffery and have enough meanings to where nobody could really say his claim is false.

It seems to me that what he is doing is little different than any other person promoting his product, save perhaps that he is a bit more aggressive that others. Just like anyone else, he may fall flat on his ass and lose a bunch of money; or he might be successful. I don’t understand why he is being excoriated for it.

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Huh. Somehow, I have never heard of this lemon chicken. Will have to try next time. I looked, and of the four Chinese places in my neighborhood, two serve it, and two don’t, so perhaps that’s why I’ve never had it. Orange chicken, yes. Lemon chicken–this is new to me, and it sounds pretty good. (Yeah, and the place my parents order from – which is when I usually have Chinese takeout food, doesn’t have it, either.)’

I think even American Chinese food is somewhat regional. Is “kow” as in “vegetable kow” and “beef kow” ubiquitous in Chinese takeouts? Seems super common here, but I rarely hear references to it from people from the coasts.

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I’ve never seen it (western Pennsylvania).

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Another tale of a restaurant falling from authentic (at far as I know) to generic.

About 20 years ago, I found a Mexican restaurant close to where I worked. They had just opened a few weeks prior and when I walked in, I said to the owner “Wow, this place looks authentic.”, to which she replied: “It is, I even have real Mexican cooks” and pointed to the two guys in the open kitchen. They smiled and waved at me and I smiled and waved back. I loved the food and ate there at least a couple of times a week for the few months I worked at that location.

I visited on and off for the next ten years when I was in the area and the food was great as always. I always saw the same two guys in the kitchen. Then the last time I visited about ten years ago, the decorations were the same, but the food was different and not in a good way. It was far more generic, closer to what I could get at a Del Taco and the kicker was the salsa had almost no flavor except for the ton of black pepper in it. I asked the waitress why there was so much black pepper (while thinking why it was even there in the first place) and she said that was what the new chef liked. I looked in the kitchen and there were still the two guys, but someone else also. That explained it. I’ve never been back there since. :frowning:

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There may or may not be a Chinese language menu that’s different. I just talk with the waitstaff in Chinese if they have this, or can do that, or what they recommend. It may not always be on the English language menu.

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I’m hoping I’m not basing this on nostalgia, but I think that the Chinese food I was eating growing up (late 70s to late 80s) was better. Granted, I grew up in a much larger town than where live now, which was close enough to New York City that our family would go to Chinatown every few months.

My hometown had three or four takeout Chinese restaurants that were in our “neighborhood” (still bigger than the town I now live in in upstate NY) and several “nice” sit-down Chinese restaurants were in the area. There were were very Asians in my town, so these places were not catering to a Chinese clientele (I.e. no secret Chinese-only menu)

The sit-down restaurants had tablecloths, bound menus, nice decor and were spacious. Two of them dated from the Hawaiian/Polynesian craze of the 60s, so they basically had Cantonese menus with a few add-ons such as pu-pu platters, plus gasp a tiki bar and other Polynesian decor. One of the places was “Lee’s Hawaiian Islander” and the other was “The Pu-Pu Inn”. The other places were either Cantonese or Mandarin. There was a place called Hunan Something-Or-Other , but that was kind of out of the way.

You could get your basic Chinese food like lo mein and fried rice, just like the take-out places, but the sit-down places had more specialty dishes, more seafood, and more luxurious (but not exotic) ingredients like lobster, scallops, and duck.

Was it AUTHENTIC? With pu-pu platters and lemon chicken, I would say no. However, I would certainly say they were BETTER than the buffet options I have available to me now.

I could be nostalgic, but I think the takeout options were better in my old hometown as well. There was enough difference between the local places that if we wanted, say, moo shu pork, we’d go to one place because their version was better. Because the Chinese restaurant supply chain wasn’t as established and monolithic as it is now, the local places had to a make a lot more stuff from scratch. I’d walk by a place before they opened for lunch and staff would be at a table making dumplings. Granted, being close enough to make regular supply runs to NYC helped a lot.

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Why should public figures be immune from criticism if they say something that deserves to be criticized?

Is it only public figures that should get this immunity or should everyone be protected in this way?

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It’s an especially douche things to say because Phillip Chiang’s mother, chef/restauranteur Cecilia Chiang, was one of the grand dames of Chinese cooking in America. Her restaurant, The Mandarin, was featured in Paul Freedman’s “Ten Restaurants That Changed America”.