I’ve been to China, and the food there is different from the food served in Chinese restaurants in the US. For one thing, Chinese food has a lot of vegetable and tofu dishes that you don’t see here, like some delicious wilted spinach I had in Taiwan that had been stirfried with anise and shaochu. YUM! Chinese food uses many different spices, and Chinese food served in the US is quite bland by comparison.
Americans also don’t realize that China is a big country with a lot of regional variation in their cuisine, like Beijing, which has different varieties of dumplings and dishes that are eaten with small pancakes, such as Beijing Duck; Shanghai–seafood dishes, heavy on the oil; and the ones Americans know, like Sichuan, Cantonese, and Hunan.
Oh, and as for Korean food, yes, Koreans eat dog, but only in special dishes that are really expensive and that are used as medicine, such as boshintang, and they only serve dogs that have been specially bred for the purpose.
For daily meals, Koreans eat things like soup, bulgogi, kimchi, bean sprouts, rice, and seafood–dog is a rarity.
Yeah, I hate this story. I probably hear it more often than other folks because I work for a humane society, and being interested in animal welfare doesn’t preclude being a racist dickwad. I usually try to find a polite way of telling the dickwad that they’re factually incorrect, but sometimes it can be very difficult–the person telling the story is as often as not a donor, and I risk my job if I piss them off.
Just a nitpick - yes, poshindang is a health food, yes, it is not something you’d eat every day, though I know people who eat it as often as they are able to afford it. But it’s incorrect to say that all or even most dog that you would get is specially bred for consumption. It is common for butchers to try and save some money by catching street dogs and selling them off. This is a dishonest practice, but it’s done.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were incidents like you describe, but the government inspects dog restaurants to insure compliance with regulations. I have a photo I took in 1997 (not digitized yet) of dog carcasses hanging in a market in Taejon.
This is not about ethnic restaurants, but a jokish insult levelled at any restaurant. Any one not heard of Kentuky Fried Rat? Still it is an old and stupid joke.
Me too. I try to imagine the amount of courage and pluck it would take to move around the world to a foreign country and open a small business. I admire these folks a lot. Also, I love hot and sour soup.
Well, while I travelled in India, I was most put out that not once did anyone ever serve me chilled monkey brains a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. After eating dal and rice day after day, monkey brains and eyeball soup would have made a refreshing change.
When I was stationed in Florida, one of my moron co-workers told me that the health inspector’d found a dog carcass in the freezer of the Chinese restaurant a couple miles outside the front gate. I looked at him and said, “It could have been worse.”
A Chinese-American coworker, originally from Hong Kong, took a group of us to a local Chinese restaurant for lunch. He ordered for everyone in Cantonese. We got a bunch of great dishes, none of which bore any resemblance to the stuff on the regular menu. I’ve often wondered what you had to do to get real Chinese food if you didn’t know the secret handshake.
The thing that gets me is that if you order a sub or a burger or a pizza, they make it out of sight in the back of the restaurant and bring it out to you. Take-out Chinese restaurants are usually the only places that have their kitchens open to the customer’s view so you can watch them cooking your food if you choose to.
I have to disagree with my pal Bippy the Beardless here. In my neck of the woods growing up, it was only said about Chinese restaurants (we didn’t have much else for “ethnic” back then). It may be a jokish insult in your experience, but in my experience it was told as a dead serious warning. There was always someone’s relative who was a police officer or health inspector who was the “source”. Said source had typically found a cat, but sometimes also rat or – I’m surprised this one didn’t make the OP – seagull from the dumpster out back. To this day, I can still remember the names of the 2 restaurants this was said most about. I’m ashamed to say that as a kid I never wanted to eat there.
Oh, and gobear, there’s so much more to Indian food than dal and rice. I think I 'll make some rotis and potatoes & chick peas tomorrow, now that you mention it.
