Be aware that some Chinese restaurants also have separate menus - one for non Chinese and the other for their Chinese customers. The former would have all the stereotypical stuff you would find in an American Chinese restaurant: orange chicken, kung pao chicken, beef broccoli, chow mein, etc. Mehhhh. The actual good stuff is in the menu for Chinese customers. Every time I go to a good Chinese restaurant, and I see all these non-Chinese people with their separate plates of orange chicken and whatnot, I think about all they are missing out on.
It helps to know what type of regional Chinese food the restaurant is serving. Beijing? Guangdong? Szechuan? Shanghai? etc.
OK…just to be an arsehole and try to project an aura of cultural superiority…
"Chinese food"is actually pretty damn broad, and doesn’t mean too much by itself. The sub-varieties each contain my own very favourite dishes…
Like szechuan hot and sour soup (mmm…yummy)
Black bean chicken feet
Buddha Jump over the wall
Drunken Prawns
Cantonese are famous for their soups…
The best way is to eat “chinese style” if you can - where each person orders one dish, and it is shared amongst everyone, that way you get to try a bit of everything.
And the more authentic restaurants will offer this…
I have no idea if it varies from restaurant from restaurant, but this place near my sweetie’s work makes what they call Salt and Pepper Fish. It’s breaded, crispy-fried, salt and pepper in the breading and is so damn good. I love love LOVE me spicy stuff, but when we get this fish I just attack it like there’s no tomorrow, without even adding hot sauce to it <3
Edit: I have had carrots and all kinds of vegetables in Sesame Chicken, so…might want to just ask, or look at the menu really well.
Everybody in the world? General Tso’s chicken is nearly unknown outside of North America. When people in China try it, they reject it because it’s too sweet:
Well, it’s not like the Chinese make up any significant portion of the world population…
I’m going to recommend to the OP that she find a Vietnamese restaurant. I know - it sounds totally off the wall, foreign and terrifying to a food novice. But let me describe my dinner last night:
A large soup bowl is layered with the following:
Thinly sliced lettuce
Sliced cucumbers
Shaved carrots
Bean sprouts
Rice noodles (think very thin and light spaghetti)
Thin slices of grilled steak/pork/chicken (your choice)
There’s a side sauce that you can add at your leisure - a light sweet dressing of sorts. The table has condiments you use to spice things up, since the dish itself has no heat whatsoever.
That’s it - very simple ingredients, nothing spicy, very fresh food.
This is key. First off, most Asian restaurants are very accommodating; the menus generally include detailed descriptions of each dish, and usually warn which are the “hot” or “spicy” dishes. Secondly, and referring to the quote, Asian food is about sharing. When I go to a Chinese restaurant with my friends or family, everyone orders a different dish and then everybody gets a portion of everything. This is not something that’s discussed beforehand, it’s automatic. By the end of the evening, you should have a good idea what [American]Chinese food is all about.
I love how people totally don’t read. Look, she made it clear that it’s a strip mall Chinese place. It’s probably called the Taste of China Jade Empire III and staffed by Mexican people. Asking what kind of regional cuisine it can be expected to offer is silly, disingenuous, and kind of culturally elitest - you know what they’re going to have.
So I’m not sure from the timeline of this thread whether or not you’ve gone yet, but I figure I’ll throw my hat into the ring here.
I’d stay away from sweet-and-sour anything–it’s just plain awful. If you want fried chicken with a sauce that isn’t pure sugar, try Wor Su Gai – it’s fried chicken in a yellow gravy-like sauce.
Moo Goo Gai Pan – Chicken with assorted vegetables in a mild white sauce. Usually comes with broccoli, if it does you can always ask for it to be left out.
Sesame Chicken – Fried chunks of chicken in a sweet dark brown sauce with sesame seeds.
Lo Mein – Noodles stir fried with veggies, a salty sauce, and usually your choice of meat. I prefer it with pork.
Mu Shu Pork – Pork with shredded cabbage, shiitake or wood ear mushrooms (not like normal mushrooms, so you may want to give them a shot), and a little bit of scrambled egg. Comes with tortilla-like pancakes and a dark thick sweet sauce on the side called hoisin sauce. You put the pork filling inside the pancakes with a little bit of the sauce and eat it like you would a fajita. This is my favorite thing to get a strip-mall Chinese joint.
Egg Foo Yung – Kinda of a flat omelet patty with egg, veggies and meat. Usually contains bean sprouts and onions. Served with a brown gravy.
Pepper Steak – Beef with green peppers, onions, and sometimes chunks of tomato in a brown sauce.
As long as we got a bunch of Chinese restaurant fans reading this thread, let me ask a question: Would anyone like to do a Dopefest which consists of going to the current restaurant where the cult Chinese chef Peter Chang works?:
As you can see, this guy has such a cult following that he has articles about him in two national magazines within a week. He has made his reputation by being a chef at a series of hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants, each of which was nothing interesting before he came and nothing interesting after he left. He jumps around without any apparent plan from one restaurant to another. According to his fans (and he has lots of them), he serves brilliant Chinese food. He’s moved from Fairfax, Virginia to Alexandria, Virginia back to Fairfax, Virginia to Marietta, Georgia to Knoxville, Tennessee to Charlottesville, Virginia. So would you be interested in a Dopefest in Charlottesville, Virginia (assuming that he’s still there)?
Well, that’s not really true. In places like L.A. or the SF Bay Area, there are plenty of strip mall Chinese restaurants with really great specialized regional foods. She doesn’t have a location listed.
I’m just guessing, and I know people who live in really big cities are spoiled, but I think she would have mentioned if she lived in a city with a Chinatown.
Not exactly…malls round here do have specific regional chinese food - from canotonese to hainanese, to thai chinese…
But on the culturally elitist thing - yeah - which is why I tried to make a joke of it, but it was a joke with a point.
If you are going for “genuine” chinese cooking, the origin of the restaurant matter. If its just “chinese” I would say look at the picture and order - no matter what I can reccommend, its gonna make pretty little difference, because the food is going to be some sort of american interpretation of chinese food (but I hate arseholes that try to act all clever and make such comments)
I have to second this - my wife is fluent in Chinese and Cantonese, so she will invariably discuss the menu with whoever (mummy, waitress or chef) and then order - I don’t understand a word.
Some of my favourite dishes I know - other than that I tell her something like - I want that roasted chicken thingy wrapped in paper" and she will translate that to the proper name.