I once had a Chinese roommate (from Hunan) whose favorite dish was chicken feet stewed with hot peppers. He said they’re considered a delicacy back home and he couldn’t believe how cheap they are in American supermarkets. Well, considering how many chickens you have to kill to get a pound of feet, I guess they would be expensive anywhere they were populat. (BTW, I didn’t like the dish. A chicken foot is just bones with some fatty skin on it.)
Ho Ho’s, a Chinese restaurant in Tampa, has two menus – a regular menu for Americans and an “authentic” menu for Chinese. The latter features some items few Americans would touch – tripe in black bean sauce, beef tendon. How do they make tendons edible, I wonder? It also has fish dishes. In an Americanized Chinese restaurant, you’ll see shrimp, crab and scallops on the menu, but never fish, for some reason.
Same here. Calvin Trillin, the food writer, did a schtick back in the '70s about how if Mao Tse-Tung came to New York for dinner, he’d force him to read the Chinese menus posted on the walls in return for political favors.
NOT same here. Ukulele Lady is always scheming to order the Whole Steamed Black Sea Bass with Scallions and Hot Chiles, even though none of the rest of us want it.
> Ho Ho’s, a Chinese restaurant in Tampa, has two menus – a regular menu for
> Americans and an “authentic” menu for Chinese. The latter features some items
> few Americans would touch – tripe in black bean sauce, beef tendon. How do
> they make tendons edible, I wonder? It also has fish dishes. In an Americanized
> Chinese restaurant, you’ll see shrimp, crab and scallops on the menu, but never
> fish, for some reason.
This business of two menus still happens reasonably often, and it was formerly almost standard that the non-Chinese patrons would never see the full menu. It was supposed a major event in the evolution of American cuisine when in 1969 a Chinese restaurant in New York (named something like The Szechwan Garden) translated its Chinese menu into English and began offering it to all its customers. There has been an incredible amount of change in American tastes in the past 35 years. In 1970, it was difficult to get an acceptable Chinese meal outside of a few Chinatowns, it was hard to get Mexican (or even Tex-Mex) food except in Hispanic neighborhoods, and even pizza was still a little exotic.
One just opened here in Chicago, on Devon Avenue (on the corner of Devon & Western). It’s so new it isn’t even on any of the restaurant review sites yet. I’ve been waiting for months to go in there and ask them what Indian-stle Chinese food is…
Ivylad and I once stopped in at a Chinese buffet where they served a whole bunch of stuff I’d never seen before.
There were these very pretty white balls, with a blush of pink and an “icing” (?) petal on the top. It turned out they were plum balls or something, rice flour dough surrounding a plum paste center. A bit chewy, but very pretty.
Ivylad also loaded up on some strange thing that turned out to be chicken feet. He didn’t eat them once I told him what they were.
I take the fact that the employees did not seem to understand English (I asked one woman what an item was on the buffet and she nodded and smiled at me and walked away) and that there were a lot of Asian folks there eating with chopsticks that it was a fairly authentic restaurant, or at least as close as you can get in Orlando(ish).
“New York Style” is the restraunt equivalent of the little blue dots in powdered laundry detergent, doesn’t really make a difference but gives you a sense of having something special.
ivylass, what’s the name of that place, and where was it? Now that I’m traveling around more in the Orlando area, I’d love to go out to eat at some exotic new places. So far I’ve only had Chinese food at the China Jade buffet on Colonial, near the Fashion Square Mall. Pretty good, but I like to try new things as much as possible. But I do live near a little take-out place off Red Bug and Semoran that advertises “New York-style Chinese food.”
I grew up in Queens and now live in the Bay Area. I have no idea what the official definition of New York style food is, but here is what we Jews ate in the '60s.
We had egg rolls - fat with hot mustard. Never saw a spring roll.
No mu shu anything. White rice and brown rice. In New Jersey what is called chow mein out here is called lo mein.
The restaurant we went to had Cantonese dishes - esp. lobster cantonese, our favorite, with chunks of lobster and veggies in a white sauce. There were lots of family dishes, the choose 1 from column A and 1 from column B stuff that I’ve never seen out here. I think they had egg fu yung, but I never much cared for it. No Szechuan dishes that I can remember. Being a kid, there were probably lots of items on the menu that I don’t remember.
Oh, no buffets.
If you want really bad Chinese food, take a trip to North Andover Massachussetts, up the road from the old Western Electric factory. The only Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been to that served rolls. And looked at you funny for ordering rice. :eek:
You get around! I’m not sure which place you’re talking about, but there is a really good one on Rt 133 in North Andover.
Actually, from what I can see, many (most) chinese resturants that I’ve been to on the North Shore of Boston serve rolls. Many will get upset if the resturant doesn’t have them. I don’t get it personally, but what do you expect when the Irish go for something with more exotic spicing than salt & pepper.
My own Irish family has started to come around on the non “appetizer” type chinese foods, and we now order less of Chop Suey which I think is vile… but I’ve more taste than the rest of them. I can have toast that isn’t burned, I make my own hot sauce, and know how to make a good red tomato sauce… I had to learn it was a matter of survival for a teen/young adult in a house where food came from cans and boxes only.
There is a vegetarian and seafood Chinese restaurant in Oakland, near the Berkeley border, that serves brown rice with all their vegetarian meals. I always make sure to specifically order mine with white rice instead.
I got a related question. Almost every chinese restaurant I’ve gone to here in (western) Canada is “family style”, meaning you get a really big bowl of rice, and order about twice the number of total dishes as the number of people at your table and everyone shares.
The only exception to this is a Hong Kong style café I’ve gone to for lunch.
In the states, everywhere I’ve gone for chinese seems to be more western style, in that sometimes you get an appetizer or two to share, and each person orders their own entrée.
I’ve never gone to a chinese restaurant in Toronto or Montreal, but throughout the prairies, and in Vancouver, family style pervades, yet Boston, Denver, and Austin TX (at least where I went) served the food the same way as any other restaurant.
I don’t think it’s billed as Family Style, but I know that we always take home Doggy Boxes full of leftover Lemon Chicken or Shrimp Lo Mein from the Green Garden.
So, either it’s big servings because Americans demand it, or it’s big servings because it’s Family Style.
When I was working at Bell Labs I once got someone to introduce me at a conference as living in Newark Airport.
The restaurants there shocked me because I went to a Chinese restaurant in Corpus Christi, Texas while visiting my roommate in 1970. I expected it to be dreadful, but it was quite good. I remember that they had coffee on the menu for $100. (and 1970 dollars too.)
Ivylass I don’t think you’ve ever told us what kinds of dishes count as NY style. Family style is standard, except for lunch plates at most restaurants I’ve been to on both coasts… The food usually comes on platters for sharing.
I’ve been in Southern California for 30+ years now, and the only time I’ve ever seen “individual entrees” in Chinese restaurants is during the discounted lunches. I can’t recall seeing a dinner that wasn’t “family style”.
Though we go with N diners = N dishes. Anything more would be way too much food.
“Family style” just means the entrees are placed in the center of the table, and everyone gets to take portions of whatever they want (as opposed to “This is my orange-flavored chicken, you eat your BBQ pork”).
The most obvious difference I’ve noticed between East and West Coast Chinese food is the condiments- when I’d get Chinese food in Maryland, there was usually soy sauce, duck sauce, and hot mustard. Here, instead of hot mustard, there’s usually chili oil. I miss my hot mustard
