# What's the largest city in the world with no Chinese restaurants? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 1, 2014, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075 "2014-07-01T08:21:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/41 "2014-07-01T21:16:51Z")
> [@dstarfire](#): > > I’d postulate McMurdo station. As an antarctic research station, it seems unlikely they’d be able to support an indepently owned restaurant. I was going to say that [we know the cook](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=695591), and he could probably whip us up some Chinese food, but he’s at Palmer Station, not McMurdo. ---
**Author:** ![Suicide](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Suicide](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suicide)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/42 "2014-07-01T21:18:57Z")
why not, mcmurdo has its own atm ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/43 "2014-07-01T23:02:42Z")
Does a research station count as a city, though? ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/44 "2014-07-01T23:12:51Z")
Mecca? ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/45 "2014-07-01T23:25:07Z")
How about Mogadishu? Trip adviser only lists 2 restaurants total. ---
**Author:** ![Erdosain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/erdosain/32/7284_2.png) [@Erdosain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erdosain)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/46 "2014-07-01T23:30:19Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > After systematically looking through the largest cities in Chile, [Puerto Montt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Montt) with a population of 220K appears to have no Chinese restaurants, to the best of my googling abilities. I found two: Mei Ling and Dragón Varas: > **[Comida China en Puerto Montt. Páginas Amarillas de Chile](https://www.amarillas.cl/b/comida-china/puerto-montt/)** > > Comida China en Puerto Montt. Encuentre Sucursales, Teléfonos y Direcciones en Páginas Amarillas de Chile ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/47 "2014-07-01T23:30:29Z")
I’ve been in some fairly large cities where the cuisine is dominated by other Asian nationalities, for example, the restaurants in Tananarive, Madagascar, all seemed to be Vietnamese. ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/48 "2014-07-01T23:48:36Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Mecca? [Jumbo Chinese](http://www.sufrati.com/sa/rest/jumbo-chinese#n) ---
**Author:** ![runningdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e9c0ed/32.png) [@runningdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runningdude)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/49 "2014-07-02T00:23:39Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Mecca? There are Chinese Muslims. They would be catered to. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/50 "2014-07-02T00:39:57Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > True. But I wonder, though, how authentic some of these places really are. I’m told they are pretty good. Addis also has really good Korean restaurants. It is a pretty cosmopolitan city overall, between the African Union, the current financial and construction boom, tourism and various aid agencies. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/51 "2014-07-02T00:44:28Z")
Ok, with no real candidates up there, I’ll nominate Garoua, Cameroon, with 235,996 inhabitants. They have a Chinese grocery store, but no Chinese restaurant. Indeed, the city itself only had maybe 10 real restaurants, though there is plenty of street food and informal dining. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/52 "2014-07-02T00:50:25Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > By various accounts I have heard, actual Chinese (as in, you know, in China) restaurants would not be recognizable to Americans, nor would American-style Chinese restaurants nor the cuisine they serve be recognizable in China. This is only partially true. What we have here in America is a combination of American-Chinese food(things made up here) and a very limited selection of actual Chinese food. Sweet and Sour Pork, for example, is more or less identical in China. The sweet and sour sauce/flavoring is pretty common here. The things that amazed me in my 2 years in China was the extraordinary variety of the Chinese food we had. Thousands of kinds of dishes are available and it is all quite diverse. I miss it more than any other aspect of the culture. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/53 "2014-07-02T00:51:40Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Ok, with no real candidates up there, I’ll nominate Garoua, Cameroon, with 235,996 inhabitants. They have a Chinese grocery store, but no Chinese restaurant. Indeed, the city itself only had maybe 10 real restaurants, though there is plenty of street food and informal dining. Mogadishu is still a contender, with at least 1 million more people than Garoua. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/54 "2014-07-02T01:00:03Z")
The following cities have Chinese restaurants according to citations given in this thread: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Karaganda, Kazakhstan Francistown, Botswana Tbilisi, Georgia Havana, Cuba Puerto Montt, Chile Mecca, Saudi Arabia Bangui, Peru Bujumbura, Peru Iqaluit, Peru It appears that there are no Chinese restaurants in Mogadishu, Somalia but there is one in Hargeisa, Somalia. Can anyone name a city larger than Mogadishu with no Chinese restaurants? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/55 "2014-07-02T01:04:11Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Hell, I know plenty of very good restaurants here in Tel Aviv run by Israeli Jews. A “Chinese restaurant” is a restaurant serving Chinese cuisine. The ethnicity of the people working there is utterly irrelevant. And Israel needs Chinese restaurants–where else can Jews eat on Christmas? 😉 Or is that an American thing? > [@Johanna](#): > > I was going to return to my original idea and checked population centers in Quechua land. Urubamba, Peru, for example, seemed a good candidate. Not Chinese cuisine, but years ago our favorite sushi chef was from Peru. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/56 "2014-07-02T01:19:30Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > By various accounts I have heard, actual Chinese (as in, you know, in China) restaurants would not be recognizable to Americans, nor would American-style Chinese restaurants nor the cuisine they serve be recognizable in China. (Although I’d guess that major cosmopolitan metropolises like Beijing would have American-style Chinese restaurants now.) I think this idea is mainly an old one that’s out of date, combined with the desire by foreigners who’ve lived in China to want to express how unique their culinary experience was there. Chinese immigration to the US was quite restricted from the 1880’s until the 1960’s, though some Chinese did enter, legally and illegally. In that period it was common for Chinese to be in the restaurant and laundry businesses, two stereotypes with originally a lot of truth to them. The cuisine in the restaurants tended to become Americanized. And I recall such restaurants as a kid, and some of the same style still do exist. Nowadays though most Chinese running restaurants in the US are recent immigrants, and that old saw about Americanized food Chinese wouldn’t recognize is a lot less true. It’s true China has many regional cuisines, and they are not all uniformly represented among immigrants or restaurants in the US (a disproportionate % of immigrants for example in NY are from Fujian). But a lot of Chinese restaurants in the US now are not much less Chinese than those of similar regional cuisine in China, especially in areas where much of the clientele is Chinese also. AFAIK South Korea is a place where ‘Chinese food’ is much more unique to the ROK than Chinese food in the US is Americanized, nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/57 "2014-07-02T01:19:30Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > I’m told they are pretty good. Addis also has really good Korean restaurants. It is a pretty cosmopolitan city overall, between the African Union, the current financial and construction boom, tourism and various aid agencies. Another factor is that China is expanding its influence in eastern Africa. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/58 "2014-07-02T03:13:41Z")
To understand Chinese foods in the US, it helps to look at Western food (as it is generally classified- one would go to a “western food” restaurant) in China. Some are the real thing. Chengdu has a straight up Tex-Mex restaurant run by a guy from Texas. There are a few concessions to what is locally available, but it’s the real thing. The audience is largely expats and adventurous Chinese people. This corresponds to the dim sum halls, new Cantonese bistros, Asian supermarket food courts, and family banquet restaurants one finds in American cities with many Chinese immigrants. Then there are the generic “western” restaurants found in smaller cities. The menus at these places range from the familiar (French fries!) to the odd (peach and seafood pizza!). Some items are right on. Spaghetti Balognese is inevitably offered (it has somehow become the quintessential western dish), and it usually tastes pretty good. Other items are usually bad. Hamburgers tend to be a thin smear of meat paste on a soggy bun. Other items have the right idea, but aren’t really recognizable western dishes. My local restaurant served rice baked with spaghetti sauce. It tasted good and hit the spot well enough, but it’s not something you’d see back home. Some dishes were were pure fantasy, and others were just repackaged Chinese dishes. Finally, there are odd quirks like putting a fried egg on every dishes from pizza to steak, a fried egg being Chinese shorthand for "authentically Western. " These are kind of like the majority of Chinese restaurants in the US. You can often eat fairly authentically if you know exactly what to order. But other dishes are somewhat odd adaptations, and it all comes with some pretty bizarre conventions. None the less, se times you get hungry and crave something vaguely like home. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/59 "2014-07-02T03:43:13Z")
> [@Donnerwetter](#): > > What is special about Chinese food is that it has become so ubiquitous all over the world, very much like Italian food (or Mexican food in the United States). Maybe the largest city in the world in which there is no Chinese restaurant also has no McDonalds? Pyongyang? ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2014, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/60 "2014-07-02T04:25:16Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It appears that there are no Chinese restaurants in Mogadishu, Somalia but there is one in Hargeisa, Somalia. Can anyone name a city larger than Mogadishu with no Chinese restaurants? I never saw one in Hargeisa when I was there last December, but bigger than Mogadishu might be tough. Maybe Mashhad, Iran? I’ve been there twice and only ate Persian food…. foreign options seemed quite limited. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075.md?page=4)