# 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:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/81 "2014-07-03T12:25:53Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > [Here](http://shot.aminus3.com/image/2010-01-07.html) is someone’s photoblog, taken at a Chinese restaurant in Mashhad. It looks like we can cross that one off. > > * * * > > Pyongyang is approximately 2.5 million people. The NoKo government obviously entertains a lot of Chinese dignitaries, but are there any actual Chinese restaurants? I actually tried searching in Persian for a Chinese place in Mashhad, and I think I may have found the only one: Marina Restaurant. This may be the same place as in this picture because it appears to be an Eastern Asian place that does Japanese and Chinese. (The picture is of a westernized Japanese _teppan-yaki_.) Pyongyang most definitely has Chinese restaurants. Pyongyang isn’t like the rest of NK. There’s enough of a (relatively) wealthy elite that you will find several restaurants offering anything from lots and lots of Korean to sushi, pizza, Chinese, micro-breweries and even [hamburgers](http://www.lindsayfincher.com/north-korea-the-best-burgers-and-milkshakes-in-pyongyang.html). [More about the Pyongyang dining scene.](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/north-korea-pyongyang-restaurant) ---
**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 3, 2014, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/82 "2014-07-03T13:29:20Z")
So I guess we’re back to Mogadishu, Somalia as being the city to beat. ---
**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 3, 2014, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/83 "2014-07-03T14:45:54Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I’ve heard, and I think it was from you, that Chinese banquets serve food that is sickly sweet and swimming in grease, even moreso than at Panda Express. Is that true? Cuz if it is, the bland, low fat Cantonese of my youth, made by the Chin family, was health food compared with “authentic” Chinese food. (Yes, I know. Big country, lots of cuisines. Shut up and accept my gross generalization for the gross generalization it is. 😉 ) Chinese food can be swimming in grease, though I think it’s more a matter of how the grease is presented rather than the actual amount of grease. In Western food, we are used to the grease being incorporated into the product- fats are incorporated into batters, baked goods, and sauces. In Chinese food, it’s mostly outside of the food, so the food appears to be sitting in a pool of oil. But in the end, I think it works out to being pretty much the same amount. As for sweet, I haven’t encountered a lot of sweet Chinese food. I lived in Sichuan where the food was extremely spicy and incorporated a special type of pepper that creates a numbing sensation, so that was what most of the food tasted like. Other areas may be sweeter, but I don’t think they get as sweet as American Chinese food. ---
**Author:** ![LiliesOfTheField](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c0e974/32.png) [@LiliesOfTheField](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LiliesOfTheField)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075/84 "2014-07-03T20:00:47Z")
Ate Chinese food in Cairo. It was very much like one would eat at a mall in the US. It was delivery so I couldn’t tell you who was in the kitchen. No pork on the menu. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-largest-city-in-the-world-with-no-chinese-restaurants/692075.md?page=4)