Once upon a time I read (somewhere) a bit of history about Chinese people in American history, including their rather extensive involvement in the American West, circa Gold Rush days. They brought with them their native cultural Chinese styles and tastes in cuisine (seaweed, anyone?). But as some of them became cooks in the Gold Rush camps and later opened their own restaurants, they became adept at improvising new dishes in Chinese style, but using American (especially American West) ingredients that they could get their hand on. This must have included some good representation of Mexican style herbs and spices.
Indeed, it speaks well of the Chinese chefs of those days that they were willing and able and imaginative enough to do all that. This, I’ve read, is a large part of the origin of Chinese-American cuisine, which clearly has developed into a successful style over the years.
So let me ask this about authentic Chinese cuisine style: (Srsly, looking to fight some potential iggorance here.)
In Chinese-American style cuisine, as seen in Chinese restaurants in America, an overwhelmingly popular style is the “Family style”.
A large portion of food, consisting of some meat (beef, fish, poultry, or whatever), together with a whole lot of vegetables, all cut up onto small pieces (like a stew) and cooked together with any of a variety of savory sauces . . .
All this served on one heaping plate, placed in the center of the table, along with large portions of rice or other goodies, served in the center of the table. The guests all pass these around, serving portions of all that stuff to themselves onto their own plates.
I would like to know: Both in terms of the style of cuisine (stew-like dishes with meat and veggie pieces with various kinds of sauce), and in terms of the “family” serving style . . . To what extent do these styles derive from “authentic” (in some regional style at least) Chinese cuisine?
In short: To what extent is “Chinese cuisine”, as seen in Chinese restaurants in America, really Chinese cuisine?
I could be way off base here but what I’ve seen and heard from the Chinese people I’ve eaten with has led me to believe that communal dining where everyone is sharing dishes of food from the center of the table is common. The meat dishes they order though seem to have only one vegetable, it’ll be something like pork with sour pickle, or chicken with Chinese cabbage.
Noodle dishes seem to get the multi-veg treatment sometimes.
Yes, Chinese food is not very popular there as I saw. There are lots of Uighur restaurants, of course, but I am hesitant to count those as “Chinese” places. There are some Dungan people in Kazakhstan too but I didn’t see any restaurants catering to their cuisine.
Even though my guess was wrong, I’m glad to have some new places to try the next time I make it to Karaganda! Hallucinex, what were you doing around there, if you don’t mind me asking?
To add to even sven’s excellent post, I once had a surprisingly delicious hawaiian pizza next to Fuzhou’s south bus station. It was almost as amazing as finding a place that makes Sichuan food honest-to-God Sichuan spicy in a random suburb of Boston.
The Ka’aba is absolutely surrounded by a Disneyland/Mall of Arabia zone of staggering scale and, well, tastelessness. I’d bet on there being a Chinese-ish restaurant in there somewere.
Off at a bit of a tangent – with the one-time British Raj in the Indian sub-continent, and subsequent migration therefrom to Britain, and with the British people’s love affair with Indian-sub-continental food; I find self wondering now and again, what is the largest community in the British Isles, without any kind of Indian restaurant? Picture basically got, is that it is probably a very small one.
Do we have any reason to believe this is true? I find it unlikely, though not impossible, that Beijing would have restaurants that serve American style chinese food.
Not really an answer, but … I’d take a look at large-ish incorporated upper middle class suburbs in the United States, where there is little commercial zoning or development. In American suburbs, Chinese restaurants gravitate towards small strip plazas, and communities that are less likely to have strip plazas will probably be less likely to have Chinese restaurants.
A quick search reveals that Superior, Colorado (population: 12,483) has no Chinese restaurants. Hutto, Texas (14,698), a suburb of Austin, has a Vietnamese restaurant that serves some Chinese food, but no Chinese restaurants.
I don’t know if they’d necessarily market themselves as such, but there are tourist restaurants with English menus and dishes aimed at foreigners (boneless meat, calmer spices, etc.) I’d be shocked if some didn’t include a few American Chinese dishes.
One of the funniest ethnic restaurants I know of is a Mongolian BBQ in Ulan Bataar- which is a western chain. So many your groups came in expecting Mongolian BBQ (which doesn’t actually exist in Mongolia) that a foreign firm finally came in and opened one.
Chinese dishes are usually served family style, with the main difference being that in China it’s normal (though slightly uncouth) to eat directly from the common plates. You will usually have a small bowl that may or may not have rice that can act as a landing pad, but often you just reach over and eat directly from the serving plate. If you are dining solo, it’s tough to eat Chinese dishes, and solo diners usually eat street food or snacks.
One thing that always stands out to me is that fried rice and noodles are generally considered snack food or quick lunches in China, and you don’t typically find them at restaurants that serve dishes (though banquets may have fancy versions presented playfully).
The combinations of meat and vegetables are simpler and more purposeful on China. Pork with green peppers, for example, is a discrete dish that calls for specific spices and techniques. You’d never just randomly mix up veggies, meat and sauces- dishes come from a pretty fixed repertoire that combine specific meats with one or two specific vegetables in specific sauces.
Wikipedia’s American Chinese food article has some good comparisons between authentic Chinese dishes and their Chinese counterparts. Chinese food has more bones (meat is usually served bone-in, which is considered more flavorful), more spices, different textures and more pickles and preserved vegetables. Northern cuisines also have more wheat-based staples than we get in the US.
But a lot of it is like my rice-baked-with-spaghetti-sauce. The flavors and concepts are not completely wrong, but it still misses the mark in a way thats hard to articulate.
Despite your user name, “back home” isn’t Minnesota? Cuz that’s just another iteration of Hot Dish, though it would contain more cheese over here. Cheddar cheese, for that true Italian touch. And Kraft powdered Parmesan cheese, to add calories without adding flavor.
That sounds like something my daughter would cook. Never spent a minute in the Old Country, but she puts cheese in everything.
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. )
Was living in Almaty for ~6 months a few years ago, just visited Karaganda for a long weekend. Enjoyed the trip, but Karlag & Spassk memorial in winter were bleak.
Here 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?
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