Chinese Food

[Elegiac]

That is only one style of chinese food. It is a country the size of a continent with the population of a continent. Generally westerners are only exposed to cantonese style cooking.

I.e. the better style of cooking.

North China is a weird place, bro.

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Laksa is good, but I think pho has more depth. Also, laksa is Malaysia is better than laksa in Singapore.

The best laksa I've had was in KL, yes. But I find it a much more flavorful soup than pho.

[Dwarfhamster]

It sucks.

You suck! (I kid, you don't )

[Player Twelve]

I think real Vietnam food is better than real Chinese. Pho and Thịt Nướng are some of the best foods on earth. Seriously, anyone who says Pho isnt the best soup created by humans on planet earth, deserves an ass beating with a baseball bat.

Goulash(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulash) > any other soup. Come at me.

[Rasulis]

I.e. the better style of cooking.

North China is a weird place, bro.

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The best laksa I've had was in KL, yes. But I find it a much more flavorful soup than pho.

It is hard to compare laksa to pho. They are based on completely different ingredients. I am not an expert in pho, but I know quite a bit about laksa. Most people only know about Malaysian and Singaporean styles, but they have laksa in Indonesia also. There are so many different kind of laksa dishes in Indonesia. You have laksa soto, laksa betawi, nasi laksa, red laksa, yellow laksa, mie laksa, etc. Here is a wiki page on Laksa just to give you an idea of the breadth of variation in laksa dishes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laksa

[Pyro1990]

When I was at Fort Leonard Wood, MO I had a good friend who was Korean and he found a small authentic Korean olace off post that was pretty amazing. Another guy there had spent some time in Taiwan where he got married found an authentic Tai place about 20-30 minutes off post. That place was also amazing tho I wasnt crazy about the sour soup (it smelled like hot pickles). The asian food I had out there was the best Ive ever had.

[belfpala]

Nor is that unique to Chinese food. @belfpala got any good stories about adulterated foods, questionable additives, mishandled food or stuff like that?

There's a phrase, "On the turn," that gets used sometimes in kitchens. It's for items that are maybe kind of sort of going bad, and we need to decide to use them right away or throw them out. For example, "This box of lettuce is on the turn, should I toss it?" And the answer might be, "Umm, see if you can find anything usable and throw out the rest." Not that I do that. I don't let my produce go bad.

I've seen cooks go from cutting raw chicken to cutting parsley for garnish with the same knife, no sanitizing it.

Hand washing... some cooks seem allergic to water on their hands.

Using the same cutting board for raw shrimp and then fresh produce without washing or changing the board.

I could go on all day...

[belfpala]

We have mandatory military service here and I cheated my way into a comfy spot on the officer's club. They put me in charge of procurement where I soon realized they had no idea what they were doing with food storage. None of their freezers had been defrosted or cleaned in years, there was no temperature record kept, the fridge was stocked with produce well on its way to becoming a fungus farm, they stored raw chicken on the shelf over raw pork and I found something unidentifiable at the bottom of the seafood freezer that is proof that the Greek navy must have killed the Kraken at some point and disseminated its remains to bases across the country.

I worked in a kitchen like that for about 3 hours. Quit when I pointed out we need 2-3 people on for an entire shift to fix it and the owner said it was fine that way. That was a "modern American" restaurant, for all those who think this just happens in Chinese or other ethnic restaurants.

There was shrimp thawing in a box of raw chicken. I'll just stop there.

For those who don't know, we're supposed to store items in a specific way. On the meat shelves, ready-to-eat (ham) goes on top, under that is beef, under that is pork, under that is chicken. Seafood should be stored on a different bottom shelf. Anything prepared, such as our sauces, soups, stews, should be stored on a different shelf or above anything raw.

Everything should be labeled and dated. That's so I don't have a moment like, oh, we're out of beef stew on the line, so I go search and I grab a cambro from two months ago....

This isn't hard. I've seen too many restaurants fail at this.

[Phookah]

There is nothing Chinese about "Chinese" food in 99% of the so called Chinese restaurants in the US. In fact its so far from being authentic Chinese food that it should be illegal to market it as Chinese food. Dishes like General Tsos Chicken and Orange Chicken were invented by a Chinese immigrant in San Francisco over a hundred years ago as he envisioned what Americans would like since he didnt think we would like traditional Chinese food. So he invented what we know as Chinese food and gave the dishes Chinese sounding names to fool Americans into thinking its what Chinese people ate.

The only one who thought it was authentic chinese food was you, apparently.

[belfpala]

The only one who thought it was authentic chinese food was you, apparently.

A complete tangent to your post...

There's a burger joint in a Midwest US city that will do anything you ask to a burger. Anything.

Their slogan is "Better Than Food."

The point is, it doesn't matter if it's "authentic" anything. Does it taste good? Does it give you nourishment? I personally pull influences from around the world into my cooking and I see no shame in that.

[Daedius]

The Chinese food in most take-aways are absolutely muck straight from jars from the local super markets...

I prefer Malaysian food, where there's a whole variety of fusions between various cultures of foods... now that's Heaven to me.

[Blackspiral]

Oddly enough, Asian restaurants are VERY popular in Utah. You name it, there's a type of restaurant for it here.
Quality can vary and most do the Americanized chinese, but there are some Gems with authentic style food like Peking Duck, Stir Fry, and Seafood dishes.
I have a Ramen House, Authentic Mandarin Chinese restaurant, and a Asian Supermarket by my house I visit a lot for goodies and food.

[Elegiac]

The Chinese food in most take-aways are absolutely muck straight from jars from the local super markets...

You must eat in some pretty shitty restaurants, then. Because this is also true of a lot of non-Chinese restaurants.

[Deleted]

I dislike chinese restaurants and I usually avoid them.

I have the impression that everything and all ingredients are cheap... they must be, because the price they charge is often comparatively pretty low too. Chinese restaurants also often offer those "all you can eat buffets", this is also typical for less sophisticated restaurants.

All of the above refers to chinese restaurants in Germany.

I've been to china a few times now, and the food there was good. We've been taken to various places by locals, cheap ones and more special ones. It was always good. The frog legs were delicious... you don't even find that in chinese restaurants in Germany. The chicken was also very different, it was smashed into small pieces, all bones included, but it was good and it was tasty. In china you usually sit at a table with a rotating center piece on which all the different meals are placed so that everyone can access them by turning the center piece of the table. Haven't seen that in Germany.

Summary:
Chinese food in China = good
Chinese food in Germany = boring, avoiding all "exotics", not good and cheap

[Daedius]

You must eat in some pretty shitty restaurants, then. Because this is also true of a lot of non-Chinese restaurants.

Not many Chinese restaurants here, hence me saying "Take away".

[Phookah]

The average Joe might know what they are getting, but they DON'T know that its not really authentic Chinese food. That's where the fraud is happening. They are tricked into believing what they are eating is Chinese food, when it isnt

The only one getting tricked are idiots, and it isn't illegal to trick morons.

KNOW THE LAW

[belfpala]

The only one getting tricked are idiots, and it isn't illegal to trick morons.

KNOW THE LAW

Dude/Dudette, you're arguing with Orlong. Orlong thinks it's abhorable that he has to interact with people to order a burger from McD.

Nobody is getting tricked. We all know that your usual Chinese place makes bad food. Thus the joke in South Park about Shitty Wok.

On topic: I haven't found a great Chinese restaurant nearby. I have plenty of Thai/Cambodian/Vietnamese though.

[docterfreeze]

American chinese is great, have half for dinner and the other half later in the night. Never had real chinese food.

[dvaz]

"Chinese" food in Sweden is quite interesting.



This is the staple of Swedish Chinese food. We call it "Tre små rätter", three small dishes. Deep-fried shrimp in sweet and sour sauce, chicken in some kind of sauce I can't identify as I don't eat this dish, and shredded beef in soy sauce with bamboo shoots. Those three, together with spring rolls combine into the holy square of Chinese here.

However, a lot more authentic restaurants have popped up. Just by my street we had a Cantonese restaurant, that sadly shut down last year so I can't write down their menu other than that they made some insane Peking duck. There's also another one close to me called Hing Wa with an amazing Chinese menu (they have Swedish Chinese food as well, but their speciality is their Chinese menu), with stuff like fish head in stew, char siu and stuff.

With that said, Swedish Chinese food is tasty, especially after a night out.

'

That looks like something you would get from IKEA food court.

[BloodyAngel12]

I can not wait for Friday, gonna order myself some anglo-chinese food.

Im talking Sesame Prawn toast, Sweet and Sour pork balls and Chicken in blackbean sauce with green peppers and egg fried rice.

[Rasulis]

I can see why you would say that, but there is a reason that China has a strategic reserve for pork. Particularly with growing affluence, many Chinese eat a hell of a lot of meat. Pink (2.1) just brought us 50 kg of smoked meat from her mother's farm and being a moderate Buddhist and a very slender 145 cm she goes light on meat. Even when cooking for other women she uses a considerable amount of meat. For reference, my grandfather was a rancher in Oklahoma -- if the steak fits on the plate there is something wrong. I still get meals with Chinese friends that have what I would have to call hefty amounts of meat.

As for Gaoliang, that's another thing Chinese can't really believe I can handle. The first question asked is -- how much can you drink? Hard drinking is part of the local culture. Ah, yes, the big jars. We have shops that specialize in Gaoliang. You go in and the whole place is packed with them, and fragrant with the fumes. I always like visiting one of those shops and never get out without a few liters.

I am sure things have change since we were there (2005 - 2007). The one thing I miss the most about living in Asian countries is the street vendors. The last year we lived in Shanghai, we rented a courtyard house on a busy street. Even after midnight, we did not have any problem finding an open food stalls within walking distance. In fact, some of the vendors specialized in serving the late night crowd, and they did not open until 10 pm.

My wife’s favorite was the steam bun vendor. The guy would come to our house around 6 pm every day. He transported his buns in a push cart. My wife always ordered the one with thousand year egg and pork filling. A late night favorite was the Chuan’r vendor. Skewered meats (chicken, pork, beef, lamb, and some more exotic variety like frog) on sugar cane sticks. Then there were glutinous rice, steamed clam, baba, pancakes, soy milk custard, etc. I love the variety of noodle dishes like scalion oil noodles and cold noodles with thick hot eel sauce.

Now I am hungry.