美国人的口味

My wife and I went with my mom and dad to a Chinese restaraunt when we visited them in Orlando last year, and we were really disappointed. I really liked the place before I moved to China, but even with an insistence to make 正宗 it came out very American. :(

Jenny, When you are in the U.S. in a month or two, you should go to a Chinese restaurant for a meal and ask for a take-home box for the unfinished portion of your meal. :-)

Yea the western Idea of Chinese food is a big buffet where 250lbs+ people get to eat as many chicken balls(where they came from i don't know) and as much fried rice as they can. No one eats communally and it is all just blah. I have found if the waiters or waitresses are Chinese and you talk to them and tell them in Chinese a few dishes you like, they will even bring the chef out to discuss it with you. I still find that Chinese food here is more vegetables and less meat than in China. 7 days until I go back and I will be digging in to my favorite restaurants again.

I have observed that it is not just a western problem. I live in Hong Kong, which is known for international cuisine, but it is rare to find a western restaurant that can really get it right. And finding a good pizza is a problem worldwide! My son and I laughed the other day when we visited our new Krispy Kream donut shop in Hong Kong and they had green tea icing and red bean filling! Whoever saw a donut with a slice of pineapple on it? So every culture tends to modify foods to meet local tastes. Actually, even when we are in China, we miss PF Changs!

For pizza in China I would usually just go to a pizza hut and than actually ask if I could go out back and help them make the pizza. After I did it once at a restaurant they would know it was me and they would make it the way I liked it. It actually turned out to be excellent pizza in the end.

I f I eat Pizza it has to have Salami on it! (I never tasted Chinese food so I kan´t say anything about that ) :-)

eccuter, if you haven't tried real Chinese food in China with Chinese friends yet, than you still haven't discovered one of the most important reasons to study this language! :) By the way: For those who can read German: There is a comment on this very issue on SpOn: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,497958,00.html

Well, I love good Chinese food (real Chinese) but here, living in Shanghai, I have found few good restaurants that are moderately priced and CLEAN. I usually eat at Wei Qian La Mian 味千拉面 which is moderately priced and Clean. So, in Shanghai, I'm not terribly excited about the local restaurants. Actually, one of the best places to eat is at my old school cafeteria.

billybobjoebobwilly, in Intermediate - Street Food at 16.30 we learn "不干不净吃了没病"

Ha ha... Yes Henning, cleanliness is highly over rated as indicated by the locals I often see hurling their guts out at the base of a tree on the sidewalk..

i live in Clacton on sea, in england. i have 5 chinese restaurants on my street, all good. Clacton has many Chinese people residing and on vacation. Clacton is full of hairy Crab too

Hmm...interesting article. Yeah, I just had Chinese food in America for the first time this year, and probably will be the last. Not that it's bad in itself, but WHY can't anything even come close to Chinese food in China? Not even close. I mean, I know how to order the good stuff, yet there is no good stuff at the Chinese restaurants here, at least not in Idaho, and come on, good Chinese cooking can even be quite simple. Yet they can't even use some of the basic seasoning that makes Chinese food good. Oh well.... I guess you gotta have China with your Chinese food... can't separate the two! -R

I have found a handful of excellent and authentic Chinese restaurants in both San Francisco and New York City. I lived in Sichuan province for two years back in the early 90's and the food definitely left a lasting impression. I agree with Tianfeng; if you speak a little Chinese with the waitstaff, the food is often times much better and sometimes you are even given the "real" menu which is not handed out to the regular crowd. Like Wei1Xiao4, I too often found the so-called "western" food in China quite amusing. I'm sure you can get most anything in Shanghai or Beijing these days, but in Chengdu in 1992, you were hard pressed to find anything close to western food. We did have Coke and Pepsi though, so it wasn't complete withdrawal. Tianfeng, I had a horrible food poisoning experience in China too. It was completely my fault though. I often did my own shopping and cooking and one day I bought something new and prepared it as best I could. Turns out, I cooked and ate a part of something that was supposed to be chopped off and thrown out! My school was so distraught over my mistake, that they hired an ayi to cook for the "foreign guests" after that! She was totally awesome. I miss her cooking dearly. She was also wonderful to practice my limited Chinese with at the time.

Dottie, The Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area are heavenly compared to the ones in the Chicago area, although there are a few good ones in Chicago. One of the best Chinese restaurants in the States is in a Denver suburb in Colorado. It's called John Holly. When my sister and her family lived in Colorado, we would go to this restaurant and ask the owner to prepare meals that are not in the menu. He happily obliged and we had never been disappointed

For me, the appeal of American Chinese food lies largely in the takeaway box. Or do they appear on TV and in films only?

Jenny, how was the Chinese food in Australia?

Jenny, the take away box is real. However, here in NYC, it seems that in the past couple of years the restaurants are switching to cheap plastic containers for Chinese take-out. In my neighborhood only the rice comes in the paper cartons these days.

Henning, the article was a bit harsh from my point of view, yet he´s defenitle correct... :-) If I have to much time on my hands (and my mum isn´t there to interfere) maybe I´ll try to find this reciepevideo again and try to make some 小笼包 :-)

Not many good places in Copenhagen either. The cheap Chinese take-away places here are exactly like those in the US and the UK with the usual sweet and sour pork and a couple of local dishes on the menu as well. And they don't even use any fancy takeaway boxes, just the cheap plastic containers. There are some restaurants here as well but I haven't been there so I don't know about them. I guess I still have to eat my first proper Chinese meal :-)

I once got sever food poisoning in China from a clean restaurant what was serving western style food. I heard latter that it wasn't beef but water buffalo burger I ate and they must not have cooked it all the way through. I was in a small village in the south and the hospital's bathroom was in another room and a typical squatter. I couldn't even stand under my own power and me, a 6'3 215lb guy, had to be carried by nurses to the washroom every 15 minutes. I just decided that Chinese people know how to cook Chinese food really well, but there is something dangerous about imitation western restaurants. I don't plan on eating pork or ground beef when I come back this year. I differently don't want to go through that again.