Chinese food abroad
zhanglihua
July 16, 2008, 08:38 PM posted in General DiscussionOr: 中国菜 in 外国-land.
Something I would really like to know is what kind of Chinese food is available abroad. I heard it's not very authentic, but what is it actually like? Why do you think it has evolved that way? (I think chicken feet wouldn't appeal to many people in other countries, but still... ;-) )
So far, I have not had the opportunity to travel much, so I'm really curious. We do get food that tailored for tourists, but I reckon that's different.
Moreover, I'm sure there's some diversity concerning fake-Chinese cuisine even amongst these countries.
Are fortune cookies* omni-present?
*Does anyone know how they're called in Spanish-speaking countries?
(By the way, group member are fully entitled to create posts themselves...)
sushan
July 19, 2008, 10:32 PMThere were also many ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam during the middle 20th century who fled in '78-'80 (boat people). A lot of them ended up in Canada and we therefore have many Chinese/Vietnamese restaurants. These places feel more Vietnamese than Chinese though - lemongrass, spring rolls, stuff on rice (盖饭）,etc.
lostinasia
July 17, 2008, 11:11 AMTomatoes and green peppers and chilli peppers and potatoes are all from the Americas and weren't available in Europe or Africa or Asia before Columbian contact.
Therefore, British fish and chips, spicy Indian curry, Korean kimchi, and spaghetti bolongnese (sp?) are all inauthentic fusion foods.
Just a point on authenticity.
sushan
July 17, 2008, 03:00 PMI get steamed when I order something like gong bao ji ding and it arrives 50% full of cheap vegetables like onions and cabbage, which have no business anywhere near the plate. (Though I have also read that the genjuine gong bao ji ding shouldn't even have peanuts.) And the word 'fusion' in a restaurant name is usually a signal of horrors within, but it can be done very well.
The way Chinese or other immigrants have adapted cooking techniques to available ingredients and cooking methods is a matter of survival and interpretation. Take Hakka food, for instance. Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Singapore all have Hakka people, language, and food. So, I recently discovered, does Sichuan. But the (incredibly good) Hakka food I ate in Sichuan bears little resemblance to the Hakka food in India.
mikeinewshot
July 17, 2008, 03:17 PMSushan said:
"... and many have a menu with basic glop on it for westerners ..."
I must say that in England, my experience is that most of the food in Chinese restaurants is just that "glop". Hughly overcooked with some sort of dark goo sauce that makes it all taste the same.
Now if only they could rival the freshness of Thai restaurants that we have here.
jpvillanueva
July 17, 2008, 03:20 PMI don't have a high tolerance for 'fusion' or 'pan-asian' cusine, and I don't have time for Americanized Chinese food.
However, there is great Cantonese food in Seattle. In Seattle's International District there is dim sum, there's a bunch of noodle houses, and there' even congee and stone pot places. And several seafood restaurants. And roasteries where you can get bbq pork, roast chicken, soy sauce chicken... There are even several Hong Kong style bakeries, and Taiwanese bubble tea places. Outside of the ID there are a couple of 北方菜 and 四川 places as well.
There are also many popular fusion and Americanized Chinese food places.... my rule of thumb is if I don't see Chinese faces in the dining room, then I turn around and walk out.
I very much miss eating Chinese food in Seattle. I live in Shanghai now, and Shanghainese cuisine, from the street vendors to the high-end places, is very different from what I'm used to.
There is also great Cantonese food in Vancouver and San Francisco.
There is some terrible, wreched, horrifying Chinese food in Las Vegas' Chinatown stripmall. It's not that it's fusion or Americanized; I think it's too things... 1) lack of fresh seafood, and 2) inexperienced chefs. *shudder*
lostinasia
July 18, 2008, 03:23 AMLiving in Taiwan, and especially traveling to the small islands of Penghu (between Taiwan and the Mainland), has totally destroyed my love of seafood.
I mean this in a complimentary way; the seafood in Penghu was so incredibly good that now other seafood just tastes bland and stale. I mean, I'm from VANCOUVER, a town with a decent reputation for seafood, but now when I eat seafood in Vancouver it's just... OK. Not great. OK. A bit stale.
Although when I visit home in a few weeks, I think I'll have to stop by Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine in Richmond, which according to The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is the greatest outside-Greater China Chinese restaurant... I just hope it's still open.
(Jennifer Lee, author of the Fortune Cookie Chronicles, can be seen on the Colbert Report: "Is Chinese food safer to eat than Chinese toys?" Test your Chinese level at about the two minutes mark when she speaks Mandarin!)
Man, I should charge commission for all the links in this thing. (I haven't read the book yet; I'm waiting for the paperback.)
pinkjeans
July 17, 2008, 10:21 AMI'm a stickler for authenticity, so I don't take very kindly to fusion cuisines, except for nyonya food which is a blend of chinese and malay styles but has really developed its own character and is an integral part of the baba/nyonya culture.
in the UK, most people think of Chinese food as oil-laden takeaways (chicken chow-mein, bright orange sweet & sour pork, egg fried rice) or Hong Kong 点心 in Chinatown. Of late however, some swanky restaurants serving a haute cuisine type Chinese menu have sprouted in the capital (with cut-throat prices of course). I'm tickled to learn that my 孩子's friends think they are really lucky to have Chinese food everyday at home...and that the mum prepares it herself!
tvan
July 18, 2008, 02:30 PMThe husband of a visiting Chinese teacher came here (i.e. the U.S.) over the summer and toured the Western U.S. for a month with his wife. He ate nothing but Chinese food the whole time. His wife, who enjoys local specialties, couldn't get him to go anywhere else. She said they went into one Chinese restaraunt in a small Colorado town and were served pork chops, mashed potatoes w/gravy, green beans, and a fortune cookie.
BTW zhanglihua, I'm sure somebody's going to take exception to this comment, but American steaks... best in the world. Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas steaks... best in the U.S.
lostinasia
July 18, 2008, 03:28 PMAh, tvan, American steaks may be the best in the world, but... they're still a steak. And giant slabs of meat don't appeal much to the Asian palate. (Slices of meat, on the other hand...)
Incidentally, any Argentinians lurking around may now be out for your head. Duck if you hear Spanish.
tvan
July 18, 2008, 08:00 PMlostinasia, actually I was more worried about an Australian or Canadian... well, not a Canadian. But now that you mention it, a bolas-wielding gaucho... "duck," is probably good advice.
btw, thanks for the Colbert video.
sushan
July 18, 2008, 09:23 PMFusion is not always a bad thing. One of the great aspects of Hong Kong cuisine is the international influence - the bakeries are just one example. High tea at a posh hotel often includes pastries/sandwiches and beautiful dim sum. The 茶餐厅 (cha2 can1 ting1) cafes have HK interpretations of Western food that many people make a point of sampling when they travel there. And many HK restaurants have decent wine lists and wine service, which I much prefer to the baijiu-chugging style of alcohol service more common on the mainland.
pinkjeans
July 19, 2008, 08:39 AMI think one must not confuse fusion food with having variety, and it would be expected that any cosmopolitan Asian city such as HK and Singapore will have an international choice of food on the menu. I do agree that fusion is not always a bad thing, but often the result may seem quite odd (and I'm not talking about influence, which can add an interesting twist to a tried and tested favourite). I just can't bring myself to try Satay Beehoon which I think is a Singapore creation using satay sauce (Malay/Indonesian) and rice vermicelli (Chinese); it just seems too 'neither here nor there' to me. Apologies to Satay Beehoon fans.
andrew_c
July 19, 2008, 09:22 PMI think that people have have already covered the gloppy, greasy nature of take-out Chinese food in America. And yes, fortune cookies are an omnipresent and essential part of the experience. I think it's also interesting, that Chinese take-out restaurants themselves are everywhere. In my experience (Long Island, Northern Jersey, and Northern Virginia, and anywhere else I've travelled in the US), these take-out restaurants tend to have more or less the same menu, no matter where you are.
Besides take-out places, there are plenty of authentic Chinese restaurants here. Obviously if you go to a Chinatown you can get anything. Even outside of these places, you can find authentic Chinese food, specializing in different styles. I don't live in a place with particularly many Chinese people, yet within a few miles of here there is authentic 川菜 and 北方早点. Another nearby restaurant serves nearly authentic 斋菜. There are also plenty of Chinese supermarkets and authentic bakeries in the area.
pinkjeans
July 18, 2008, 10:23 AMThat Colbert Report...great video...thanks, Lostin Asia. And, btw, I understood every word of what she said. To my maybe undiscerning ear, she doesn't have any foreign accent at all.
sushan
July 17, 2008, 06:02 AMThere are some famously good versions of Chinese food in other countries that have evolved into their own cuisines. Very generally speaking they use Chinese cooking techniques on locally available ingredients, but other factors such as beliefs also come into play - for example, a lot of Indian Chinese places prepare vegetarian food.
My favourites are Indian Chinese, which is astoundingly hot, salty, garlicky, and greasy, and Korean Chinese. Korean zha jiang mian is amazing (I've actually never had the Chinese version); so is the tang su yuk (sweet and sour pork) . Peruvian Chinese food is reportedly very good too but I've never eaten that style.
There are not a whole lotta good Chinese restos in my town, and many have a menu with basic glop on it for westerners and a menu in Chinese for those who might want real Chinese food. There are many reasons for the lack of quality including the fact that many restaurant kitchens are staffed with immigrants who never learned how to cook until they came - ie, they've never prepared anything except the westernized 'Chinese' food.
Another is that most people (very, very unfairly) expect Chinese food to be cheap, even though it might be prepared with ingredients just as expensive and with cooking skills just as sophisticated as other cuisines. This gives the restaurant owners not a lot of recourse but to cut corners where they can.