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China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

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Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#91

Post by VLM »

Svekax wrote: post #30

As offensive as saying the Spanish don't understand the concept of burritos.

A far better comparison would be the Taco Bell Chalupa which shares the name with a Mexican dish but has nothing in common with the Mexican dish.

Taco Bell, much like American-Chinese food, or McDonalds, accelerated past cultural escape velocity a long time ago.

See also the concept of American Lite-Beer-like-beverage vs German Beer.

The concept of cultural escape velocity applies to more aspects of culture than just food.

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#92

Post by Mendenhall »

sooheon wrote: post #80
m_mueller wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually rice is the main focus in Japanese Sushi - it needs to be treated perfectly - soft and grained, yet sticky enough to just hold together, with salt and vinegar added to a point, pressed and eaten very quickly. Fish is just there to round off the rice. That's why Sushi chefs train for years just preparing the rice - cutting fish is the last step to learn.

I'm sure rife is important, but you're way over correcting. Fish is just there to round off the rice? Please.

I am pretty sure parent is "right" from my limited understanding. That being having watched some interviews etc with sushi "masters" I have heard some of them say same thing. If I remember where I will respond again and apply link.

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#93

Post by kelukelugames »

markdown wrote: post #18
aioprisan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't take away from the amazing reporting that Vice does.

Vice tells amazing stories, but not everything in those stories is factual and there is often significant embellishment. This is not obvious at all until they report on a topic you're very familiar with. I'm a big fan... it's great entertainment.

I think that's true of all papers/sites.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

― Michael Crichton

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#94

Post by bonzini »

barry-cotter wrote: post #81
alkonaut wrote: post #70

This is exactly the same with Italian food: even though the US is full of people of Italian descent, that doesn't change the fact that the Olive Garden menu baffles Italians. Italian-American is a different kitchen. Just like British-Indian food. Or Tex-Mex. Sometimes these adaptations are pretty good (the British Indian food, which is what everyone outside india thinks of as "Indian food" is pretty good!) but for so…

Indian food in Malaysia/Indonesia/Singapore is Southern Indian, mostly Tamil, not Bengali but spicier like British Indian food. Japanese Indian food is Bengali by way of Britain with no hint of spiciness. Tex-Mex for food snobs is called Southwest cuisine. American pizza is very different from Italian and good enough to have a small niche in Italy itself. I'm not really familiar with US-Chinese but you're wrong about…

"Tall" NY-style pizza can be found in Italy as a kind of fast food, especially around Milan, but it developed independently.

Cuisine in Italy is extremely regionalized. Pizza has only been a "national" food for perhaps 50 years. At home we cook pizza perhaps once every week or two, but when my grandparents were young, it wasn't even a word here in the North. 30 years ago pizza was never in my school's menu, while nowadays they have it.

On the other hand, I have never tried Chicago-style pizza, because it's just not a thing here. I am actually really curious about it, and would like to taste it---perhaps unlike most of my fellow countrymen.

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#95

Post by rco8786 »

bane wrote: post #37
nostrademons wrote: post #27

My dad's a Chinese immigrant, and I've been to China and had Chinese food there. There are two types of Chinese food you can get in America (well, more given all the regional variations, but I'm making a point...). If you went to a strip mall, walked into a P.F. Chang's, and had General Tso's Chicken, that's not Chinese food. But if you walked into an unmarked doorway in Chinatown, walked down a flight of stairs to a…

> walked into a P.F. Chang's, and had General Tso's Chicken To be a touch contrarian, I'd even argue that the kind of food served in some of the newer chain restaurants isn't even proper traditional American-Chinese food (which seems to have shown up sometime in the late 19th, early 20th century). One of the things I've come to appreciate after lots of travel and lots of -Chinese food is how well developed and embedd…

From what I understand(I believe there's a documentary out there) there is a company that helps Chinese immigrants get on their feet in the US by helping them start an American Chinese restaurant. They give them menus, recipes, and to your point above...help find places that don't have a lot of Chinese restaurants around. It's something similar to a franchise model. But it explains why you can find nearly identical yet seemingly unrelated Chinese restaurants in every podunk town.

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#96

Post by ajross »

alkonaut wrote: post #70

This is exactly the same with Italian food: even though the US is full of people of Italian descent, that doesn't change the fact that the Olive Garden menu baffles Italians. Italian-American is a different kitchen. Just like British-Indian food. Or Tex-Mex. Sometimes these adaptations are pretty good (the British Indian food, which is what everyone outside india thinks of as "Indian food" is pretty good!) but for so…

> This is exactly the same with Italian food

This is exactly the same with all food, everywhere. Cultures appropriate and modify stuff they get from other cultures, continually. Americans did it with Chinese, sure. And also Italian as you point out. And Mexican. And Japanese (the modern conception of "fancy maki rolls" is mostly an American export). And the Italians did it too! And the Mexicans! And the Chinese!

The confusion of "authenticity" with "quality" in the comments here is really embarassing. Find good food. Eat it. Sometimes that's a traditional recipe and sometimes it's a recent synthesis.

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#97

Post by draw_down »

nitwit005 wrote: post #56
inopinatus wrote: post #19

I'm married to a first-generation offspring of Chinese parents, a source of regular and scathing remarks on how what is served in the US as "Chinese food" is often a many-generations-removed facsimile thereof. Three items in particular (Chop Suey, Chow Mein and General Tso Chicken) receive very special ridicule and their appearance on a menu can effectively disqualify any restaurant from further consideration. As the…

There is a lot of ego around food when it gets tied to identity. Your spouse is probably rejecting many restaurants that are run by immigrants cooking recepies brought over.

Yeah. All that matters is whether it tastes good, and stuff the rest. You can't taste a story you tell yourself. Or perhaps more to the point, you shouldn't be able to.

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#99

Post by LoSboccacc »

wonnage wrote: post #71
nostrademons wrote: post #27

My dad's a Chinese immigrant, and I've been to China and had Chinese food there. There are two types of Chinese food you can get in America (well, more given all the regional variations, but I'm making a point...). If you went to a strip mall, walked into a P.F. Chang's, and had General Tso's Chicken, that's not Chinese food. But if you walked into an unmarked doorway in Chinatown, walked down a flight of stairs to a…

We eat meat too, primarily pork. FWIW, the PF Chang's menu has a couple of dishes reminiscent of actual Chinese food, even if the execution is slightly different - salt & pepper prawns, pepper steak, fried chicken wings, pretty much all of the soups... The problem is that "Chinese food" as a category is really an enormous oversimplification, and even in China you can go to a place and be disappointed ordering somethi…

That's a common theme about regional flavors: they need to be adapted to local tastes.

Just ask autochthonous Italians eating abroad - every single Italian restaurant serve plates that are too greasy, too flavored, too spicy or whatever. And you can't get a good cup of coffee almost anywhere around the world, because outside of Italy the burnt flavor is often praised as a brew having 'character'.

But that's fine, because Italian flavors are not really to the liking of Englishmen and vice versa. Carbonara being made with cream instead of egg is often done not because the places can't look a recipe off internet, but because that's what locals expect in term of flavor and consistency.

Likewise for the absurdly loaded pizzas with three dozen ingredients: it tastes great both ways and I'm not gonna tell the One Italian Way is superior, but Italians are more used to a single strong flavor per plate, while abroad that'd be just plain and boring. So everything adapts.

I dab in international dishes at home, but if a Mexican would eat my chili he'd have a stroke - but for other Italians? They all say it's super, because it's modulated to our taste.

Re: China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)

#100

Post by microcolonel »

wonnage wrote: post #71
nostrademons wrote: post #27

My dad's a Chinese immigrant, and I've been to China and had Chinese food there. There are two types of Chinese food you can get in America (well, more given all the regional variations, but I'm making a point...). If you went to a strip mall, walked into a P.F. Chang's, and had General Tso's Chicken, that's not Chinese food. But if you walked into an unmarked doorway in Chinatown, walked down a flight of stairs to a…

We eat meat too, primarily pork. FWIW, the PF Chang's menu has a couple of dishes reminiscent of actual Chinese food, even if the execution is slightly different - salt & pepper prawns, pepper steak, fried chicken wings, pretty much all of the soups... The problem is that "Chinese food" as a category is really an enormous oversimplification, and even in China you can go to a place and be disappointed ordering somethi…

Yeah, English is "blessed" with roots in most languages over 100k speakers; so unlike most other languages, even local food names are indecipherable. Indian food names are straightforward in a similar way to chinese food names: dal (split, referring to split lentils) tadka (a.k.a tarka, a.k.a chaunk, referring to tempered spices), Saag (leafy greens like spinach, mustard leaf, collard greens) paneer (unaged acid-set cheese), aloo (potato) gobi (cauliflower).
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