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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)

#151

Post by ajross »

Chathamization wrote: post #133
ajross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The confusion of "authenticity" with "quality" in the comments here is really embarassing. I don't necessarily disagree, but a lot of the time "authentic" can be a decent indicator of quality. In my experience, the best food comes from people who actually eat the food themselves and people who are making the food for motivations other than simple monetary motivations. That's the issue with a lot of "inauthentic" fo…

> the best food comes from people who actually eat the food themselves

The linked article is literally about two american expats in china who started a restaurant to recreate the chinese-american comfort food of their youth.

...and people right here in this thread are smearing the whole concept of "chinese-american comfort food" with this crazy authenticity frame.

I mean, come on folks: orange chicken and chow mein are pretty decent food on occasion. Lots of people like them. Their existence has in some small way advanced the way people (not even just americans) think about food. Don't eat it if you don't like it, but don't dismiss it as a "cheap cash grab" either.

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

#152

Post by ajross »

alkonaut wrote: post #119
ska wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authenticity itself is a problematic concept. There is another confounding variable, especially but not exclusively in the US, which is the industrialization of food production. In some ways quality is thus traded off against convenience and cost, but it has nothing to do with the specific origins of the dishes and techniques.

100% agree - there is both good and bad adaptations of foreign cuisine - in the US as well as elsewhere. The US is just (in)famous because of the megachains like Olive Garden, Taco Bell.

A Taco Bell taco is no farther from the original conception of the food than a Big Mac is to the original notion of a hamburger, frankly. People are all bent out of shape in this thread because they're applying odd notions of "morality" to something (food) where it doesn't apply.

Cultures appropriate food, they always have and they always will. It's a good thing, not a bad thing, even if sometimes you personally don't like to eat the specific items. We should be celebrating the chalupa, not smearing it.

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

#153

Post by sdiupIGPWEfh »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #76
orblivion wrote: post #63

What doesn't add up to me is the idea that American Chinese food evolved from the 1800s, yet every legit Chinese restaurant has owners who have a heavy Chinese accent, clearly from China themselves. Did they come here and so quickly adapt to what was expected from "Chinese" food?

My experience has been that very few Chinese restaurants are owned by Chinese immigrants, most are from some other country. There are a handful of "Chinese" food distributors in the US that provide for most restaurants. It's more akin to opening a McDonald's.

Having never eaten at two Chinese restaurants with even remotely the same food, I find that hard to swallow. At least in my part of the eastern US, Chinese food quality varies wildly.

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

#154

Post by jghn »

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.

Iirc sushi means rice in Japanese

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

#155

Post by m_mueller »

sidegrid wrote: post #103
m_mueller wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by my comment. Any trained Sushi chef knows how to cut the fish properly, all they need is access to a good wholesale fish market like Tsukiji or one of its resellers to offer you some very nice fish - but the way they treat the rice is where you see the biggest difference between a trained sushi chef and a master. No matter where you go in Japan it's still way beyond what you'd get in expensive places abroad…

How long can it take to learn how to cook rice? Couple of hours?

Here's a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamae

>It is a common Japanese legend that the truly great itamae-san ("san" is an honorific suffix) should be able to create nigirizushi in which all of the rice grains face the same direction.

While that's definitely an exaggeration, it gives you an idea of the importance of rice in Japanese sushi. Basically, it's taking something that's naturally chaotic (like cooked rice grains that just stick together in whatever fashion), and bring their entropy down to become something ordered by using the most efficient motions possible. For that purpose they use hand fans and wood to control the moisture as well as very finely trained hand motions to control the shape of the nigiri as well as the alignments of the grains.

All of that, just so the guest can pick it up with his/her chopsticks, and have it effortlessly fall apart in the mouth, in an explosion of flavour, like a two stage guided cluster bomb targeting your taste buds ;-).

So, yes, you could probably just use an automatic cooker for the cooking process (although the masters sneeze at that of course, but it sure is standard in Japan nowadays up to a certain price level) - but cooking is the easy part, the fun starts after that.

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

#156

Post by zhemao »

lhorie wrote: post #149
ebiester wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North American food is surprisingly diverse, too. That isn't to take anything from Chinese food, which is amazingly diverse. However, compare the food of Tucson, San Francisco, Santa Fe, San Antonio, New Orleans, Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver. (I'm not even comparing to other North American countries such as Mexico, Cuba, and Panama, each with microregions of their own.) Off topic, I…

Yeah, I wasn't saying that american food consists solely of burgers and hot dogs, there's definitely lively food scenes in north american big cities. My impression, though, is that the food diversity in US/Canada has more to do with multiculturalism than with tradition, i.e. you get to pick between indian, thai, mexican, italian, greek, etc and a lot of the twists and novelties are fusions of two or more cultures (e.…

The US has a lot of international cuisines. And as a country of immigrants, there's not much of a "native" culinary tradition. But there are distinct variations in local cuisines. For instance,

New England: clam chowder, lobster rolls

Southeast: barbecue, cornbread, grits, sweet tea

Texas: steaks, Tex-Mex

Louisiana: Cajun and Creole cuisine

Southwest: similar to Mexican cuisine

California: avocados on everything

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

#157

Post by sooheon »

m_mueller wrote: post #146
consz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any trained Sushi chef knows how to cut the fish properly, all they need is access to a good wholesale fish market like Tsukiji This isn't a convincing argument at all, I could just as easily say "any trained sushi chef knows how to cook rice properly, all they need is Amazon and access to a good rice cooker like Zojirushi". For what it's worth, I don't believe the idea that rice is the main focus -- it just sounds…

There's an easy Test you can do: Go to Japan and do a few taste tests. Try 7-11 sushi, kaiten-sushi (big chains that serve on turnstiles), a small neighborhood sushi restaurant that serves lunch for 1000 yen and a master's sushi restaurant (usually 10000 yen up to 25000 yen, but you may be able to get a better deal through a Japanese contact). Then report back on what you find. All I can tell you is from my experienc…

I guess that makes sense. The value-add of a sushi chef to good fish is almost nothing, they just have to cut it and make sure to serve it fresh. The variability the chef introduces to rice is a lot bigger (i.e. rice can be really shit if you cook it wrong), so in order for sushi to rise from its piece-of-fish-on-rice street food beginnings to cult cuisine status of today, they had to pick some part to idolize and ritualize (in typical Japanese style), and rice was it.

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

#158

Post by m_mueller »

sooheon wrote: post #157
m_mueller wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an easy Test you can do: Go to Japan and do a few taste tests. Try 7-11 sushi, kaiten-sushi (big chains that serve on turnstiles), a small neighborhood sushi restaurant that serves lunch for 1000 yen and a master's sushi restaurant (usually 10000 yen up to 25000 yen, but you may be able to get a better deal through a Japanese contact). Then report back on what you find. All I can tell you is from my experienc…

I guess that makes sense. The value-add of a sushi chef to good fish is almost nothing, they just have to cut it and make sure to serve it fresh. The variability the chef introduces to rice is a lot bigger (i.e. rice can be really shit if you cook it wrong), so in order for sushi to rise from its piece-of-fish-on-rice street food beginnings to cult cuisine status of today, they had to pick some part to idolize and ri…

You could at it this way, yes - Sushi is a bit like Pizza in that

a) it was born a few hundred years ago (Edo period) as a take-away food / fast food

b) some forms of it have become a high craft or even art that you can spend a lot of money on (compare to high status Pizzerias in Napoli)

Now whether that's legitimate or not is of course up for discussion - in my opinion it's a legitimate and fulfilling experience that you can have by going to a Sushi master if you can appreciate this kind of craft.

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

#159

Post by LoSboccacc »

jmiserez wrote: post #150
dagw wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of the "adapted" stuff just tastes bland. I don't think anyone could accuse for example American Italian food of being a "bland" copy of the original. Italian food tends to be more subtle in flavour and with more focus on accentuating a single ingredient. American Italian is much bigger bolder flavors often mixing several strong flavours. You can argue that it's simplistic, boring and perhaps even unrefined if y…

I agree. When I say bland I don't literally mean bland as in non-spicy/tastes-like-nothing, but rather a bland experience. In the sense of uninteresting, dull, unexciting. I'd say that often happens exactly because of overpowering flavours. Also agree on the pizza, of course there is no single Italian way. But you would hardly expect e.g. a deep-dish pizza when there.

that's still a naming issue, we eat plenty of what'd you call deep dish pizza, but mostly we call them 'quiche' or 'torte salate'

http://ricette.donnamoderna.com/torta-salata-in-rosso

http://lericettedisimona.blogspot.it/2013/09/torta-salata-ma...

now recipes usually call for a base which is different from pizza's, but that's mostly convenience because you can get good one out of common stores.

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

#160

Post by gurkendoktor »

stupidhn wrote: post #73
nitwit005 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Much of this thread reeks of hipsterism, where nothing is good but the "original", as if cuisine isn't under constant evolution.

I think the issue is not that most westernised cuisines are different from the original, but that they end up tasting all the same. Here in Germany most people only care about the mandatory piece of meat/fish in each meal, so it's hard to find delicious side dishes that may exist in the "original" cuisine.
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