China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014) • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by boomboomsubban » Mon, May 01, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

sdiupIGPWEfh wrote: post #153

boomboomsubban wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Easiest to tell with the chicken dishes, and even with the same food source the quality varies wildly. Chefs, amounts of ingredients, freshness and other things still influence things, similar to fast food.

Distribution still doesn't have the greatest online presence, but here's one of the east coast distributors. http://nywtc.com

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

#162

Post by sooheon » Mon, May 01, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #158

sooheon wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

Good comparison. They both are delicious, simple, affordable foods widely enjoyed by the "peasant" class, which nonetheless have a rarified purist/snobbish following as well. I enjoy both, hope I can one day afford to judge for myself whether the high falutin varieties are worth it :)

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

#163

Post by consz » Thu, May 04, 2017, 11:42 AM UTC

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've done all this, I felt there was a (marginally decreasing) increase in quality at all levels of that chain you described. Maybe the marginal increase in quality of the fish was less than that of the rice; I don't know. I certainly couldn't tell -- they both seemed to taste better and better to me.