Chinese food

[mickthecactus]

What is your take on it? It always disappoints me.

[bixaorellana]

I frequently crave it, but since my circumstances decree that my only access is to restaurant buffet Chinese, I don't even know if I've ever had anything that was really authentic. As far as the buffet food, more often than not it is too heavy, greasy, and salty.

[kerouac2]

It used to be disappointing in Paris because the first Chinese restaurants had dumbed down their cooking to correspond the bland French taste. I liked it even back then because I didn't know any better. However, in recent years there has been a large influx of Chinese immigrants, and that has changed the quality considerably -- as long as you go to one of the three Chinatowns of Paris and not the local neighbourhood bland place. The quality is often outstanding and some of the offerings are weird, which proves that they are authentic.

One interesting thing that I noted in the past was that North Americans coming to Paris found the Chinese food here terrible. But it finally became apparent that it was because they had none of the dishes that they liked. Most of the Chinese immigrants to the Americas came from Hongkong and Canton and served the dishes of that region. Chinese immigrants to France tended to come from Beijing or Shanghai which have completely different cuisine. And of course over the years, the Chinese that have settled in other countries have invented completely new dishes to suit local tastes. You can never find the same food in other countries.

One place that really amazed me was when I went to the Dominican Republic. I had been "warned" that the Dominicans absolutely love garlic and that was indeed the dominant flavour in just about every dish. But one day I went to a Chinese restaurant in Santo Domingo, and it was exactly the same -- every single item was absolutely smothered in garlic. I very much like garlic myself, but by the time I left the country I was quite happy to leave the garlic behind.

Therefore, Mick, do not necessarily blame the Chinese if the restaurants where you have eaten have been disappointing -- blame the English for forcing the Chinese to cook what pleases them.

[questa]

When I was a kid we would take a billy can down to the Chinese restaurant (very basic) and Mr Lee would fill it with rice and 2-3 different meals.When everything got mixed up we had chow mein with battered chicken, or some other strange combination...how could I be disappointed?

When I travelled in China, I was in 5 different places and the food was so different in each. I had the local foods from Tibetan momos...yak meat dumplings, to soup with raw veg and boiled egg in a bus drivers' cafe in Cheng Du which was a dietary indiscretion that lasted most of that trip. In Beijing and Shanghai the food has been modified to western palates in restaurants, but the little share table places still make the sharper (harsher?)foods.

The most spectacular was in Guangzhou the "Feast of the 17 dumplings". These dumplings were works of art in shaping and filling... goldfish with long wavy tail, tortoises, rabbits, cats and many other creatures. The table had a central burner simmering chicken broth, each dumpling was presented to the diner who simmered it before eating. Vegetables were on the table as well.
# 17 was a bouquet of tiny flowers which was also stuffed with various meats.

I like the Vietnamese Chinese cooking, finer and more subtle, but Thai Chinese produces an allergic reaction. Szechuan is too spicy and Ozzie too bland...and we haven't touched on Fusion cuisine...

[rikita]

i must admit, i sometimes like the very bland, very unauthentic chinese buffet type of food ... i haven't eaten much chinese food that i knew to be authentic, so i can't compare. a chinese friend once told me there are only a handfull chinese restaurants here that she likes, and none of them near where i live.

[mickthecactus]

I think K2 is absolutely right. In fact there are very few Chinese restaurants now outside of Chinatown whereas once upon a time they were everywhere. Their food is just too bland for me and unlike Indian food, they aren't inclined to reinvent themselves. The takeawAy menu hasn't changed in years.

[questa]

Ahh...the menu. Have you noticed how the 'mix'n'match'menu design indicates there is enough food to keep a small town fed.
Then you realise that there are a few protein bases..chicken, beef, pork, seafood, tofu/tempe and maybe duck.
Then you check the cooking method. Just about everything winds up in a sauce. Now here is the dilemma...most of these sauces can be bought from markets. With a dozen jars of Sweet and Sour, or Black Bean, or soy and Honey we're in business.
Obviously we have to have our rice and noodles ready. Some of the protein bases get cooked in own juices and when they get ordered they get appropriate sauce applied and nicely garnished.

If we assume there are 10 different sauces and 6 protein bases that already gives us 60 meals on the menu. If we give a choice of rice or noodles, we have made it to 120 meals.
There are Chinese restaurants which carry the best into the future and there are those we call in for a take-away to eat while watching the TV.

[mickthecactus]

Amazing questa. You are on the other side of the world yet your menu sounds exactly like ours.

We had one decent Chinese restaurant in town but it closed down overnight and never reopened leaving two nondescript takeaways.

The only half decent restaurant is 5 miles away and that hasn’t changed it’s decor or menu in donkey’s years.

Give me Indian any day.

[questa]

There are a few Indian places here but the customers are mainly students from the sub-continent. Thai cuisine is popular as is Italian and Mexican. As people fleeing the wars settle here, up go the restaurants and the latest crop are Afghani, Somali, Moroccan and Mongolian.
My home is in the main tourist and holiday area 800 m from the best beach. Dozens of all sorts of eateries abound. I could eat my way around the world without being more than a Km from home.

[mickthecactus]

Send some sun. We haven’t had any in weeks. Just rain and more rain.

Some years ago a client took me to Chinatown for an authentic chicken meal. We were served every bit if the chicken including feet. Beaks, comb etc.

It was foul.

[kerouac2]

Maybe you should have ordered the partial chicken meal.

[Deleted]

"Chinese" food here in New Orleans is very disappointing.

Much of it has more of a Thai influence and is not at all representative of the many types of authentic Chinese food.

Likely because there aren't that many people who live here are from the various regions of China.

Actually, to get technical about authentic Chinese food there are many regional variations.

Szechuan, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Zheiiang, Shangdong, Anhui, and Zigong. All very distinctive from one another.
There are likely many others.
I would imagine that the varied climates and terrain of the vastness of the country offer different ingredients, mainly spices.

So, I imagine that the only really authentic Chinese food available outside of China is likely not served in places outside of those regions.

NYC's Chinatown is the only place I've ever found different representations and even then,very limited. Similarly in San Francisco.

(There is a lengthy treatise on this in the Time-Life cookbook on Chinese cuisine).

[kerouac2]

I was trying to look up which foreign countries had the largest Chinese populations, but every country counts them differently. Countries like the United States or Canada include everybody in the ethnic group even if they were born in the United States or Canada. France and Italy for example count only the foreign born Chinese, and all of their offspring are just standard French or Italian citizens, so there is just no way to compare. But in any case the Chinese population of France is 700,000 of which about half live in the Paris metropolitan area, so that's a big enough base to have authentic food. The UK has "only" about 435,000. I would assume that the majority of them are in the London area.

Well, even if the Chinese food in every country isn't up to the standards of the home country, at least it has the merit of existing and being considered one of the principal cuisines of the world. Just the fact that about everybody in the world knows what chopsticks are and use them from time to time or have at least have tried to do so proves that the Chinese have made a permanent mark on us at the dinner table.

[lagatta]

By far the best Chinese food in Canada is in and around Vancouver.

K2, where do the restauranteurs around Torcy hail from? Are they mostly Sino-Vietnamese, or from China itself?

[bixaorellana]

Mar 31, 2018 12:57:20 GMT mickthecactus said:

We were served every bit if the chicken including feet. Beaks, comb etc.

It was foul.

Surely you meant to say "It was fowl", right?

[kerouac2]

Lognes and Torcy have become the principal Asian cities of France, with an Asian population above 40%. It's all quite mixed, but I read that the largest social club in Lognes is the Franco-Indochinese Social Club of Southern Laos. Apparently even most of the Indochinese in the area self-identify as Chinese because they speak Chinese at home rather than Laotian or Cambodian. They are pretty much mortified that their teenage children reject their culture and are 100% French, but even the older people are called "bananas" when they visit their homelands -- yellow on the surface and white inside.

[mickthecactus]

Mar 31, 2018 15:43:34 GMT bixaorellana said:

Mar 31, 2018 12:57:20 GMT mickthecactus said:

We were served every bit if the chicken including feet. Beaks, comb etc.

It was foul.

Surely you meant to say "It was fowl", right?

I wondered if someone would get it....

[lagatta]

I think I was having a bit of a brain-fart early this morning, conflating Torcy the town (where I've been) and Torcy the street in the eastern 18e, where I ate several times with friends who lived in K2's general area. Sort of like a dream conflating the original Cambridge and Cambridge Mass, with their academic renown. I was actually thinking of both.

[kerouac2]

The name of my metro station was Torcy until after the war. Now of course there is the Torcy RER station in the suburbs in the actual city. (My station became Marx Dormoy to honor the MP who was assassinated in 1941. He was one of 90 who voted against Petain at the beginning of the war.)

Anyway, I have my little Chinatown as well on rue de Torcy and Place de Torcy, so I don't have to go to the suburbs to eat well. My only current concern is that the nice little restaurant called Tin Tin has closed and is being transformed into a different (Chinese) establishment with a different name. I will have to try them. Who knows? -- it might be an improvement. One of the things I most liked about that place is that it is the only one directly on the square (Place de Torcy) and it therefore had a section of outdoor seating for when the weather is good, something that is extremely rare in Asian restaurants in Paris.

[lagatta]

Yes' I've eaten at Tin Tin more than once, and indeed it is one of very few Asian restaurants with a terrasse. Even here in Montréal, where there should be more room, they are extremely rare. I know of ONE in our old Chinatown, and frankly, it is a shitty restaurant. This, on a pedestrianised street.

[kerouac2]

Tonight I opened a can of water chestnuts dating from 1994. Delicious.

[bjd]

Not much good to say about Chinese restaurants here in Toulouse. There is one street with some Chinese grocery stores, where there is a very small celebration of Chinese New Year. Also there is a big Asian supermarket where many restaurants buy their supplies. But I haven't eaten in a Chinese restaurant for ages. I have the impression that most of them here are run by Vietnamese.

Kerouac, have you eaten at Paris-Hanoi in Paris? One in the 11th, another in the 20th. Good, cheapish food and always a giant line outside waiting to get in. I don't know how "authentic" it is though.

[kerouac2]

I've never eaten there, but I remember taking a picture of it once. I had an idea for a photo thread where two cities were mentioned on the same sign. But I never actually started the thread.

[lagatta]

bjd, how about Vietnamese or other "Indochinese" restaurants in Toulouse? There must be some decent ones.

There is a very nice small restaurant a bit northeast of where I live (métro Fabre) that is from the region along the Laos-Thailand border: www.lapresse.ca/vivre/gourmand/restaurants/201611/10/01-5039873-thai-sep-coup-de-coeur-laotien.php It is tiny, and one takes one's own wine or beer.

The only problem for some people is that it gets quite noisy - not loud music or a raucous crowd; just a small room with poor insulation. The solution is to go early if possible, and early in the week.

Those sausages are delicious!

[Deleted]

I have heard or read from various sources that Toronto has excellent Chinese restaurants.

[bixaorellana]

I have to admit that whenever I go to the US and it's lunchtime, I seek out a Chinese buffet if there's one available. This means I've had some pretty bad grub at times, but there are also places which serve some very satisfying food, especially if some of the offerings are prepared fairly simply. Because really, you have to wonder if any Chinese people from any part of that huge country would eat many dishes in different sauces at one meal, as is too easy to do at a buffet.

The Chinese buffets here in Oaxaca are heavy on meat and the various dishes resemble each other too closely.

[kerouac2]

Sept 1, 2018 20:16:55 GMT casimira said:

I have heard or read from various sources that Toronto has excellent Chinese restaurants.

Yes, Toronto has an absolutely fantastic Chinatown, second only to Vancouver.

[mickthecactus]

My Welsh cactus friend is in Beijing for his father in law’s 90th birthday.

Here is the cake-

[biddy]

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have many options for Chinese food, some very good and some mediocre. Sadly in San Francisco downtown area some Chinese restaurants closed for good during Covid lockdown. One place that closed had my very favourite smoked ham chow mein. Talk about comfort food! Agreed with previous poster Chinese food in Vancouver is very good.