It's the shock factor talking, and also a belief that real Chinese food is more "exotic" and not widely prepared in North America (sorry folks, kung pao chicken and sweet and sour pork are indeed "authentic" Chinese).
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Vice: The Struggles of Writing About Chinese Food as a Chinese Person, Clarissa Wei
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It's the shock factor talking, and also a belief that real Chinese food is more "exotic" and not widely prepared in North America (sorry folks, kung pao chicken and sweet and sour pork are indeed "authentic" Chinese).
Even within each Provinces, the cuisine could be massively different. (see Chaozhou's famous beef hotpot in Guangdong province). I'm gonna say most people in the West are oblivious what's available in China, or Asia really.
I feel like I've barely touched the surface of Chinese cuisine and I've lived in Asia for 16+ years.
Chairmanchuck
Member
Thats the thing. Also right now a lot of restaurants, at least in Beijing, are trying out "Fusion food", not like America where they fuse mexian and korean food, but they try to fuse foods from different provinces.
Its great.
FlutterPuffs
Member
Found the full documentary on Youtube (also is apparently on Netflix)
Thanks for mentioning the documentary, it was an interesting watch.
itwasTuesday
He wasn't alone.
Eh, we do this to ourselves too. Lobster used to be a trash eating water bug struggle lunch. Meant for the blue collar crowd. Then some rich people had some and said "let's flip this for a profit, post haste". It's not only delicious but popularly used as a symbol of wealth today. And that's the story of how white people invented lobster.
Majority isn't all though.
At least here in Germany, natural casing is quite common, according to a quick wikipedia research over 50% of sausage specalties in Germany use natural casing. Might be different in the US.
Same here. My favorite restaraunt growing up was an upscale Chinese place (in Switzerland). I used to pick it out for my birthdays. It's kind of sad how the overwhelming expectation for Asian food is that it be cheap grub, but at the same time, a lot of joints cater to their own immigrant communities who need it to be affordable. That's a big factor in the appropriation discussion: white/American chefs and purveyors are naturally going to have the upper hand over immigrants in terms of the finances and networking needed to establish and promote buzz-worthy restaurants, brands, cookbooks, whatever.
Gully State
Member
Chinese cuisine has been built on fusion from different provinces for a long time now..Dishes like Peking duck, was actually brought over from Southern China and vice versa.
donkey show
Member
Haha, was gonna say Daly City right out the gate. Also, West Covina and the LA area, Las Vegas, etc. but you're not going to find many places outside of the coasts.
soundscream
Member
If you get it from a butcher it will most likely be natural, but the amount produced for store bought brands its impractical.
MomoPufflet
Member
Do any Fillipino restaurants serve good Mole? Talking about that thick, dark brown stewy stuff with meat in it. My friend's mom makes it once in awhile and it's incredible but I can't get it anywhere. I've heard it's annoying to make so I'm not hopeful.
Do we eat mole? I mean we have mexican influence but i've never heard of Filipino Mole.
Lost of stuff that comes from Mexico may have the same bame but its a whole different food. See our version of Adobo or Menudo.
Fake edit: Just googled. Looks like its really what we call kare-kare. But thats a peanut sauce you eat with bagoonong (shrimp or fish paste)
Kare-kare is pretty common enough to find in a filipino restaurant.
I used to work in Brisbane, do DC was lunch spot. So we ate a lot of Filipino food. I miss loads of things. Not balut, obviously, but I did try it on a dare.
It's that stigma of 'eww you just like it because you were raised on it, no thanks'
'wait, a white person on TV/internet said that it's actually good? I want to try it'
And dimsum is in general very tame compared to other cuisine . The most exotic dishes served are generally the tripe and chicken feet dishes.
shnurgleton
Member
What resources would be good to learn about Chinese regional cuisine and cooking? I'd love to expand my cooking repertoire.
I understand the author but I probably wouldn't have found a lot of other culture's food without white people/Americans spreading it around, fad/craze and all. The richer can afford to treat food as an art and write about it.
It is annoying when X food is used as a reductive placeholder for a whole culture. It seems to be getting better over time.
It is annoying when X food is used as a reductive placeholder for a whole culture. It seems to be getting better over time.
I don't know but it's not even that weird to me. Maybe it's because I am southern and have seen family members eat collards and chitlins for years. Maybe I was lucky as well my town had at least 2 chinese places since I was a kid. One was the US variety while the other was run by a thai family and god was that the best place. They had a dish that they called Hunan Chicken but that was just because they would give everything a more familiar name and I never got around to asking what the dish was really called.
MomoPufflet
Member
That actually makes sense since her husband is Mexican. Guess I incorrectly assumed it was a Fillipino thing. It wasn't with shrimp or peanuts so it must have been more Mexican style, maybe with some alterations.
It is telling how Europe gets to define themselves with distinct regions, identities and cultures but everything else gets lumped as Indian food, Chinese food etc. As if there aren't regions, cultures and cuisines distinct either. People don't even realize how different Cantonese cuisine is from Sichuan or Fujian at times. Just like people don't realize their 'Indian' food is actuall Punjabi, Rajasthani, Bengali, South indian, North indian.
But, why the presumption that they are not genuinely enjoying the cuisine? I'm sure it can be frustrating and generate friction but overall it seems hard to see how it would be a bad thing. If people really are there just because it's trendy then the crowds will die down soon enough and the owners will have gotten a nice cash infusion. If it turns out, hey, those people really do like that food, then the market for it has just expanded and there'll be more of it available.
How many South Koreans understand the difference between southern and midwest US food?
Sheriff_Battlesnake
Banned
Is Houston a particularly good area for Chinese food? Definitely don't think of Chinese as "cheap, easy." But maybe that's just me!
I do know we have a rich Vietnamese population and fantastic Vietnamese food.
I do know we have a rich Vietnamese population and fantastic Vietnamese food.
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