Do You Share Dishes at Chinese and Other Asian Restaurants?

[Martinus]

It's a position that the overwhelming majority of the respondents to this poll have agreed with.

The group is not statistically representative. We have too many Asians and pretentious pony-tailed fake Canadians here.

[sbr]

I always eat Chinese food family style.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Our normal technique is half-and-half; so we share dishes but take a larger portion of the particular dishes that an individual selected for Chinese food. For Indian food we take our own main course but share the side dishes.

[Josquius]

Ok but this is completely different.  We do not have Mexicans from the Mexican interior moving here and opening Tex-Mex places, those are run by, you know, Texans and Tejanos considering it is our food.  We do not have Italians immigrating over here to open Papa Johns joints where most of their clientele are other Italian Immigrants.

I still just do not understand why all these Chinese Immigrants come here and inexplicably open restaurants serving weird food that is dramatically different from the food they know and claim it is theirs.  Then they all go eat at these weird restaurants pretending to be their food.  It just makes no sense.  And for reasons that are mysterious they do not do this in Canada.

I don't know about the Chinese but Japanese people often did find it weird that I liked certain very typically Japanese dishes. They think foreigners are far more alien than we are.
Maybe it's the sand with the Chinese? It is just known amongst them that foreigners don't like proper Chinese food so they have to make the foreign version.
Though it is odd given the amount of Chinese around that there aren't many authentic places....

I guess one point is the makeup of Chinese immigrants. not many of them are actually chefs. they're just guys who open a Chinese takeaway because that's the tried and tested done thing for skilless Chinese immigrants.



xxising foreign food is odd.
Long ago I went to an Indian restaurant with some foreign friends. They all thought it was  the best thing ever, just like what they ate back in the US. I thought it was terrible. The taste was....wrong. it seemed so artificial.  There's another Indian place meanwhile that tastes a little bit like British Indian.The Americans find it rather meh, the Brits though rate it highly.

[DontSayBanana]

I've always shared, even when it's just me and my girlfriend- it was actually pretty common for us to go get late night Chinese after a long night in the studio and end up just sharing a plate of mei fun and a pot of tea.

[Capetan Mihali]

Our normal technique is half-and-half; so we share dishes but take a larger portion of the particular dishes that an individual selected for Chinese food.

This is my experience too, unless there is either very cohesive group decisionmaking or a benevolent dictatorship of someone who really knows the cuisine.

[Viking]

Not many Asians in RI.

238 million Asians in Republik Indonesia

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, most of the stuff that's being served in North America as Chinese food - especially the take out and delivery stuff - bears little resemblance to Chinese food in China. That doesn't make it bad or wrong, but it's definitely a different evolution of Chinese cooking - much like Tex-Mex and Mexicali food compares to Mexican food, the evolution of the pizza in the US etc.

Ok but this is completely different.  We do not have Mexicans from the Mexican interior moving here and opening Tex-Mex places, those are run by, you know, Texans and Tejanos considering it is our food.  We do not have Italians immigrating over here to open Papa Johns joints where most of their clientele are other Italian Immigrants.

I still just do not understand why all these Chinese Immigrants come here and inexplicably open restaurants serving weird food that is dramatically different from the food they know and claim it is theirs.  Then they all go eat at these weird restaurants pretending to be their food.  It just makes no sense.  And for reasons that are mysterious they do not do this in Canada.

Sit back one and all, and be wowed as Otto reveals his knowledge on an arcane, useless, less-than-interesting topic. Through my real estate shenanigans I've gotten to know a lot of the business owners in Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg is home to a lot of what I'd call the "buffet-style" Chinese restaurants. Buffet-style restaurants come in basically two flavors that I've seen around here:

1. You can come in to eat the buffet, or during off hours order from the menu. (Usually off-hours actually the food is better as it is cooked more on demand than buffet hours, but the restaurants do not do nearly as much business during these hours.) You can also call in a take out order at most of these places.

2. You can come in to eat the buffet, but they also deliver most of the day, and heavily advertise their delivery business. (Take-out is obviously an option too.) These restaurants differ from the non-delivery places in that usually their buffet has a more restricted time period (like say, only two hours around lunch time) whereas the places where you're expected to come in and eat the buffet usually runs until around dinner time when it stops.

In general, the best food will come from the primarily walk-in business places during off-buffet hours, as the buffet is the lowest quality offered at these places.

Now, I know the owners of a lot of these places, they basically come in three types.

One is the generational family restaurant. There are a few I could name that are second or third generation, even one I believe that was opened in the late 1920s. These restaurants are ran by real Chinese Americans who may presently not even speak Chinese and who are massively Americanized. Many of them with Anglo names and etc. However, these have the best food usually because as Americans who mostly grew up middle class or better (most of these people drive very nice cars, live in the best neighborhood) households they expect a certain quality. Basically this means the chicken isn't so stringy/poor quality, the beef is better quality, the pork is better quality etc. The kitchen is usually staffed by a mixture of family members and Mexicans. Very few if any first generation Chinese immigrants will work for these restaurants, as these families are so heavily Americanized they have no real connections in the Chinese immigrant community. The owners of these places, I've directly seen driving what I call the "Mexican van." Basically, some of these places the owner drives out in the morning with a big empty van, later he shows up at the back of his restaurant with a van full of Mexicans who go in to work in the kitchen. Where they come from, nobody knows, maybe ask Jaron or Katmai. The waitstaff and host in these places will 99.99% be girls from the owner's family, daughters/granddaughters etc, usually working part time when not in school.

Two is the recent immigrant restaurant. These are owned by genuine Chinese immigrants who may speak little to no English and have moved to America with intentions of setting up this restaurant. The wait staff and the kitchen staff will be heavily tilted towards the same. Subsequently the wait staff will speak little to no English and the kitchen staff you can hear barking out orders in Chinese (I don't know enough to tell if it's Cantonese or Mandarin.) Most of the owners of these places, if they've been open awhile, are semi-prosperous, but usually live above their means. These immigrants want to be like the first guys I mentioned, but aren't American enough yet and don't have enough money yet. They will buy a Lexus though and wear lots of gold to show that they are doing well. Most of these guys, when they first came to America it is specifically because a cousin or some other relative somewhere else had a similar restaurant. They'll come over and work with that cousin for awhile and then move to another town and open up their own place. I've talked to some of these guys but there are still details I'm not 100% clear on. One of the details I'm not clear on is this, a lot of these guys employ teeenage girls as waitresses, but none of them are enrolled in the local school district, and none of the waitresses seem to stay very long. Their staff also often appears to sleep in rooms above the restaurant or in very cheap rental units living many people to a room above local ordinance limits. I'm not sure if this is an indication of some illegality or what, or just poverty. (I'll admit it's hard to judge the age of young Asian women, maybe they aren't actually teenagers and that is why none are enrolled in school.)

Third is the non-Chinese owned restaurant. These are abundant as well, and you have all types. Some owned by normal white Americans, some owned by other types of immigrants (Korean/Vietnamese are big into that around here.) They can vary in how they're run. The oddest one I'm aware of is owned by a Mexican who also owns a Mexican restaurant, managed by a white guy and with a white hostess, waitstaff all are Vietnamese girls, and kitchen staff are all Mexicans. Not sure how the owner rounded up that motley crew.

Okay, so to get to why they make the food they do. Primarily because they want to make money off of "ordinary white Americans." From the multi-generational, traditional "American Chinese restaurant" to the place recently opened by a bonafide Chinese immigrant, they all basically believe that "American chinese" is what their customers want. Mind none of these peoples were chefs in China. If they were accomplished Chefs in China they would not be coming to America, or if they were they wouldn't be opening restaurants like this. Most of them were very poor in China, and knew someone already in America that was a family member who could assist in their immigration. This family member will probably have already been involved in the Chinese restaurant business. The new immigrant will learn the American Chinese restaurant business from whoever helped bring them over. Often by the time they can set up their own restaurant they've been collecting resources for many years.

They will attract some other Chinese into these restaurants, but their primary money is coming from white Americans, and they seem to believe they need to prepare "American Chinese food" to be successful. I wouldn't doubt them, many of these restaurants have survived for many years (and restaurants are a bitch to keep running and profitable.) A lot of these restaurants are very popular with other Asian immigrant groups like Vietnamese as well. I have some Vietnamese friends who love these places, the reason? They love a value. I've noticed this with several of my Asian friends (all upper middle class) they love value for money and eat up places like thrift stores and buffets, even though they could spend more. They aren't there for authentic Chinese cuisine, but lots of plates of food for $8.95.

I think this is typical of a mid-sized American town. I go into the D.C. area every day for work, and there the situation is different. You can find many much higher quality Chinese restaurants there, and the ownership models don't fit the above mold at all. In the D.C. area, all the nicer Chinese restaurants serve food family style. All the ones in Fredericksburg serve food individually or are buffet-style.

[CountDeMoney]

What's the name of that massive dim sum place right off 270?  I think it's past Seven Locks.
Fuck, can't remember the name of it.  Big place, like cafeteria big.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Maybe New Fortune? I have a coworker that has a hard on for that place, I've been to it a few times (not in the last 2-3 years though.)

[CountDeMoney]

Time on target, Otto.  Looking at the map, I'm pretty sure that's the one.  Bad ass pushcart dim sum, IIRC.

[Jacob]

Yeah Otto, that makes complete sense. I think that's a pretty common pattern - its similar to how every Canadian small town usually has a Chinese-Canadian restaurant offering fried rice, chow men and burgers; or how every town in Denmark has (or used to have). "China Grill" serving those same Chinese dishes and roasted chicken.

There is a whole lot of Chinese food adjusted to local sensibilities, including how it's served.

[The Brain]

All food should have to be authentic.

[Zanza]

I had three Chinese colleagues in Singapore who invited me for lunch or dinner occasionally and they always ordered from the local menu. Two of them had a pretty good idea what Europeans like, the other one was the only one who was really from China and not a native Singaporean. Let's just say some of the stuff he ordered was interesting. So give me the European-adjusted food any day.

[Jaron]

Sometimes. Usually I do because they bring a big ass plate and someone else will want to try what I ordered, and I will want to try what someone else has!