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Analyzing the names of almost every Chinese restaurant in the U.S.
- Yaa101 11y agoFunny story, but here in The Netherlands they are named after the owner, as far as I know...
- nthcolumn 11y agoSushi should not to be in the word cloud.
- tyingq 11y agoThai, Hibachi, and other bad matches are there too. They mention Yelp! as the data source. I suppose they are either businesses that feature multiple genres, or owners that wanted their listing under Chinese for some other reason.
- vollmond 11y agoEvery Chinese buffet I've ever eaten at had a sushi section, as well. I'd say there's a lot of overlap.
- YokoZar 11y agoAnd out here in the bay area, basically none of them have. In parts of the country where Asian restaurants are relatively scarce, I believe combination restaurants are a lot more common. There is much less room for market specialization, and there likely aren't enough consumers with specific tastes either.
- khedoros 11y agoI'm in Orange County. Within about 5 miles of my place, there are about 2 dozen Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, Mongolian, etc). I'm excluding the big chain restaurants. There are two "Chinese" buffets, and there used to be a third. They've all had sushi sections. Maybe the businesses in this area have opted for variety rather than authenticity, or maybe one was a pioneer and the others followed behind. My point is that I see a lot of specialization in my area, but I also see combo buffets, and I'm not sure how to account for the difference between my area and yours (aside from a hand-wavy answer of "demographics").
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jghn 11y agoThe article starts off by talking about how chinese food in the US is a cuisine of its own at this point. Given that, why are we worrying about how traditionally non-chinese items are featured? It's not uncommon for chinese buffets in the northeast to have things like french fries on it. Besides, many Americans aren't too bright and have trouble discerning their asians.
- shalmanese 11y agoI went to a Chinese restaurant in Beijing that had a dish of fried lamb with cumin that was served with a side of french fries. Something got lost in translation though because the french fries came with a dipping sauce which was a whole can of cold tomato paste.
- panglott 11y agoIt's been a decade since I backpacked through China, but potatoes were a thing that were always lost in translation. Did not know fried potatoes could be both greasy and undercooked.
- bane 11y agoLots of "upscale"-ish Chinese restaurants try to offer Sushi dishes. There's even a fair amount of Thai and other Asian cuisines shoved under one roof.
- partisan 11y agoThose are typically called "Asian Fusion" where I live. It's every popular dish in every Asian cuisine all in one place, though they usually exclude Indian food.
- bane 11y agoFor whatever reason, in the U.S. at least, "Asian" means "East Asian" (or for older folks, "Oriental Asia") and there's various other terms for different parts of Asia that don't fall under that umbrella. India is usually considered its own thing, all the "-stans" get grouped under "Central Asia" and the rest is either "Middle Eastern" or "Russian". I don't know of any Central Asian restaurants, but there's tons of Kabob places. Asia is a big place.
- innocentoldguy 11y agoWhile I agree with you 100%, in my area, most of the Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai restaurants are owned by people from China. So, we end up with an amalgamation of perverted Asian cuisine on the menus.
- patio11 11y agoAsian fusion restaurants are a thing, particularly in places where Asian restaurants are scarce. This is why you end up with places like e.g. Mt. Fuji Thai. (Not an exaggeration.)
- mc32 11y agoOne of my favorite names is "the five happiness" which happens to be in the same form of the new official political strategy of the CCP "the four comprehensives".
- 99_00 11y agoIf you haven't already, try Indian style Chinese food.
- nwatson 11y agoThe Beef / Chicken Jalfrezi at Shalimar (in Tenderloin SF or in Fremont) dish is a Pakistani take on Chinese food, one of the best things I've ever eaten. I try to time my flights back to the SF Bay Area so I can swing by the Tenderloin location after picking up my rental car. I agree it's not something to miss.
- kelukelugames 11y agoIt's India's version of PF Chang's except maybe even less related to Chinese cuisine. Indian people love Indochinese food. Chinese people hate it. Keep that in mind when you try it.
- contingencies 11y agoAfter living in China for a decade, I was quite amused to find food labelled as Chinese on a multi-month jaunt to southern India, where it seemed the only categories for food were "veg", "non-veg" and "Chinese". There were only a few dishes under the 'Chinese' classification, and the names seemed to have been stuck. However, quite interestingly, I did find three other examples of Chinese contact in South India. The first was Chinese cigarettes, super budget brands that are obviously export only, probably using the worst quality floor-sweepings from China's tobacco industry, which is centered on the province I live in, Yunnan, which happens to be the closest part to India as the crow flies, if you exclude Tibet. Secondly, bamboo-structure pivoted fishing nets[0] were fairly common on the Kerala coast, and particularly in Kochi. These were commonly acknowledged to have come from China. Finally, some locals told me that a traditional system of physical exercise endemic to Kerala had actually traveled to China with a monk and was the true basis for the Chinese system of Kung Fu.[1] I wouldn't write this theory off entirely, but it's not widely known and too close to Chinese national sentiment to discuss usefully in-country. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fishing_nets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fishing_nets [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Asian_martial_arts#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Asian_martial_arts#...
- leemailll 11y agoI find it funny somehow invented a dish never found in any menu in China saying other's dish is not "authentic". He is right other did not follow his recipe, but "authentic" is a word I would never associate with most Chinese dishes and resteraunts in US.
- brownbat 11y agoLanguage Log often notes how the English and Chinese names on Chinese restaurants are typically wildly different.[0, 1] The Chinese Restaurant Worldwide Documentation Project is a good resource for restaurant names in both languages.[2] [0] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9943 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9943 [1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4424 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4424 [2] https://www.flickr.com/groups/twchineserestaurantsdp/pool/with/141012288/#photo_141012288 https://www.flickr.com/groups/twchineserestaurantsdp/pool/wi...
- vacri 11y ago> General Tso's Chicken might be the most popular Chinese dish in the western world Ah, the definition of 'western world' that starts at North America's west coast and ends at its east coast...
- bfung 11y agoor everywhere west of China...
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoSurely you mean east to west.
- taejo 11y agoWikipedia [0] confirms that this is an American dish. I personally have never encountered it in any of the four other western countries where I've visited Chinese restaurants. (Also not in restaurants in China, or a Chinese restaurant in Korea) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tso%27s_chicken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Tso%27s_chicken
- exogen 11y agoI used to wonder why there was no Chinese restaurant in all of Capitol Hill in Seattle. Some have opened more recently, but it turns out one was there all along – called Regent Bakery & Cafe. Truly hidden from my Chinese restaurant radar due to the name.
- kelukelugames 11y agoThere is a fusion place that's actually decent. Zhu Dang? But I'm never going back because people in Capitol Hill are racist. Also parking is hard.
- exogen 11y agoI liked Zhu Dang! Sadly it closed after only being open for a year. :(
- Raphael 11y agoIt's all about the Korean and Vietnamese on 99. Never have to go to the same place twice.
- zhemao 11y agoI think it's kind of funny how Mongolian and Jin show up prominently in the word cloud. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_dynasty [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_dynasty_(1115-1234) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_dynasty_(1115-1234)
- somberi 11y agoObligatory Pun on the Chinese restaurant names: https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/31/45-asian-fusion-food/ https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/31/45-asian-fusion-...
- joeframbach 11y agoThe reporter's name, Jennifer 8. Lee, is not a typo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_8._Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_8._Lee > Lee was not given a middle name at birth so she chose "8." when she was a teenager. In Chinese culture, the number eight symbolizes prosperity and good luck.
- tyre 11y agoWe ran into this when working at ZenPayroll. Not her specifically but a similar circumstance where a security check triggered based on an unexpected non-alpha character in a signature. Turned out the person really did have a number as a name.
- newjersey 11y agoNames are hard. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472 In your case, I'd just say you need the same name that the IRS/department of revenue would need though.
- derefr 11y agoYet her Chinese name continues to just be "李競", rather than "李八競", even though the latter reads far more naturally than "Jennifer 8 Lee" does (probably because an ideograph is an ideograph (and plenty of people have number-ideographs in their names), while letters and numerals are different in kind.)
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoWell, it could also be "李８競". "8" can be written spaced as if it were an ideograph.
- notfoss 11y agoRecently I was watching "The Dictator" in which Sacha Cohen's character told someone that his name was something like "Imumoccupancy120", to which the other one replied "There is a number in your name?". But, I guess, it isn't impossible in real life ;)
- WalterBright 11y agoThis is why I don't buy the theory that automation will make jobs obsolete. The fact that automation produces enough surplus to enable the employment of people to do articles like this!
- jkira 11y agoI had some fun with this idea by modding Dot-o-mator's name generator code to cook up random restaurant names... http://www.dotomator.com/namers/asian-restaurant.html http://www.dotomator.com/namers/asian-restaurant.html :)
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoUltimate Chinese restaurant name: China Panda Garden Chinese Restaurant Express!