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> walked into a P.F. Chang's, and had General Tso's Chicken To be a touch contrarian, I'd even argue that the kind of food served in some of the newer chain re
by bane 10y ago
> walked into a P.F. Chang's, and had General Tso's Chicken
To be a touch contrarian, I'd even argue that the kind of food served in some of the newer chain restaurants isn't even proper traditional American-Chinese food (which seems to have shown up sometime in the late 19th, early 20th century). One of the things I've come to appreciate after lots of travel and lots of <insertcountry>-Chinese food is how well developed and embedded American-Chinese food is as an American cuisine.
There's rough variants of it in Western Europe when you can find it, but it's a little different. But you can find an American-Chinese restaurant in almost every po-dunk country town across the entirety of America. I've been to places where the only places around to get prepared foods was a local gas station and a Chinese takeout. And the menu is both incredibly standardized, but quintessentially American.
P.F. Chang, Ka Pao, and a couple other of the new food places seem to be putting an effort to "de-ethnic" the food and make the preparation and presentation of it shift a bit more into familiar American diets. It's actually kind of hard to talk about without ending up confused with the words, but the nearest I can think of is a spectrum from:
<food somebody from China would recognize> - to - <food an American would routinely make for themselves>
These new Chinese dining places seem to shift a bit more to the American side, and lose some of that scrappy mom&pop Chinese takeout joint charm and replace it with fresh faced, often Caucasian college kids serving healthy optioned brown rice and not too spicy or oily (and not too tasty) variants of American-Chinese favorites.
America has a lot of very interesting quasi-ethnic cuisines that are no longer recognizable by the people from their origins, but also don't really exist outside of the U.S. in any meaningful way.
Some day, perhaps, we'll just think of it as "food" and it'll be solidly on the right of that weird spectrum, much in the way Ramen is thought of as "food" in Japan even though it's also Chinese-Japanese cuisine. P.F. Chang's is a step towards Ramenizing American-Chinese food, but it still makes me feel a bit sad.
My only hope is the more recent trend of more "authentic" regional and modern Chinese cuisine finally starting to show up as a new wave in the U.S. Non-scary (for Americans), high quality, and tasty Chinese foods are starting to appear in American cities, often with an American-Chinese section on the menu.
- spc476 10y agoYou can find an American-Chinese restaurant everywhere, but I was very surprised to find a Chinese-Mexican restaurant in Florida (Indiantown, Florida to be precise): https://www.google.com/maps/@27.024428,-80.4724516,3a,75y,218.04h,91.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smB9PfMrpI8aZoZNIjDYbKg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@27.024428,-80.4724516,3a,75y,21... Haven't eaten there, but have passed the place plenty of times (girlfriend's Mom used to live in Indiantown).
- partisan 10y agoI had plenty of meals at Chino-Latino places growing up. In my neighborhood, they were the only Chinese food places that offered a sit-down dining experience. Every standard Chinese place was all takeout and even then, all transactions took place through some bulletproof plexiglass. At the Chino-Latino places, you would get toasted slices of italian bread and butter instead of fried noodles and duck sauce and you could get you favorite sides like mofongo or tostones. I miss the experience. My mom would treat us to it when she could.
- tremendo 10y ago> …but I was very surprised to find a Chinese-Mexican restaurant in Florida… Here in AZ there's Chino Bandido that attempts this fusion, and many seem to like it. Personally I, a mexican, was not particularly impressed. On the other hand I thoroughly enjoy the Jap-Mex Sushirrito. Then again the whole of Mexican food here in the US is at least somewhat americanized too.
- ebiester 10y agoWhen I used to spend more time in Phoenix, it was a semi-regular stop. I look at it as its own thing, not to be judged against its component cultures.
- colomon 10y ago"But you can find an American-Chinese restaurant in almost every po-dunk country town across the entirety of America." This is a relatively recent development, BTW. I grew up in small town Michigan. In the 70s, when we wanted Chinese food, we actually drove 30 minutes to Sarnia, Canada. (Or cooked it ourselves.) In the 80s, a place finally opened in town. As late as the early 90s we were still occasionally going for Chinese in Canada because they were still marginally better than the local places. But in the last 20 years only nostalgia would get me going to Sarnia primarily for Chinese food. (The dim sum place in Windsor is a different matter!)
- rco8786 10y agoFrom what I understand(I believe there's a documentary out there) there is a company that helps Chinese immigrants get on their feet in the US by helping them start an American Chinese restaurant. They give them menus, recipes, and to your point above...help find places that don't have a lot of Chinese restaurants around. It's something similar to a franchise model. But it explains why you can find nearly identical yet seemingly unrelated Chinese restaurants in every podunk town.