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>The "local Chinese restaurant" is a much more franchised thing than most people are aware of This is interesting (but also makes sense) -- do you happen to ha
by hhmc 5y ago
>The "local Chinese restaurant" is a much more franchised thing than most people are aware of
This is interesting (but also makes sense) -- do you happen to have an article?
- spoonjim 5y agoI don’t think the “franchise” is literal in terms of a royalty — it’s just that the vast majority of Chinese restaurants order their supplies from the same few distributors yielding largely similar results. It’s why you pretty much know what you’re getting when you go to a new Chinese restaurant in a way that you don’t at a new Italian restaurant.
- bencollier49 5y agoSame deal with Patak's sauces in Indian restaurants in the UK nowadays, unfortunately.
- sidlls 5y agoWe have those sauces in jars available on the shelf at my local grocer (Safeway, Bay Area, US). Bastardized or not, they are tasty.
- bencollier49 5y agoApparently it's the pastes which are used: https://www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/bulk-pataks-balti-curry-paste-10121-p.asp https://www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/bulk-pataks-balti-curry-p... It's a shame, because a lot of the dishes have lost a lot of their subtlety and especially regional variation.
- sidlls 5y agoYeah, that's what I'm talking about. They are a bit bland and more salty as compared with properly done from-scratch versions of the sauces, marinades, and sautés, but they're not too bad.
- kenneth 5y agoAs an expat who lives in China and loves Chinese food, it makes me incredibly sad that in the Western world Chinese food is basically greasy bland cheap garbage generally inspired by 19th century Cantonese immigration (chop suey, fried rice, and various stir frys, plus uniquely American inventions like orange chicken or fortune cookies). What happened to the amazing food of Taiwan, Hunan, Sichuan, Shaanxi? There's so much better Chinese food than what you'll find at your average American Chinese restaurant. It's getting a bit better but there's still a long way to go even in the cities that have more Chinese options (NYC, west coast cities)
- alliao 5y agowhat you're witness isn't actually Chinese food it's the melting pot of multiculturalism in action. Just like curry in UK, General Tso's chicken is now part of the US identity. New comers will bring new forks but the old dare I say classics are here to stay.
- jrochkind1 5y agoSichuan seems pretty popular in the USA these days. In the medium-sized city where I live, there is a standard American Chinese place by a university which is frankly not very good even for American Chinese food, but was owned by people from sichuan and would make off menu sichuan dishes for immigrant students. But they noticed non-immigrant Americans ordering them too, and wisely noticed the general trend going on, and the same owners up a different place a few miles away with actual sichuan food and prices 2x+ higher, which has been very successful. :) In Philadelphia there's also the popular Han Dynasty chain of sichuan places. I'd imagine even the places with food closer to "actual" sichuan food, if they are popular with non-Chinese people, have "Americanized" to some extent. I couldn't say as they are my only exposure to it! But I know sometimes I get something where the flavors/textures are just TOO different than what I'm used to, and I just don't like it!
- 41209 5y agoDo you have any tips on getting real Chinese food in America. I was planning on living in Asia later this year, but it doesn't look like the pandemic will be under control by then
- bluedino 5y agoI came across a web site that looked like it was written in Geocities-style, it was a chinese food distributor and they basically sold a chinese restaurant in a box kit. All the food to make the menu, all the accessories like boxes and fortune cookies...
- ngcazz 5y agoI've always presumed as much. Chinese restaurants, in Portugal at least, are practically indistinguishable from one another.
- devb 5y agoThis is a good read on it: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/cookas-tale https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/cookas-tale
- ruddct 5y agoAnother good one, on the fruit/veg supply side of things: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fruits-and-veggies-are-so-crazy-cheap-in-chinatown-1466762400 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fruits-and-veggies-are-so-c...
- jrochkind1 5y agowow, what a fascinating article!
- dang 5y agoAlso discussed at the time! Why Fruits and Veggies Are So Cheap in Chinatown - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063 - June 2016 (237 comments)
- hhmc 5y agohttps://outline.com/rsHPec https://outline.com/rsHPec
- dang 5y agoDiscussed at the time! The Kitchen Network: America’s Underground Chinese Restaurant Workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425246 - Oct 2014 (39 comments)
- boomboomsubban 5y agoI don't, I read about it nearly twenty years ago and my attempts at searching for it again can't get past the actual franchises like Panda Express. Parts of it are incredibly obvious though, things like interior design, the Chinese Zodiac place mats, fortune cookies and Sriracha.
- showerst 5y agoThere's a great documentary on this -- http://www.thesearchforgeneraltso.com/ http://www.thesearchforgeneraltso.com/ There are immigrant associations that will take recent Chinese immigrants, train them to cook the US staples, help them find a new "territory", and finance the restaurant. It's really fascinating.
- bigbillheck 5y agoJennifer 8. Lee wrote a book about it: http://fortunecookiechronicles.com http://fortunecookiechronicles.com