Have you ever had REAL Chinese food?

Question

I lived in China for a year and let me tell you, the food there is AMAZING. Makes the stuff here taste bad.

If you've eaten in a Chinatown or similar area you can count yourself as a "yes" too.

The main difference is the ingredients, of course. :)

Oils, spices, and the wok all make a difference. Even the fried rice is different! There are dishes we just don't see, like fried corn... mmmm...

Dumplings are awesome, my all time favorite in our city.

Comparing real Chinese food to Chinese here in the States is like comparing a fast food burger to one made by a good cook on his own grill.

Answer 1

I guess it's no for me then.

Answer 2

I'm a 100% Chinese, my dad is a very good cook, I can cook too, so I believe that I always eat real Chinese food at our home!
I have been to many places like Shanghai, Beijing, Dalian, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Yangzhou, those big cities have different characters when come to food. All are nice and unique. As I like cooking, when I travel around places for business or vacation, I always have a little chance to cook and go to the local market to have some fun shoppng. I lived in Tokyo for 3 years and I pretty much missed my Chinese dishes that I had to hunt all the ingredients from Kinokuniya (Tokyo) till to the Yokohama (China Town) .. still, it was fun and i enjoyed the food I prepared for my friends.

When I'mtravelling in Europe or in US I usually don't go to the Chinese Restaurants unless the clients insisst to bring me there! Honestly, I want to explore different food in that area and hope to have some culture shock. It was fun to me to have a unique approach to food! If I have 5 days in London, then I would have timeto get the "bo chai fan" - rice pot in their Chinatown.
And having Fried rice in the Vancvour's Chinatown is not bad too, most of the people working there are from Hong kong, we spoke the same language. My motto is.when Im in Japan, I eat what Japanese eat, when I'm in Korea, I eat what Korean eat. When I'm in America, I eat American food. So that I can gain more experience on different things, that includes good or bad of the place.

Answer 3

I visited Shanghai for about a month and I had always wondered about the difference in the food served here in the US. Now I know why they call it Chinese-American food. It doesn't come close to the food served in Northern Mainland China.
If you want to lose weight China is the place to go. They have very little fried food, bread and sweets in their diet. They eat a lot of vegetables. They also drown you in green tea.
Some of the more interesting meals are as follows:
Braised fish heads
Some kind of a snake soup (I have had both large and small sections of snake in the soup - the smaller ones were delicious).
Braised dog (This was good as I was starving for meat)
Chinese burrito (skin from a baked duck, with shallots and plum sauce rolled up in a Chinese pancake).
Raw sea food of all types.
The best meal and standard fare for the Chinese citizens was steamed dumplings. It is dough shaped like over-sized hershey kisses and the inside is filled with seafood or meat with seasonings. They steam it in bamboo containers. It is delicious.
I understand Southern China has a lot of rice in their diet but I did not go there. That is what surprised me most. I thought all Chinese ate rice but not in the northern provinces.

Answer 4

Yup, the stuff my Chinese mother-in-law makes and food I had in Hong Kong, too. I don't always like my MIL's stuff but the food in HK was awesome.

Chinatown can be hit or miss. If you go to a hole in the wall, okay, but some of the bigger restaurants cater to American tastes.

By the way, fried rice is considered a "leftover" dish by Chinese. You take whatever leftover meat and veggies you have and throw in an egg, stir fry with leftover rice, and there you go. They think it's funny how Americans actually order it off a menu.

Answer 5

No, but I have tried REAL Italian, French, and Switzerland (what would you call that? Swiss?) food while I was traveling through Europe.

My friends dad went to china and brought back sweets though. I had never tasted anything like it...most of them were very good but there was one that wasn't that good at all. Hopefully one day I'll get to try some real Chinese food!

Answer 6

Yes. Some of my favorites are Bah Kuh Teh, it's a pork ribs cooked in a variety of herbs and spices. Their Hainanese chicken rice is so tasty. Tau Yu Bak, it'll make you eat more than you want. Char Siew if cooked just right is awesome. Their fried rice is great especially if they put chinese sausage and charsiew in it it.

Answer 7

Did you try what the daughter's make for their ailing mothers?

Other than that, here in Hawaii...we have a choice on diet, especially in the morning. In simpler terms, our toast in the morning is rice. It starts from there, and most of us with practical cooking skills cook better than what you would get in a public kitchen on the mainland.
No bragging, just real.
Chinese cooking is a different lifestyle of cooking than mainland America.
I do not approve of eating dogs, or monkeys.
No apologies forthcoming on that either.

Strange days ahead to you!

Answer 8

Racism, like any other human fioble, is best left to die a lonely death. I am from the SF bay area, and that is an advantage, as we grew up form day 1 in fully integrated schools, which means, that from an early age we saw that it didn't matter a what persons nationality was, it was what htey could do, that counted,, play sports, get girls, make you laugh, physical strength, goodness, or badness, none of it was linked to nationality (that''s what we call it out here,, kinda defangs the hyena). Race has really only become an issue in this country again in the last 15 years as the economy has again turned down, thanks all politicians selling our jobs overseas. People need a scape goat to make themselves feel better,, and as many in this country have tried to return to thier favrite scapegoat they have found it difficult, as us people who have been raised w/o it will not execpt it, at all. Best to leave it alone. Racism hasn't done anything to black people. Evil individuals, who should be punished, for thier offensive action, however, have personaly attempted to mistreat their fellow man on the narrow excuse of their ancestors achient origins. I hope it sounds as ridiculus as the premise truly is. evil is as evil does. trying to understand it will only make you a worse person, Instead I would suggest you concentrate on how to treat everybody Fairly,, and watch the opposition come out of the woodwork. C.

Answer 9

i lived in Hong Kong. and i now live in Portland Oregon we have some exceptional dim sum here. harder to find canton though.um mm intelligent_friendlist..I'm sorry but if you actually want some real Chinese food San Fransisco china town has nothing on BC. And they didn't 'ruin' anything like all cultures they changed it. i suppose you also think that Japanese food was 'ruined' cause the Hawaiian make the sauce so sweet.

Answer 10

The answers here don't really care. It is kind of like the customers who claim to like hot and spicy and then scream when the general tso's is hot and spicy and not sweet like sweet and sour with the sour dropped. The way the customer ruined chinese in America means they get what they Need and Deserve. Bad Food. I only eat chinese in NYC or San Francisco as I want it to be at least as reasonably good as it is in China. What a shame for a whole country to be so stupid as to ruin this for everyone. So sad.

Answer 11

China town in New York, San Francisco - I have also had Chinese food in London - which was very good.

But I still like my around the corner Chinese take out!;)