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Why don't we have real Chinese food in the United States?
We don't -- just believe me -- outside of a few places such as Monterey Park or Flushing, Queens.
Dan Drezner poses the query, and considers immigration restrictions as a factor, though without endorsing that hypothesis. Immigration can't be the key reason, since I can learn to cook the stuff (really), there is plenty of excellent Chinese food in Tanzania (really), and most French food in America is cooked by Mexicans (that you already knew), albeit with instructions. The main problems are simple:
1. Cantonese food requires super fresh ingredients, lots of vegetables, and amazing seafood. That's three strikes right there, especially below the gourmet price level.
2. Sichuan and Hunan foods are oily, often very spicy, and most of all use lots of animal fat. Nor do they hesitate to serve up chicken kidneys, pig's maw, and the like. This is essential for these cuisines to taste good but it all goes against the American grain. To cite one example, Mexican food cooked with fresh lard tastes much better than with vegetable oil, yet most Mexican families, within a generation and a half, make the switch to vegetable oil (que triste!).
3. Even today most Chinese cities are huge gardens with massive swathes of small-plot farmland, right within the city. Shanghai too. The short food supply chain makes many things tastier, as they are sold fresh in daily markets. The cuisine is designed around that system, whereas mass-produced American cuisine meshes with long-distance trucking. This clash of culinary civilizations penalizes true Chinese styles, though I'll still predict that real Sichuan will be the next big food trend here in the U.S. In my household, it already is.
Since there is excellent and reasonably authentic Chinese food in densely populated Chinese-American communities, consumer demand (see #2) is probably the major factor.
For the comments I'll stipulate no rehashing of the usual immigration debates; you all have enough chances to do that.
p.s. On MR it's China Day!
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 19, 2007 at 10:54 AM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
Americanized Chinese food sells pretty well, and it would take inspiration as well as appropriate local culture to try more authentic food here. It's getting easier to get good veggies, so perhaps it's more likely to get tried.
A lot of American Chinese food is heavily sugared, especially at the low end. Is that part of Chinese cooking in China?
Posted by: Nancy Lebovitz at Jun 19, 2007 11:08:14 AM
I've been to China a couple of times. At the mid to upper end, Chinese food in the US is better than in China. The ingredients seem fresher, the food better prepared.
Posted by: Ned at Jun 19, 2007 11:42:12 AM
The problem is that most chinese restaurant are just poorly run operations.
If you review the weekly health department reports it become apparent that it is the Chinese restaurants that routinely fail health inspections. If they cannot keep the roaches out of the walk in cooler and they use expired food, how can they be innovative in their cuisine.
Second, I tried a Chinese restaurant in Fairfax County that is recommended by Tyler. The experience was less than satisfactory. The waitress/server could barely speak English. Even though it should have been obvious to anyone that I was there to be adventuresome, the serve could make no suggestions, could not help at all, and seem to want to discourage me from ordering off the chinese language part of the meny. It lead me to believe that most chinese restaurants seem to exist to create no paycheck jobs for relatives and are not there to produce a good produce.
Posted by: superdestroyer at Jun 19, 2007 11:53:38 AM
"I'll still predict that real Sichuan will be the next big food trend here"
Please! I only know it from Dunlop's book, but even if my attempts are only within shouting distance of the real thing, it's a great cuisine.
Posted by: Todd Fletcher at Jun 19, 2007 12:01:26 PM
Chinese food has become nearly synonymous with takeout. Could this have lead to a decline in quality, as items are prepared to "travel" well and not necessarily to taste good when served immediately after preparation?
Posted by: Peter at Jun 19, 2007 12:02:42 PM
If you eat Sushi in Des Moines, are you eating authentic Japanese?
Living in the SF Bay Area, I have to say, there are a lot of great food options, some of them Chinese in the most authentic variety - shoot, you can walk into a particularly nondescript restaurant and not see a single white face in the place - all of them speaking the local dialect of Cantonese or Mandarin. Moreover, I can't speak to the freshness of the ingredients, but given that I'm able to shop the same farmers markets almost daily, I think they area about as fresh as you can get.
By your definition, would these be "authentic?"
There is a slow food movement that a number of folks are advocating round these parts, that promotes sitting round with friends, cooking your own whatever ethnicity food you like. Sounds like a good idea.
My primary beef with the industry are the great and vast number of restaurants that claim they are serving fresh food daily when all they do is reheat the prepreped food delivered that morning off the back of a Sysco Foods truck.
I went to a supposedly "authentic" fish and chips place last year, and vowed never to be back as you could tell at the first bite, they didn't serve freshly battered fish of their own secrete ingredients...it was fried frozen bricks that tasted like paste.
Posted by: windspike at Jun 19, 2007 12:13:42 PM
The real mystery to me is that the Chinese food we do have here (sugar-coated, greasy, nondescript hunks of a vaguely meat-like substance) tastes so good, in a disgusting sort of way. Also, the homogeneity between carryout places, in the absence of chains (that I know of), is surprising to me. Do all of these places buy sauces from the same supplier?
Maybe part of the answer for the lack of authentic Chinese here is branding: Saying "I want Chinese" to me means "I want junk food." Fresh vegetables and seafood (except shrimp fried rice) don't even enter my mind. If Tyler is right and Sichuan cuisine will be the next big thing, maybe people will go out for "Sichuan" and "Cantonese" and whatever other culinary traditions from China become popular, and going out for "Chinese" will still mean junk food. Just a thought.
Posted by: d.cous. at Jun 19, 2007 12:20:56 PM
I have absolutely nothing of substance to add, I just want to gloat that I live five miles from monterey park/alhambra/san gabriel. It's awesome.
Posted by: v at Jun 19, 2007 12:38:03 PM
the real reason, which nobody wants to admit, is that most chinese food in china (esp northern and shanghainese) is greasy, fatty, and not very good. there's also an overreliance on lesser-quality meats: frogs, mutton, chicken feet, turtles, pork knuckles/elbows, sparrow nests, intestines, etc.
food from sichuan can be much better than other regions -- but when made properly it's usually too spicy for the american palate.
Posted by: zz at Jun 19, 2007 12:42:08 PM
Tyler, what about Rockville, MD? How inauthentic are places like Joe's Noodle House and A&J, for example?
Posted by: JW at Jun 19, 2007 12:42:44 PM
How about Fu Mei, the funky place in Great Wall Market on Gallows? If that's not authentic, then they've gone out of their way to make it just plain weird!
Posted by: johnshade at Jun 19, 2007 12:49:07 PM
I guess I don't care too much about authentic, but the idea that Chinese food in the U.S. is invariably sweet and bland doesn't reflect my experience at all -- spicy Szechuan/Hunan dishes are common around here and Cantonese dishes less so. I'm not sure you could find Chop Suey or even Chow Mein if you wanted it.
Posted by: Slocum at Jun 19, 2007 12:59:11 PM
To make a bit of an analogy, I think it's great that I can go for "Italian" food at places like Pizza Hut, Dominos, or California Pizza Kitchen -- or I can go for real Italian food at a more authentic restaurant. They all have their place. Likewise, at least locally we see the same sort of diversity in Chinese/"Chinese" restaurants, and I would love the trend to continue, with both sorts getting better and more common.
Also, while Dominos and your average mediocre carry-out "Chinese" place both make lousy food compared to the best examples (Americanized or "authentic") of their genres, their food is fantastic compared to your average McDonald's or Burger King.
Posted by: Sol at Jun 19, 2007 1:04:17 PM
Cantonese food requires super fresh ingredients,
Right, I'm sure it makes a HUGE difference if it's just "very fresh" rather than "super fresh".
I can't wait to hear your theories on wine...
Posted by: Person at Jun 19, 2007 1:16:23 PM
I think it's fair to consider "Chinese food" similar to "European food", given the vast differences in style in different regions. I certainly think we'll see Chinese food broken down into regional cuisine, particularly for things like Mongolian (think hotpot, literally huagua in Mandarin), Hunanese, Sichaunese and Cantonese. I can't imagine a large market for cuisines like Tibetan, Pekinese (aside from duck, of course), Dongbei, etc. To continue the analogy, these are the Irelands and Norways of the Chinese food world.
It's safe to say that American Chinese food is heavily Southern at the moment; Cantonese, Fujianese and Sichuanese were the most common early immigrants to the States. The major difference is the spiciness (and inclusion of rice) in the South versus the blander, noodle-heavy Northern diet.
Posted by: cure at Jun 19, 2007 1:17:17 PM
I don't believe most Americans would be all that interested in truly Chinese food. Most of us have palates that have become accustomed to deep-fried, salty and sugary food and that are immune to the attractions of fresher ingredients and different textures than what we're used to.
What zz wrote partially proves this: "there's also an overreliance on lesser-quality meats: frogs, mutton, chicken feet, turtles, pork knuckles/elbows, sparrow nests, intestines, etc."
Lesser quality to you, maybe. Some of these things are expensive!
By the way, I find it hard to believe that Tyler can really cook a variety of Chinese food. 饺子 jiǎozi, for instance.
Posted by: hanmeng at Jun 19, 2007 1:21:02 PM
d.chou -- interesting what you say about branding. I'm Southern Chinese and was raised on said diet, and when I think "I want something healthy and light for dinner tonight", my automatic options are Chinese and Japanese. A noodle soup, roast meat on rice, some fresh vegetables, etc. When I think "Italian" and "French", OTOH, I associate those cuisines with being rich and heavy - cream based sauces, pastas, platos muy fuertes.
and to hanmeng -- jiaozi aren't hard to make... why would you doubt that, out of all there is to doubt? I'd be more interested to see if he could rustle up a good stirfry with genuine wok hei, since I suspect that (like most of us) his home stovetop lacks the BTUs...
Posted by: Michelle at Jun 19, 2007 1:27:40 PM
Same with Italian food. Even going beyond the obviously Americanized restaurants into various trendy cafes and fancy expensive restaurants, I haven't found food even close to what you find in Italy or even the food that my Italian immigrant grandparents cook.
My theory is practicality: Different ingredients, food preparation, and distribution methods are more practical in different parts of the world. All these factors affect the final taste, flavor, and experience of the food.
For example, it's particularly hard to reproduce unusual "street" food. In some areas, there is a popular food that you can buy from a street vendor or a casual corner store. The food is made very cheaply and very quickly to be sold in mass quantities. It's hard to recreate the same food, flavor, and experience as a specialty dish in an expensive non-native restaurant and make that effort worthwhile to the restaurant owner.
What is a great Chinese restaurant in Flushing, Queens? I go there quite frequently and would love to check that out.
Posted by: Giovanni at Jun 19, 2007 2:03:54 PM
hmm, maybe it's time I opened that donkey burger restaurant.
What's wrong with dongbei food? People who went from the north to Shanghai always told me the food there was too bland.
Posted by: Matt at Jun 19, 2007 2:23:15 PM
If we assume that Canada has the same food infrastructure as the US, then we can make the hypothesis that it's something about US culture, as we have very, very Chinese restaurants up here. Like in Vancouver and places like Pacific Mall north of Toronto. Of course, this is based on the assumption that if you can't get service in the restaurant in English then it must be authentic.
Posted by: Guy at Jun 19, 2007 2:31:48 PM
Oh, foo. "Real" is the most meaningless adjective in the English language, particularly when applied to food.
Unless you seek to reproduce a particular terroir, which is nearly impossible, there is no such thing as authenticity, and a terroir only really means anything to those whose taste is imprinted from birth on it. To anyone else, particularly American diners, quality is what matters - an achieving it means not slavishly adhering to principles irrelevant outside of China, but looking at what principles make that cuisine worthwhile and applying them to the best available ingredients (which are necessarily going to be different). Authenticity is overwhelmingly a tool used by pretentious people to put down everyone else.
That said, San Francisco and Vancouver both have exceptional Chinese restaurants at the high end. While my month in Beijing exposed me to many wonderful things that are unavailable here, there was also a lot of things that are available here, and the quality is equivalent.
Posted by: Tony at Jun 19, 2007 2:43:42 PM
Perhaps the reason (that we don't have "real" Chinese food here) is that we are too fond of dogs and cats as pets?
Posted by: indiana jim at Jun 19, 2007 2:59:41 PM
Two comments:
First, what the heck does "real" mean?
Second, sorry Tyler but a better explanation for this alleged phenomenon is that its assumption is false, and you and Dan just don't know where to go.
Posted by: zlguocius at Jun 19, 2007 3:05:52 PM
My experience has been that ethnic food of all types in the US is less authentic than in other western countries. I've spent several years in Asia (Singapore, HK and China) living on the various regional Chinese cuisines and I've never seen most of the dishes on the menu in Chinese restaurant's here.
It's definitely a cultural problem. Americans have the worst case of 'not invented here'. So they insist on food being modified to their tastes and then come to think that's the authentic thing. I've actually seen Americans in Hong Kong complaining that the food is not like the Chinese food at home! In the same way I'm sure most American's think that Starbuck's invented the cappucino.
The only time you find authentic ethnic food is if you find a restaurant that primarily serves an immigrant community. Of you want decent Chinese food (without going to China which is my rather drastic solution) go deep into Chinatown in San Francisco or New York and find a restaurant where nobody speaks much English!
Posted by: Dan Hill at Jun 19, 2007 3:18:49 PM
Michelle,
I'm talking jiǎozi made from scratch, with home-made wrapping.
Posted by: hanmeng at Jun 19, 2007 5:05:12 PM
