Reply to S/O: Chinese or Chinese Americans, can you tell us about American Chinese food?

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Reply to "S/O: Chinese or Chinese Americans, can you tell us about American Chinese food?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I lived in China for years. Chinese American food isn't the same food as Chinese food. It's a separate "cuisine" and shouldn't be compared or confused.

Like a PP said, many Chinese restaurants will have two menus. One for the American food and one of the more Chinese style food.[/quote]

OP here. What I’m honestly asking is like, what is on that menu? Same dishes prepared differently, or entirely different dishes, etc. I’m looking for specific descriptions.[/quote]

China is a massive country with dozens of local regions all with their own food history and traditions. Listing "what's on the menu in China" would fill multiple volumes.

In terms of comparing the menu of a typical American Chinese menu to their bastardized counterparts, that narrows it down a little, but not much. There are dishes like General Tso's Chicken that are purely non-Chinese in origin and have no Chinese counterpart. There are dishes like Lo Mein that have a passing similarity to many, many Chinese dishes, but it would be impossible to pin down "American Lo Mein came from this particular dish."  Then there are dishes like the generic "fried/steamed dumplings" that are pretty darn close to pork and cabbage dumplings you'd find in China but tweaked towards American tastes with a bigger pork to cabbage ratio and also tweaked towards mass production with a much thicker wrapper presumably to aid machine production and increase shipability.  There are a few dishes I can think of that do have a direct counterpart and are just dumbed down on the American menu, but not many.  Double cooked pork is one - the Chinese version uses very fatty meat from the belly and is often dripping in flavorful oil, while the American version uses lean cuts and far less oil.

Then on the other end there will be lots and lots of items on the Chinese menu that have no bastardized counterpart on the American menu. Mapo doufu for example you will rarely find in American Chinese restaurants, and in restaurants with two menus will generally always be on the Chinese side.

Really you'd need to go dish by dish. There's just too much variety in food in China to generalize like you're asking. [/quote]

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