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How Chinese is chinese cuisine outside China?
Apr 13, 2007 01:55
  • DREAMCATCHER
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I wonder how chinese are Chinese Restaurants outside China.

These restaurants serve some imitation chinese dishes and claimed to be serving chinese cuisines.

Beijing duck in Hong Kong & Singapore looks very much like an ordinary roasted duck. Just name it Beijing Duck and you have a winner here.

I believe that for commercial reasons, the recipes have to be modified to suit local tastes. Thus, the name chinese cuisine becomes a misnomer. But then, it is good for business. The name Chinese Cuisines carry a lot of weight. It is a sure-win situation for the restaurants.

Apr 13, 2007 06:28
#1  
  • AIRAN
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I tell abt India and USA.
India has a so called chinese food outlet in almost every street ..these are smart food outlets who sell the popular food items from various parts of the world ..meaning ..same outlet doing pizza,burgers and chowmin noodles ..
noodles are quite populer there with the name of chowmin and soups are quite popular too ..but customized to indian taste.
The chinese resturants in US are more of fast food joints(there are some pure chinese also) but noodles is something most popular ....
Apr 13, 2007 13:02
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  • CHYNAGYRL
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The Chinese food in major North American cities with large Chinese populations (San Fran, Vancouver, Toronto) is very good and covers the regional cuisines from different parts of China. Generally, when people in N.A. think of Chinese food, they think Cantonese cuisine since the Hong Kong -originated businesses have really good food and dim sum. Now there's starting to be more Taiwanese, Shanghaiese and Beijing style joints. American Chinese food is different, and can be found in many towns, in the small ones. They have dishes like chop suey, lemon chicken, egg rolls, that were popularized here by the first Chinese immigrants.

My parents travel a lot and they tell me the Chinese food in Europe is generally of a much lower quality than what is available in North America. Nice architecture, history and art, but if you love Chinese food, continental Europe is probably not the best place to find it The Chinese restaurants serve small, expensive dishes that sometimes don't even taste remotely like a comparable dish in China. :-)
Apr 13, 2007 17:33
#3  
  • JANFRISK
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I know of one of the worst; it's Chinese in sweden (northen country of far away), everybody (swedish) think of their "Chinese resturants" as genuine, and promise they love this kind of fake food.
It's really much of some smart hongkong chinese immigrants that make this "sweinch cousine", certaninly only made for swedes! ;-)
Apr 14, 2007 06:16
#4  
  • APAULT
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Australia is similar to Sweden, In Australia we have terrible tasteless 'Chinese food' throughout the country in rural areas and city suburbs. !!! No or minimal garlic, or they use powder, no chillies, few other spices, few if any soup dishes, and a typical dish is a stir fry in a tasteless cornflour sauce.

In the largest cities there are some excellent Chinese restaurants run by Chinese for Chinese. I go to Chinese suburbs rather than the Chinatown in the city. Of course there is some concession to locally available produce and to the changing style of the Chinese themselves.
Apr 15, 2007 00:36
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  • GRIZ326
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I think CHYNAGYRL is correct; whenever there is a large Chinese population, the food is reasonably authentic. Elsewhere it is just Chinese style food.
Apr 15, 2007 02:51
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  • FAERIEQUEENE
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i find the chinese restaurants in Hong Kong are very specialised in regional specialities (even speciality in certain town) and their food are amazingly tasty, many have chefs from mainland china. Those restaurants are of high quality in terms of culinary skills, presentation, service and ambiance

here is a peking duck we had the other time in a not kind of famous restaurant, and it was very tasty

Apr 15, 2007 02:56
#7  
  • FAERIEQUEENE
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another slice of peking duck outside china

Apr 15, 2007 04:28
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  • EVENING
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Wish someday, I could open a genuine Chinese restaurant out of China, to let the whole world know the real Chinese cuisine! LOL.....
Nov 26, 2008 04:16
#9  
  • WANHU
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How do you define a Chinese dish or cuisine? Is it because cooked by a Chinese using "chinese" cooking utensils, or liked by the Chinese, or renowned in China mainland or...?

I can say something about Thai tomyum, the famous spicy sour soup. The fresh ingrediants are not easy to find, and even more expensive. The full ingredients may land a bowl too expensive to buy. Dried galangal, dried kaffir lemon leaves, dried coriander leaves won't taste the same as the fresh ones. Thus, probably one ofthe reasons why tomyum in Thailand is more original and tastier,although both are cooked by Thai chefs.

Wan
Mar 3, 2009 11:20
#10  
GUEST61022 i dont like any chinese food!!!
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