Why do so many Chinese restaurants serve "Bourbon chicken"? (restaurant, shrimp)

[Tracysherm]

I just had to throw that out there. To my understanding, this is a New Orleans-originated southern dish. But nearly every Chinese restaurant, and EVERY "chinese" buffet serves it.

This seems to have started in the 90s, but it's still going strong.

[rainroosty]

I cannot stand that Bourbon Chicken! You are so right-on, Tracy!
Lordy, throw that crap in the garbage!

[Strelnikov]

Yep, most of the "Chinese" restaurants in the US are actually "Chinese-American" and are aimed at American tastes with little do with Chinese cuisine. I began looking at nutritional information on popular "Chinese" chains, and I was shocked: I be just as well off eating at McDonalds! (If I ate meat, that is!)

[Tracysherm]

Aside from not being even remotely Chinese or even Asian (or even actual chicken) it's usually terrible. Stringy, grizzly, slimy dark-meat chicken that they try to disguise by not-very-Cajun-flavored Cajun sauce.

[toosie]

I've only ever seen that in food courts where there's a "cajun" place and a "chinese" place right next to each other and they're both run by the same people.

[Tracysherm]

I've seen those too in the malls. Very weird combination of cultures, I've gotta say!

But this bourbon chicken phenomenon has also made its way into our local "good" chinese restaurants around here. I don't think we have chain Chinese places around here, except PF Changs. I guess they are in other parts of the country.

[toosie]

Originally Posted by TracySam

I've seen those too in the malls. Very weird combination of cultures, I've gotta say!

But this bourbon chicken phenomenon has also made its way into our local "good" chinese restaurants around here.

Really? Like better table service restaurants and not just take out joints? That's weird. And yes, the whole combo even at the mall is bizarre to me. Although, I gotta say - at the mall I do get the bourbon chicken! With green beans and steamed rice. Shhh...don't tell!

[Debsi]

I don't see it at the good Chinese restaurants here. I've never been to a Chinese buffet that wasn't nasty though. They may have it at those.

I stick to the little mom and pop hole in the wall restaurants.

[Tracysherm]

Yep, I just went to a fairly decent Chinese restaurant where you can have a nice dinner with cloth napkins, table cloths, BYOB, etc, and they had it.

Sheesh. I guess there are people out there who had it in the mall and think it's actual Chinese food, and they started asking for it, so it was added to the menu.

I'm gonna go to a nice French restaurant and ask why they don't have French toast until they cave-in and add it to the menu!

[Clark Park]

Originally Posted by TracySam

Yep, I just went to a fairly decent Chinese restaurant where you can have a nice dinner with cloth napkins, table cloths, BYOB, etc, and they had it.

When I was a little kid going out to eat in a Chinese restaurant was a real treat. Yes, the restaurants were really nice with an exotic decor, full of dragons, carved screens and tasseled lanterns. In those days our favorite dishes were things like shrimp in lobster sauce, roast pork with Chinese vegetables, egg foo young, chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, moo goo gai pan, Buddha's Delight, etc.

Those places still exist, but you have took for them.

Just a few weeks ago I found one while driving back from Atlantic City to Philadelphia: New Chinatown Restaurant on Route 30 (White Horse Pike) in Berlin, New Jersey. The hostess was actually wearing a formal Chinese silk "Suzy Wong" type dress with mandarin collar. The food was great - but let's get this straight - this was the Americanized "Cantonese Cuisine" of my childhood, NOT authentic Chinese food. You get to choose from column "A" and from column "B" ...