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My go-to reason for having Chinese food is mapo tofu, which I'm told is the classic Chinese comfort food, much like mac 'n cheese is to Americans. Whenever I go to a new restaurant and order it, the waiter is always surprised that *I* am ordering *that* instead of the usual American fare.
You really want to surprise 'em order it pronounced as "ma pwo doe fu", and give the pwua a rising tone and doe a falling tone.
What I see happening is instead of 20 Chinese restaurants in one city all basically having the same foods, they will start to bring in traditional Chinese cuisines. In China if one goes to 20 restaurants, I'd be surprised if 2 of them carried many of the same menu items. In the US its ridiculous that so many restaurants have the exact same menu items.
One of my biggest peeves is when customers come in and ask if we cook a dish like such and such restaurant. I typically reply, no, we have our own style of cooking. Which is true, but if one wants the same dish that other restaurant has, why not just go there, why expect some other restaurant to be the same. Anyway, thats just a little rant, but I do think that is changing and more and more Americans expect different restaurants to be different.
my pet peeve has always been that folks will seek out a new place to try and wind up order something bland like fried rice and egg drop soup. I've always felt that chinese restaurants should eliminate those dishes just to get people to venture out for other dishes.
we went out to dinner with with friends recently at a new hip vietnamese place that served family style. Our friends ordered the fried rice but we ordered a few of the more interesting dishes. At the end of the nite, they thoroughly enjoyed the meal and nobody touched the fried rice. That was a great nite for everyone.
Buffets get boring after a while no matter what the cuisine. I've seen plenty of closed up chinese buffet places but they were generally located in steak and potato type towns.
Problem: Fried rice is delicious. Solution: Order some. The same goes for lo mein. Meanwhile, I don't think Americanized Chinese food is going out of fashion any more quickly than Americanized Mexican food.
Also wanted to add in the diminished value of Chinese food being sold in the deli sections of many local supermarkets here ( north of Seattle - 1 hour )
The food portion was amazing and even though it was sold as what I am guessing was a single persons take out meal. You could easily feed 2-3 people from it. So it was a fantastic value bargain.
fast forward a few years and the price trickled up to $7ish and then an amazing thing happened with the packaging. Everyone of the local grocers changed the portion size in unison and the amount of food you were given was basically reduced by 50-60% - near 1/2. So now your $7-8 Chinese take out order only fed 1 single person. And NEVER is an egg roll part of the deal. They will SELL you one for an additional $2
Current day pricing ( I do not purchase ever - just monitor ) is $9+ for the combo take out which is the 1/2 size I described. You get 2 very small portions of 2 entrees ( basically a large kitchen spoonful - maybe 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup ) and approx. a cup of fried rice or chowmein as a side. No value whatsoever as you can go to any actual restaurant and have a sit down Chinese or Thai meal served to you for similar or lower price ( use a coupon or special ) and you are getting far better food that was not mass produced and made to order and much fresher ingredients.
Hahaha! Love it! At first I thought you were going to write something that would have me unknowingly swearing at them.
I always say it as "mah POH toe FOO" -- close??
The American word tofu comes from Japanese which in turn came from Chinese. Chinese pronounce it like doufu. You can look it up on YouTube if you are really curious about the sounding of it.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mattks
The American word tofu comes from Japanese which in turn came from Chinese. Chinese pronounce it like doufu. You can look it up on YouTube if you are really curious about the sounding of it.
Totally curious! I really like the woman at my local Chinese takeout place. We have lovely conversations (that started when I got mapo tofu) so I'd like to pronounce it correctly for her.
The American word tofu comes from Japanese which in turn came from Chinese. Chinese pronounce it like doufu. You can look it up on YouTube if you are really curious about the sounding of it.
My daughter speaks Mandarin. She is good to take along to Chinese places, especially more upscale ones. Waiters tend to get excited when they discover that this white girl with blond hair (well, sometimes it's been purple or teal) can converse with them in their language, and we usually end up getting sent something extra for the table. But it's handy to have someone familiar with the food to ask questions.
Absolutely not, Chinese-American places are everywhere in New York.
That being said, due to Chinese immigrants and foodies there is plenty of demand for real Chinese food as well.
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