Timeline for Where can I eat dishes that feature in western countries' Chinese restaurants?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
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| Sep 22, 2016 at 21:19 | comment | added | called2voyage | @hippietrail Your point about the availability of ingredients is a good one. My favorite Pakistani restaurant in my area is very authentic but still tastes slightly different because of some substitutions. For example, they use jalapeno, which I had never eaten in any native Pakistani prepared dishes overseas. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 6:02 | comment | added | hippietrail | @Geeo: It's all subjective in my opinion. American Italian food has been around for over a century for instance. Everybody can decide their personal cuttoff point between "history of food" and "nowaday dishes". There's no one of those opinions which is the "one right one". | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 4:59 | comment | added | Geeo | @hippietrail I don't see how what you said contradict what I said. Also, we were talking about nowday dishes, the question is not about histoty of food. | |
| Jun 11, 2014 at 0:18 | comment | added | hippietrail | @Geeo: Bah rubbish. Italian food has always been bastardized food from other places, and that's why it's so damn good (-: Just try to imagine Italian cuisine without the bastardized Chinese noodles and the bastardized American tomatoes! | |
| Jun 10, 2014 at 12:53 | comment | added | lambshaanxy | Judgmental? Yes. True? Yes. Exported food is always "dumbed down", because that way it's less strange and sells better. And it's slowly "smartened up" again as people get used to it and start looking for more authenticity. | |
| Jun 10, 2014 at 12:48 | comment | added | Garrett Albright | I know it wasn't your quote, but I think it's judgmental to refer to one country's adaptation of another's food as "dumbed down." It's just different. That being said, having lived in Japan, I think people used to American Japanese restaurants, full of "rolls" made with things like avocado, would be quite surprised by the "plainness" of a sushi restaurant in Tokyo. | |
| Jun 10, 2014 at 6:11 | comment | added | Geeo | +1 for "and everybody has bastardized the poor Italians", one of the most bastardized is probably spaghetti bolognese which is totally unheard of in Bologna because spaghetti isn't a traditional kind of pasta in Emilia. | |
| Jun 10, 2014 at 3:14 | comment | added | hippietrail | There's also the incentive to sell the dishes the customers expect to find. Most Chinese restaurants in the west are based around versions of Hong Kong food. Most Indian restaurants in the west are based around versions of (I believe) Punjabi food. It's much tougher to sell dishes the customers are not familiar with unless you also have a large base of expat customers to feed. | |
| Jun 10, 2014 at 3:11 | comment | added | hippietrail | Also, adapting to local tastes in only one of the factors. Another is the availability of ingredients. Substitute ingredients are widely used all over the world in cuisines of other cultures. Then there's economic incentive. Japanese restaurants run by Koreans or Vietnamese, Chinese restaurants which include versions of Thai dishes, Thai restaurants often have laksa, etc. There are preparation differences due to cultural differences. Indian dishes can take all day or longer to prepare the traditional way but most Indian restaurants are run is sensible western business hours. | |
| Jun 10, 2014 at 3:07 | comment | added | hippietrail | You even get this between provinces in China. Even westerners I met in China who had lived in Sichuan were complaining about how pale the approximations of Sichuan food were in the rest of China - even in neighbouring Yunnan! | |
| Jun 9, 2014 at 19:48 | comment | added | user13882 | Why does the last sentence of your answer completely contradict the first sentence? | |
| Jun 9, 2014 at 18:31 | comment | added | called2voyage | Having grown up overseas (i.e. outside of the US, my native country), I never expect any local food anywhere to taste like it does in restaurants which supposedly serve its cuisine in other countries. | |
| Jun 9, 2014 at 14:43 | comment | added | Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight | Similarly, I've read that there're a handful of restaurants in Japan selling the Americanized version of the local cuisine targeted toward nostalgic businessmen who spent a lot of time in the US in the '80's when authentic Japanese food was nearly impossible to find here. | |
| Jun 9, 2014 at 12:48 | history | edited | lambshaanxy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 1 character in body
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| Jun 9, 2014 at 12:09 | comment | added | Golden Cuy | This must be like discovering Santa Claus isn't real. (Not that that happened to me - I don't recall ever believing he was real) | |
| Jun 9, 2014 at 11:59 | vote | accept | Golden Cuy | ||
| Jun 9, 2014 at 11:40 | history | answered | lambshaanxy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |