http://wtv-zone.com/JBond/chowmein.swf
i got a giggle or two out of this.
Printable View
http://wtv-zone.com/JBond/chowmein.swf
i got a giggle or two out of this.
That was beautifull man. Got a hanky?
Reminds me of the place in Mass. that got busted for pressing the cabbage between the parking lot and a sheet of plywood with a pickup truck.
I'm not a big fan of Chinese-American food. Give me Veitnamese or Thai food any day.
Chinese-American food, fa_jing?
Try my "HKV Egg Fu Yung" with white rice for breakfast:
1 or 2 eggs
a TINY bit of ground beef
1 stalk scallion (minced)
fresh potato (chopped)
1 tomato
a touch of parsley or coriander
fresh garlic
soy sauce
oyster sauce
sesame oil
ground pepper
1. Cook garlic and potato first in wok or skillet
2. Remove potato, cook ground beef
3. Add all the other ingredients, season to taste.
4. Mix a tiny bit of cornstarch in water and add to skillet if you don't want your eggs TOO runny.
and I always feel guilty that it does.
haha. I just love it.
thanks,
Cody
Let me also take a moment here to point out our Dim-Sum-dian-xin thread. :cool:Quote:
Inside the world's largest collection of Chinese menus
The Thread Tracy Mumford · Apr 28, 2016
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Harvey Spiller collected Chinese menus from all across the country -- and the world. These are some of the 10,000 menus acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
Fifty-seven banker boxes.
One thousand one hundred pounds.
Ten thousand Chinese menus.
That's what Harley Spiller delivered to the University of Toronto when the school purchased his decades-in-the-making collection. It's the largest assortment of Chinese menus on the planet. The menus go back more than 100 years and come from all over the world, from 1920s California to 1940s India to Spiller's favorite place, just down the street from his New York apartment.
"Anybody who's working in food studies knows about this collection," said professor Daniel Bender, director of the university's food studies center. "It's the Rosetta Stone of understanding the history of Chinese foods."
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This Chinese menu comes from Portland, Ore., in the 1950s. It is one of the 10,000 menus from Harvey Spiller's collection, which was acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
For the last year, librarians and archivists at the school have been sorting through the menus, studying how best to make the information available to the public. The menus don't just document the rising price of chow mein or the world's changing palates, Bender said. They speak to the history of Chinese immigration around the world.
"The oldest one that we found in the collection is from 1896, which is a really interesting time. That's around the time, or shortly after, the United States and Canada and many other places passed very restrictive Chinese exclusion acts," Bender said.
When countries closed their borders to Chinese immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants already in the U.S. found a loophole: Chinese restaurant owners were allowed to bring in workers for their kitchens. Thousands of people entered the country that way.
"The Chinese restaurant boom and Chinese exclusion happened really at the same time," Bender said. "Chinese restaurants became popular at the same moment that Chinese immigrants were looked at with suspicion."
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This menu comes from Phoenix in the 1980s. It is one of the 10,000 menus from Harvey Spiller's collection, which was acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
None of this history was on Harley Spiller's mind when he started his collection.
It began in the summer of 1981, when he moved to New York City. He was in his early 20s, and unfamiliar with city life.
"I'm renting a room in a friend's apartment, and they were out and I was all alone," Spiller said. "I heard a scuffle at the door, and I thought to myself: 'Oh great, I didn't even make it a week and I'm getting robbed.' So I hid in the bedroom.
"About five to ten minutes later, I poked my head out and went to see what was going on. It was a Chinese menu, shoved under the door.
"It was interesting to me because I was an English major, and there were typos, and there were foods I didn't know were foods. I thought squid were in the science lab, fermented. I didn't know you could eat it. I was a meat-and-potato kind of guy.
"Now I eat squid like peas," Spiller said.
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This menu comes from Empire Taipei in New York City. Moving to New York is what triggered Harvey Spiller's menu collection. His 10,000 menus were acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
That first menu shoved underneath the door sparked his fascination.
"I couldn't afford to subscribe to The New York Times. I couldn't get magazines. So I read menus. They were up and down the avenues in my new town for the taking. I would take walks after dinner, check out the new neighborhood and grab those. They were spare-time reading material."
For those who think the ubiquitous paper menus are worthless, Spiller disagrees: "A menu is a book. It has covers and it has pictures and it has sections like chapters. It's a container for ideas. That's a book!"
Spiller went from casually collecting menus on the street to seeking out historical menus and menus from far-off locales. Older acquaintances ripped Chinese food menus out of their wedding scrapbooks for him. Friends brought them back from vacation.
He dreamed of driving across the country, stopping at flea markets and buying up every old Chinese menu he could found. But instead, the flea markets came to him: eBay was invented.
"In 1997, I was off: I bid on every single Chinese menu that came up on eBay the first year. I bought most of them, and then I looked at my bank account and I went cold turkey."
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The University of Toronto's Food Studies program acquired Harvey Spiller's collection of 10,000 Chinese menus. The collection will allow researchers to track the rise and fall of certain dishes across time and location. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
That didn't stop the collection from growing, though.
One weekend in 2004 or 2005, a team of nine people gathered to count the menus for the Guinness Book of World Records. They stopped counting at 5,006, which handily beat the previous world record of 4,001. They were still only halfway through the collection.
As three decades of collecting came and went, though, Spiller decided it was time to find the menus a new home. He was delighted to hear about the University of Toronto's interest. Other potential buyers wanted to cherry-pick menus from the collection, choosing the most exotic or rare among them, but the university wanted the whole thing — and it wanted to make the collection available to the public.
"It started as a lark but it's going to end up helping people writing histories and working on immigration studies," Spiller said. "It helps normalize the immigrant experience."
Professor Bender agrees. "I like to think of that person who finds their own grandparents in that collection, finds the restaurant they worked at ... It's a bit like finding out your parents painted a great painting and now it's hung in a museum."
Spiller's collecting days aren't over, though. He still has a collection of rare coins. And wishbones. And yellow pencils. And blue bottle caps. And plastic spoons.
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Harvey Spiller collected matchbooks from Chinese restaurants, too. They are included in the archive purchased by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
"That's a collection that I started to see if anything could arise from a dumb collection," he said.
Did moving the 1,100 pounds of Chinese menus out of his apartment free up any space?
"You know how if you squeeze a bowl of Jell-O, it just squirts everywhere?" Spiller laughed. "It's like that. The shelves that were emptied were immediately filled."
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The menus allow researchers to track changing trends in Chinese food over the years. This historic menu is from a restaurant in San Francisco. It's one of 10,000 menus in the collection that the University of Toronto acquired. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
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Harvey Spiller started by simply collecting the Chinese menus on the streets of New York City, but later began seeking out menus from across the country. This menu from Seattle is one of the 10,000 from Spiller's collection. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
I love Chinese food but I love Japanese food more.
Chinese food is delicious. Link is not working anymore :C
Szechuan for you old skool Americans. Sichuan food is my favorite Chinese food, and I have yet to visit Sichuan.
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Lost tradition feared as Sichuanese food booms in popularity
By Chris Buckley New York Times
June 21, 2016
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NEW YORK TIMES Lan Guijun prepares a dish of salmon stewed in a broad bean sauce at his Sichuan fusion restaurant Yu Zhi Lan in Chengdu, China.
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NEW YORK TIMES Lan Guijun prepares a dish of salmon stewed in a broad bean sauce at his Sichuan fusion restaurant Yu Zhi Lan in Chengdu, China.
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NEW YORK TIMES The kitchen at Lian Ying, a contemporary Sichuan restaurant in Chengdu, China.
The kitchen at Lian Ying, a contemporary Sichuan restaurant in Chengdu, China.
NEW YORK TIMES
San hua kao ji, or three-flower roast chicken, adapted from a recipe by chef and restauranteur Yang Wen, in Beacon, N.Y.
NEW YORK TIMES
San hua kao ji, or three-flower roast chicken, adapted from a recipe by chef and restauranteur Yang Wen, in Beacon, N.Y.
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HENGDU, China >> The tang of the famed cooking of Sichuan wafts through streets crowded with restaurants. Hot pots of chili and oil simmer like restless volcanoes. Chicken, rabbit and frog bathe in stews tingling with red and green peppercorns. Favorites like Pock-Marked Grandma Tofu abound.
But along with all the pungent aromas, a whiff of panic is in the air here in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwest China.
“Sichuanese cuisine really faces a crisis,” said Wang Kaifa, a 71-year-old chef who has been leading a campaign against what he sees as the creeping debasement of the region’s celebrated cooking.
“The scene feels like it’s booming, but this is a chaotic boom that has had a lot of negatives,” he said. “Finally, they could become a sickness that brings down Sichuanese cuisine.”
Such gloom seems surprising. Chengdu has a bustling food scene with many thousands of restaurants, from chic newer ones to hole-in-the-wall places called “fly diners.” Tourists go there just for the food.
Sichuanese cooking has been conquering the world, making major inroads in New York, London and other intensely competitive dining cities abroad.
But many in Chengdu worry that tradition is being lost and Sichuan*ese cooks are selling out for easy but fleeting hits.
Rapid growth has debased much restaurant cooking. Menus are often narrowed to dauntingly spicy dishes, like boiled duck-blood curd and tripe in chili broth, ignoring the great variety and nuance of the cuisine.
“Our taste buds have been battered into decline so that we demand it to be spicier and spicier,” said Shi Guanghua, a food writer and former restaurateur. “Sichuan*ese cuisine has become shallow and flattened.”
In Chengdu, people dissect their meals with the reverence that other cities devote to sports teams. Lively debate surrounds finding the balance between preserving tradition and embracing new ways and new customers.
And in this country where almost every problem prompts a state plan, the province’s government last year upgraded its guidelines for standard Sichuanese dishes. The guidelines advise, for instance, that “strange-flavored chicken strips,” a cold dish that includes dark vinegar, should use the meat of a year-old rooster.
To outsiders, this alarm may seem over the top. But the angst over Sichuan cooking distills wider anxieties about the place of tradition, as China becomes increasingly unmoored from its past.
“Shocks from commercialization and the simplification of tastes have created a crisis,” said Shi, who is on a supervisory panel for the restaurant-rating plan. “Sichuanese cuisine can’t survive without its traditions, but how to preserve them and reinvigorate them at the same time? That’s the focus of discussion.”
Early this year, dozens of retired chefs formed the Sichuan Old Chef Traditional Artistry Society to restore time-honored ways they say are under assault. Its 160 members, most in their 60s and 70s, meet weekly.
They gripe about young cooks who use new ingredients, like may*o*nnaise, and recall neglected classics, like sliced pig kidneys fried in fermented bean paste. Wang said he was inspired to start the society after watching while a 30-year-old chef from a five-star hotel added celtuce, also called asparagus lettuce, to kung pao chicken.
“I was furious,” he said with a grimace. The dish should be an uncluttered mix of chicken, peanuts, stubby dried red chilies and spices, he said. “Young chefs these days just don’t understand what tradition is.”
Of course no cuisine stands still. Classic French food evolves, as does every other cuisine. In Sichuan, the question is what elements to preserve and how to change without betraying the culinary heritage.
A camp of chefs here hopes to remake Sichuanese cooking for urbane middle-class tastes in airy modern restaurants, building on the core of traditional ingredients and techniques.
“You do have to maintain tradition, but it’s not a display in a museum,” said Yang Wen, a rare woman among the legions of male cooks here. “There’s no survival without innovation.”
Yang is the chef at Lotus Shadow, where refined dishes, like braised shrimp infused with jasmine tea, are a world away from the homespun fare favored by old-school revivalists. “It’s preserving the essence of tradition while meeting modern expectations,” she said. “Sichuanese food has never stood still.”
She has a point. Sichuanese cooking is classified as one of the eight great cuisines of China. But its roots are relatively recent. Over several centuries of war, trade and migration, outsiders brought in chilies, fermented bean paste, sugar and other spices, and their own cooking traditions.
These influences melded only a few generations ago to create an unusually aromatic and versatile toolbox of flavors. Sichuan’s historic openness to other influences should be seen as a virtue, say some food lovers here.
“The truest Sichuanese food has only about a century or so of history behind it,” said Wang Shiwu, a food critic at Sichuan Gastronomy magazine.
“The attractiveness of Sichuanese food is that it’s a big melting pot. Whatever is attractive in your cuisine, I can absorb and adapt it.”
SAN HUA KAO KO (THREE-FLOWER ROAST CHICKEN)
1 3- to 3-1/2-pound chicken
>> Marinade:
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon red Sichuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon good-quality jasmine tea
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup coarsely chopped green onion
1 tablespoon coarsely chopped ginger
>> Poaching seasonings:
1/2 cup kosher salt
5 dried whole chili peppers, about 3 inches long
3 tablespoons jasmine tea
3 green onions, coarsely chopped
3 1/4-inch-thick slices ginger
2 whole star anise
6 bay leaves
>> Stuffing:
1/4 cup good-quality jasmine tea leaves
2 stalks green onion
2 1/4-inch-thick slices ginger
1 whole star anise
2 bay leaves
Wash chicken and pat dry, then ***** the thick part of the breast, legs and thighs with a sharp fork.
Combine marinade ingredients in blender or food processor and pulse into coarse paste. Rub chicken cavity and skin with paste; put in plastic bag and refrigerate 10 hours or overnight.
Combine poaching seasonings with 3 quarts water and bring to a boil in heavy 5-quart pot. Add chicken, breast side down; reduce heat to simmer. Cook, covered, 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let stand, covered, 30 minutes. Turn chicken and let stand, covered, another 15 minutes. Remove chicken, drain and let cool slightly.
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Steep tea for stuffing in hot water about 3 minutes. Drain tea, reserving wet leaves. Stuff chicken with half the leaves and remaining stuffing ingredients. Coat chicken with remaining leaves. Discard tea.
Loosely wrap chicken in foil; set it on baking sheet. Poke 4 to 5 small holes in foil to let steam escape and liquid to drain. Bake 30 minutes on middle rack.
Take out of oven. Remove foil and drain any liquid. Leave chicken in pan, breast side up, and bake until dark brown, 45 minutes to an hour. Cool slightly, then gently pull off chicken meat in coarse strips. Discard skin, bones and stuffing. Serve chicken warm or cool with some of tea leaves. Serves 6 to 8.
Nutritional information unavailable.
continued next postQuote:
How Two Chinese Immigrants Built A Billion-Dollar Fast-Food Empire More Successful Than In-N-Out
FOOD NEWS 2 DAYS AGO
NEXTSHARK
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Panda Express, the beloved fast-casual dining restaurant, was founded by Chinese immigrants who believe treating their employees right is the key to building their now billion dollar empire.
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The Chinese-American fast food chain made $2 billion in sales in 2015 — three times that of fast-food burger joint In-N-Out. According to Business Insider, Panda Express has no franchises and operates with 1,800 outlets in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
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Panda Express, which is headquartered in Rosemead, California, is solely owned by the same family that founded it back in the 1970’s. That couple, Andrew and Peggy Cherng, who are both 67, have an estimated net worth of $3 billion today.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Andrew’s father, Ming-Tsai, worked at a restaurant in Taiwan after leaving Yangzhou, China in 1947. The family eventually relocated to Yokohama, Japan where his father found work as a chef. Andrew received a scholarship and moved to Kansas where he met his future wife and co-CEO Peggy at Baker University.
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Peggy, also a Chinese immigrant, was raised off the mainland in Burma. After Kansas, she transferred to the University of Missouri where she studied computer science and eventually earned her PhD. Andrew moved to Missouri to be reunited with Peggy and earned his master’s in applied mathematics.
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GROWING AN EMPIRE
The couple wed after moving to Los Angeles and Andrew later convinced his parents to help him open Panda Inn on Foothill Boulevard in Pasadena in 1973. It was very much a family owned restaurant and business where his mother cooked the rice and Andrew focused on hospitality.
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Panda Inn was slow getting off the ground at first and the business struggled initially. The future Panda Express billionaire once had to try to lure people into his restaurant by offering deals such as three entrees for the price of two.
THE FIRST PANDA EXPRESS
In 1983, Andrew opened the first Panda Express in the new food court of Glendale Galleria. Peggy, a computer programmer at McDonnell Douglas at the time, decided to help her husband with the accounting and payroll for his business.
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Her technical knowledge allowed her to spearhead Panda Express’s growth by tracking purchasing history and shifts in customer behavior using pattern-recognition software. She said:
“The kitchen area is low tech, but the management system can be high tech-how to catch the data, how to analyze data to see what’s most salable, what’s not selling, and to determine what to offer and what not to offer.
“Andrew’s vision is that he doesn’t see anything that’s not possible. But visionaries need a system and structure to provide the growth.”
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A BUSINESS POWER COUPLE
Andrew takes the role of the charismatic leader and motivational CEO while Peggy is the chief technician in charge of operations, the financial tracking system and supply-chain management system. Though they may have differing roles, the couple agree that business is about the people. Peggy said:
“The restaurant business is the people business, and people are our investment. If we want to be loved by guests, we have to focus on food with passion and service with heart, ambience and pride. If that value equation is really good, then guests will come.”
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Panda Expresses invests in their employees and the results show. Andrew said:
“Our job is to develop people. When you have a good set of people and they’re in a good place inside and out-in their livelihood and in who they are — then chances are they will take care of the customer better.”
I've always disdained Panda Express, but this article has changed my opinion.Quote:
HOW THEY TREAT EMPLOYEES
Panda Express is known for their better quality food and positive treatment of employees. The results are higher pay and better benefits. Panda Express pays $9.50 an hour for starting entry-level positions and about $14 an hour for assistant managers.
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Benefits for Panda employees include health care, paid sick leave, paid vacation, 401(k)s and company-subsidized college courses after six months. The company is focused on self-growth and encourage employees to read books like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey and “Re-Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins.”
They are also encouraged to join Toastmasters International and enroll in personal-improvement seminars such as Dale Carnegie Training and Landmark Forum.
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CARRYING THE TORCH
Of the Cherng’s three daughters, their eldest, Andrea, is the only one to go into the family business. Andrea said of her parents:
“This idea of a purposeful or meaningful life is something that Andrew and Peggy are very dedicated to.”
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Andrea holds a law degree from Duke and an M.B.A from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. She gained experience elsewhere in the private sector before she assumed her role at the Panda Restaurant Group with her parents.
Her parents informed her and her sisters at a young age that the whole family were responsible for a number of dependents from the business. She said:
“At dinner or the breakfast table my parents would ask me, ‘What are you going to do for our people?’ far before I could do anything for our people.”
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Today, Andrea heads the Panda Express Innovation Kitchen in Pasadena where she tests out new recipes and restaurant decor. She said:
“The Innovation Kitchen is like a concept car. The products there can be replicated throughout the entire system three to five years out.”
Her younger sister Nicole is a real estate investor while her other sister Michelle is a teacher.
Written by NextShark
Greetings,
Chinese cuisine has gone off into the deep end in NYC. I was going to create a thread about the death of Chinese food, It is that bad. There has been a spiked increase in the use of frozen vegetables and the menus are essentially the "formula for success," meaning that they are the same for every restaurant. When I would call for food prepared a particular way the response is something along the lines of, "So, you want it Chinese style!". That, alone, should give you some idea about what is on the menu. The egg rolls are now contain bit pieces of pork and the worst part of the cabbage -- there used to be so much more in those things. Then again they are not a traditional Chinese food. I could go on but lets just leave it as a worsening situation in NYC that has been created by increasing rent, property values and a poor economy.
mickey
Worth the click to see the instagram vids. Well, sort of...Quote:
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A Restaurant In China Serves a Boob-Shaped Custard Bun That Lactates on Command. Watch.
By Khushbu Shah June 24, 2016
The year 2016 has showed the world that pretty much anything is possible: The U.K. actually voted in favor of leaving the European Union, the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency is very real and restaurants can make dim sum dishes that make you ask, "Is it bun? Is it the nipple of a lactating breast? Is it a vomiting baby?"
Enter the Chinese dish from Hong Kong dim sum restaurant Dim Sum Icon that looks like all three:
Quote:
danielfooddiary
20.7k views
1w
danielfooddiaryMUST WATCH. How u feel when boss chases u for work during weekends. LOL. ��
Hong Kong has the weirdest dum sum ever, a vomiting Kobitos bun.
That is milk custard by the way.
Follow @DanielFoodDiary on Snapchat to see what I ate in #HongKong #DFDHongKong
The dish — which is actually just a custard bun — is shaped like a perky breast. It has a strange baby's face that appears to vomit what Instagrammer Daniel's Food Diary wrote is "milk custard" when a hole is poked into the bun.Quote:
In reality, the dish is not part of the female anatomy, it's just a "vomiting Kobitos bun." Kobitos is a character from a popular series of Japanese books. This bun in particular appears to be modeled off of the "Hiding Peach Bottom Kobitos." Still, there is no denying its resemblance to a lactating breast.
This is not the only err, creative, bun Dim Sum Icon serves. It's also home to a bun that looks like it has the runs. When customers poke a hole on the backside of the Gudetama chocolate bun (Gudetama is a popular Sanrio character), the chocolate filling oozes out in a realistic manner that might make your stomach a bit queasy.
Quote:
danielfooddiary DIM SUM ICON
Follow
Click video for sound
15.8k views
5d
danielfooddiary"That LOOK when someone s*** near you, literally" ��
Warning: Video may cause some to feel uncomfortable. �� #DFDHongKong
Makes the over-the-top culinary abomination that is Burger King's Mac n' Cheetos look G-rated, no?
Amusing article. Anyone who has ever done research on China can relate. :rolleyes:
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The Mysterious Origins of Hoisin Sauce
The elusive history of a classic condiment.
By JOANNA SCIARRINO Art by SALLY THURER
The Internet-available information about hoisin sauce is all very, very shallow: it’s Chinese, it’s sweet, it’s good with many things. But what is it? Where does it come from? When was it created? Its name means “seafood,” but the sauce contains no seafood. The trail goes cold quickly if you want to know something substantive about the stuff that comes with your pho.
I reached out to Hong Kong– based food company Lee Kum Kee, which has been making hoisin for more than thirty years, hoping they could answer me. Their response:
Hoisin was traditionally used in southern Chinese cooking, specifically for seafood. The word hoisin is from the Chinese word for seafood. At that time it was used for stir-fries and dipping primarily. Now it has become a staple ingredient for all types of cooking and is used as a base, glaze, and marinade. It has become a multi-purpose sauce.
For a company that could fill swimming pools with the stuff, I was hoping for a little more insight. Plus, there’s plenty of informed opinion out there to the contrary: in a 1997 issue of the Chinese food-focused magazine Flavor & Fortune, Eva Koveos wrote, “Ironically hoisin means ‘sea freshness’ sauce in Chinese, but it contains no trace of seafood and usually is not served with it; rather it is popular in Chinese dishes containing poultry and pork.”
I was flummoxed. So I enlisted the help of Chinese-cuisine expert and scholar Fuchsia Dunlop to clear things up:
Hoisin sauce (hai xian jiang) is mainly a Cantonese thing. Many sources on Chinese ingredients don’t mention it at all. I did find one entry in a good culinary encyclopedia that says hai xian jiang is a collective name for seafood sauces, such as shrimp sauce, crab sauce, and clam sauce. I also found one Hong Kong chefs’ handbook that says it’s made from a smooth black bean sauce with added “seafood (hai xian),” cane sugar, garlic, vinegar, and five-spice powder. I’ve also found some recipes online that are made with fermented shrimp sauce.
So, without being able to answer you definitively, I would guess that it was originally a kind of sauce based either on fermented black beans or sweet fermented wheat sauce with some kind of dried/fermented seafood element added for extra umami flavor, as well as other seasonings, and that over time manufacturers cut back on the more expensive seafood ingredients. This seems the most likely explanation, because, as you know, hoisin sauce is more commonly used for ingredients such as pork, and not much for seafood, which would be the other logical reason for the name.
This would explain the absence of any seafood and/or shellfish product in today’s bottled hoisin. But I can’t fully corroborate any one theory about hoisin’s origins. Maybe hoisin once had seafood in it, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it made its way from China to Vietnam in the twentieth century, or maybe it evolved out of another bean-based condiment in Vietnam. Maybe it’s from Mars.
So after my futile quest for discovery, the most important facts about hoisin are those that you can confirm for yourself: it tastes good on char siu, Peking duck, and moo shu pork. It’s great in a Taiwanese-style pork bun. And it is very nice to have along- side a bowl of pho.
Oh man....China...:rolleyes:
Quote:
Beijing hotpot restaurant serves up Barbie doll wrapped in meat that you undress while you eat
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A hotpot restaurant is drawing some heat online, thanks to its new menu item -- a Barbie doll wrapped up in strips of mutton.
Typically, a hotpot restaurant serves its customers with plates of meat that they cook at their leisure; however, one hotpot restaurant in Beijing provides diners with a beautiful female doll in a red gown.
Well, upon closer inspection, she's actually wrapped up in strips of mutton (芭比羊肉衣), Shanghai Daily reports. Therefore, if diners want to eat the mutton, they have to peel off each layer of meat, slowly undressing the Barbie, exposing her naked plastic to everyone.
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While the restaurant owner must have thought that this was a brilliant idea to promote his hotpot shop, netizens on Weibo are a bit disgusted by the "sexist" display.
"Why can't we just eat meats without any kind of stupid tricks like this?" one asked.
"It's very disgusting. We don't even know whether the staff cleaned the doll or not," another commented.
"Let's just throw the doll into the hotpot! It's really time consuming to pull away all those strips of meat," one netizen joked.
Wait, where have we seen that meat dress before? Some netizens immediately thought of the recently possibly banned Lady Gaga, saying that the hotpot restaurant should stop trying to imitate Lady Gaga's style, because apparently it isn't working.
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Apparently, this place didn't get the memo that China is trying to cut its meat consumpion in half.
By Katie Ngai
[Images via Weibo]
Oh man....China...:rolleyes:
There's a vid on the other side of the link, but I don't recommend watching it.Quote:
'They're so yummy!' Stomach-churning footage shows daredevil Chinese man eating LIVE LEECHES as they wriggle around on his chopsticks
Footage posted online on October 22 shows the man tucking into leeches
He tried to dip the struggling worms into a plate of oil using chopsticks
Fat worms can be seen squirming in the plate of dipping sauce
The man is believed to be dining out with friends at a Chinese restaurant
By JULIAN LUK FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 08:03 EST, 24 October 2016 | UPDATED: 09:38 EST, 24 October 2016
Bizarre footage posted online on October 22 shows the moment a man in China tucks into a meal of squirming leeches.
The man can be seen using chopsticks to dip three leeches into a small plate of oil in a restaurant thought to be in southern China.
The excited diner can be heard saying 'Wow, they are so yummy!' in Cantonese, a dialect spoken in southern China.
Unsettling moment shows man eating LIVE leeches in restaurant
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A man can be seen using chopsticks to dip three leeches into a small plate of oil
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It's a real challenge to hold the leeches, still alive and wiggling, using the two sticks. Some leeches was left squirming in the plate of oil
In the video posted online by Weibo user Lie QI Xiao Dao Dan on October 22, the man can be seen struggling to keep hold of the leeches with his chopsticks.
The animals are still alive and wiggling as the man tries to keep control using the two sticks.
A female diner can be heard saying: 'They are good quality. They are still moving!'
The man, struggles to capture the final leech which fell in the small plate of oil.
He says: 'Two leeches are not enough. Let me get a third one. It has to be big.'
The man then picks up a fat worm from a big plate of purple and red coloured leeches.
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The man then turned to big plate of leeches to pick up another fat worm
The man tries to show off the freshness of his food. He says: 'Let them move a bit first. Otherwise people will say they are dead.'
The video then cuts to a close up of the man opening wide to eat more of the leeches.
He then gives a thumbs up before the video ends.
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The video then came with a close up of how the man opened his mouth big to enjoy the fresh food
The clip, posted on October 22, is believed to be taken in a restaurant in southern China, home to Cantonese cuisine.
Cantonese cuisine virtually includes all edible food in addition to the common staple of pork, beef and chicken, Xinhua reports.
Other than leeches, a diverse species of worms and insects are common Cantonese dishes, including ****roaches, water beetles, cicada, according to the report.
However, most are cooked and processed before eating.
144 tiles in a set. That's a lot of dumplings if they make them all.Quote:
They will bring you good fortune! Food lover makes dumplings that look like mahjong tiles
One man in China has put a creative spin on a traditional dessert dumplings eaten in winter
The food is typically enjoyed on the Lantern Festival at the end of Lunar New Year for good luck
Game lovers joked that people might eat the real mahjong tiles by mistake if they play while eating
By TIFFANY LO FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 06:29 EST, 10 February 2017 | UPDATED: 06:30 EST, 10 February 2017
Food plays an important part in Chinese culture and different dishes are dedicated to different festivals.
A man from east China has put a creative spin on the traditional Chinese dessert dumplings, which are eaten on the last day of Lunar New Year celebrations in hope of good fortune.
Web users have been amazed by the pictures of his lucky food which are shaped after mahjong tiles, a popular game in China usually played by four people.
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Tasteful game! A man in China has shared pictures of innovative dumplings which look like tiles of a traditional game
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Vivid: The mahjong dumplings (right) look so real that people have joked that game players might mix the two by mistake
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Got a sweet tooth? The dumplings are filled with red bean paste, like the ordinary sweet dumplings found in Chinese stores
According to People’s Daily Online, the images have attracted great attention on the Chinese social media because the Lantern Festival, the occasion to eat these dumplings, will fall on this Saturday.
Lantern Festival, also known as Yuan Xiao Jie, is an event characterised by its iconic red Chinese lanterns. The festival marks the first full moon in a Lunar New Year.
Traditionally, the festival also signals the end of a two-week-long Lunar New Year celebrations.
Normally, sweet dumplings eaten on the day are shaped like a ball, a reminiscent of the roundness of a full moon. The sweet dumplings are made of glutinous rice flour with various fillings such as sesame paste and red bean paste.
The food lover's mahjong dumplings, however, are decorated with dots, strokes and Chinese characters, just like the tiles used in the game.
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Quick and easy: Shaped in a mold, the sweet dumplings can be made with glutinous rice flour, jam and red bean paste
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Mahjong lovers commented on social media that these colourful dumplings might bring extra luck to the diners
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Time to make your own! Mahjong dumplings can be made easily at home, with a simple recipe and few equipment
Mahjong lovers joked that the sweet dumplings will bring them luck. However, some are concerned that people might eat the real mahjong tiles by mistake if they have the food while playing the game.
Web user 'New Hao' said: 'What if people play pranks on the others and they eat the real tiles?'
According to China Daily, mahjong dumpling first appeared in China in 2015 at a one hotpot restaurant, called 'BaShu LongMen' in Shanghai. The dumplings come in a portion of four, available in peanut paste and black sesame paste and cost six yuan (70p) per bowl.
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STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE: HOW TO MAKE MAHJONG DUMPLINGS
Ingredients: Mahjong tiles baking mold, food colouring or jam, glutinous rice flour and red bean paste
Mix glutinous rice flour and water to make a dough
Reshape the dough to a long stick and cut them into small pieces
Take a small piece of dough, flatten it with hands and place the red bean paste in the middle
Place the mixture into a mahjong tiles baking mold
Decorate the characters with food colouring or jam using an icing decorating pen
This is a great culture clash piece. It reminds me of the situation we had with our 10th Anniversary and not decapitating the fish.
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China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food
JAMIE FULLERTON
APR 27 2017, 11:00AM
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Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Meet Fung and Dave, two Americans who opened up a Chinese-American restaurant in Shanghai, where the cooks shake their heads at dishes like crab rangoon and orange chicken and the customers don't understand the point of fortune cookies.
This article originally appeared on MUNCHIES in May 2014. Fortune Cookie closed in January 2016.
If you're a Westerner, even if the closest you've got to Asian culture is stumbling across the Great Wall on Google Earth, you know that Chinese people don't crack open fortune cookies after every meal. And as a Brit living in Shanghai since a year ago, I can confirm that rather than sweet and sour chicken, most Chinese people prefer a nice pile of crispy chicken feet.
In fact, as the wonderfully named former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee pointed out in her 2008 TED Talk, most Chinese people don't even know what chop suey actually is. Since Chinese food first began being served in the USA in the 19th century, it has had generations to evolve and suit US tastes, so much so that it's completely disconnected to traditional dishes served in China, both now and then.
Given that most Chinese people wouldn't recognize a plate of sticky orange chicken if it was splattered in their face, it seems an odd move to open an eatery almost exclusively serving American-style Chinese food in the middle of Shanghai. But that's what New Yorker Fung Lam and California-born Dave Rossi have done in the shape of Fortune Cookie, which opened ten months ago.Quote:
"In China they like bones, but we had the staff spend hours deboning the chicken," says Fung. "They were saying, 'Why are we doing this?'
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Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Above, Fung (left) and Dave (right). All photos by the author.
Having failed in their bid to launch a salad-based venue in Shanghai two years ago, the pair, who had quit white collar jobs and moved to China to try to launch a venue together, were craving American-Chinese comfort food and couldn't find it in China.
"When somebody feels like they've broken up with their girlfriend, they don't think, I really want a salad,'' says David. "We wanted orange chicken, something fried, and cold beer. We couldn't find it in Shanghai, so we decided to do it ourselves. When we signed the lease we thought, If this bombs, at least we can eat the food we've been missing for six months."
But it didn't bomb. Fung's family owns 15 Chinese restaurants in the US, the first of which his grandfather set up in Brooklyn in the 60s. Fung flew his dad, who is head chef of all 15 restaurants, over to Shanghai to train up the newly hired Chinese kitchen staff.
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"In China they like bones, but we had the staff spend hours deboning the chicken," says Fung. "They were saying, 'Why are we doing this?' We also got them to fill wontons with cheese. They were thinking, What is going on? Some of them were eating cream cheese for the first time. They were shaking their heads."
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Photo by Jamie Fullerton
When Fung transferred his family's fantastic recipes (including a rich orange chicken, Kung Pao chicken, General Tso's beef, and tofu chop suey) to China and served them alongside imported US beers, Western expats latched on quickly. But locals needed to be won over, too—a goal that was achieved when the pair started selling themselves as providing "American food" rather than "Chinese food with an American twist."
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Photo by Jamie Fullerton
That's not to say that things haven't got lost in translation sometimes. "The first response from locals is always about portion size," says Dave. "They think they're huge. We had two petite women come in early on when we opened and order seven dishes. After the second one came out they just started laughing. Also, people hadn't seen the take-out boxes we use anywhere other than on The Big Bang Theory. Our Chinese assistant just said, "'Oh, that's what Sheldon eats.'"
In her talk, Jennifer 8. Lee showed a video of Chinese people looking bemused as they were shown fortune cookies for the first time. (Fortune cookies actually originated from Japan.) The responses have been similar over here: "A lot of our guests are opening their first fortune cookies," says Dave. "Some of them eat the paper or put it in their purse thinking it's a free gift."
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Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Fung believes that it is quality rather than novelty that's earned them the respect of both locals and expats, though. "We're not finding recipes on the internet, we're doing this for real," he says. "Every American-Chinese family has their own recipe for orange chicken, and this is something my grandfather passed on. This food tastes like it does in New York and is legit, with 40 years of history."
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Photo by Jamie Fullerton
As our interview wraps up, Dave hands me a fortune cookie. I break open to reveal a paper slip bearing a message so fitting, I suspect he may have set it up: If you build it, they will come.
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Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Don't expect to get such poignant messages here in the near future. Fung and Dave say they wrote all the fortunes themselves (initially to replace the first batch they ordered that turned out to be written in Dutch), but have run out of ideas. Now they use suggestions written by customers and left in a collection box by the door. "They're always something ridiculously sexual," says Dave. "Or phone numbers with 'For a good time call…' next to them. And, of course, a huge amount of pictures of *****es."
A somewhat odd story, but not unbelievable:
Jimbo, this is near my 'hood. It created quite a stir in Santa Cruz, given their generally progressive leanings. O-Mei was well thought of when I went to graduate school at UCSC, but I hadn't eaten there in over a quarter century.
Ironically, I used to be part of the USA Omei Kung Fu Academy under Master Tony Chen. I was going to wear my old school shirt in there someday, just for laughs, but their menu didn't meet my dietary restrictions. Now those shirts will get filed alongside my Shaolin Temple stuff with swastikas. :o
Not limited to Chinese food, but related.
continued next postQuote:
Asian-American Cuisine’s Rise, and Triumph
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The American-Chinese restaurant is, like the diner and the mom-and-pop restaurant, a cornerstone of the American dining vernacular. Here, the interior of White Bear, which opened in 1989 in Flushing, Queens, and is known for its exceptional dumplings.
Anthony Cotsifas
By LIGAYA MISHAN
NOVEMBER 10, 2017
On the plate, the egg looks like an eye plucked from a baby dragon. The yolk is the green-black of smoked glass, with a gray, nearly calcified halo, trapped in an oval of wobbling amber and emitting the faintest whiff of brimstone.
So begins the $285, 19-course tasting menu at Benu in San Francisco. The egg is a traditional Chinese snack, often called (poetically, if inaccurately) a 1,000-year-old egg, preserved for a few weeks or months in lye or slaked lime, salt and tea. It’s sold by street vendors, tossed into stir-fries and scattered over congee throughout China, parts of Southeast Asia and the world’s Chinatowns. To more than a billion people, it is an utterly commonplace food.
But to present it as an amuse-bouche at one of the most acclaimed fine-dining restaurants in the United States, to a predominantly non-Asian clientele, is radical. For despite America’s long, complicated love affair with Asian cooking, it is hard to imagine such a food, so alien to Western culinary ideals in appearance, aroma, flavor and texture, being served in this kind of setting, let alone embraced, a decade ago.
This, though, is the new American palate. As a nation we were once beholden to the Old World traditions of early settlers; we now crave ingredients from ****her shores. The briny rush of soy; ginger’s low burn; pickled cabbage with that heady funk so close to rot. Vinegar applied to everything. Fish sauce like the underbelly of the sea. Palm sugar, velvet to cane sugar’s silk. Coconut milk slowing the tongue. Smoky black cardamom with its menthol aftermath. Sichuan peppercorns that paralyze the lips and turn speech to a burr, and Thai bird chilies that immolate everything they touch. Fat rice grains that cling, that you can scoop up with your hands. (As a child raised in a Filipino-American household, I was bewildered by commercials for Uncle Ben’s rice that promised grains that were “separate, not sticky,” as if that were a good thing.)
These are American ingredients now, part of a movement in cooking that often gets filed under the melting-pot, free-for-all category of New American cuisine. But it’s more specific than that: This is food borne of a particular diaspora, made by chefs who are “third culture kids,” heirs to both their parents’ culture and the one they were raised in, and thus forced to create their own.
Could we call it Asian-American cuisine? The term is problematic, subsuming countries across a vast region with no shared language or single unifying religion. It elides numerous divides: city and countryside, aristocrats and laborers, colonizers and colonized — “fancy Asian” and “jungle Asian,” as the comedian Ali Wong puts it. (She’s speaking specifically of East and Southeast Asians, who followed similar patterns of immigration to the U.S. and who are the primary focus of this piece.) As a yoke of two origins, it can also be read as an impugning of loyalties and as a code for “less than fully American.” When I asked American chefs of Asian heritage whether their cooking could be considered Asian-American cuisine, there was always a pause, and sometimes a sigh.
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The Cantonese dim sum parlor Golden Unicorn, which has been operating for 28 years in New York City’s Chinatown.
Anthony Cotsifas
But this is what happens in America: Borders blur. When there aren’t many of you — Americans of Asian descent are only 6 percent of the population, a legacy of decades of immigration quotas and denial of citizenship — you find common cause with your neighbors. The term Asian-American was not imposed on us, like “Yellow Peril” in the late 19th century or “Oriental”; it was coined in the 1960s by Yuji Ichioka, a California-born historian and civil rights activist, to give us a political voice. If we call this kind of cooking just American, something is lost.
The rise of contemporary Asian-American cuisine began with Korean-American chef David Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar, which opened in New York in 2004 and was followed four years later by fellow Korean-American chef Roy Choi’s Kogi BBQ truck in Los Angeles. Their approach to cooking is typically, reductively, framed as an East-meets-West marriage of big flavors and elevated (i.e., French) technique — as if every Asian cuisine were hellbent on storming the palate (some, like Cantonese, are, in fact, renowned for their subtlety); as if culinary refinement were proprietary to the West.
But the history of Asian-American cuisine goes further back than that, to the first tearooms and banquet halls set up by Chinese immigrants who came to seek their fortune in Gold Rush California in the 1850s. By the end of the 19th century, despite Congress’s passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and attempts to condemn San Francisco’s Chinatown as a threat to the American way of life — “in their quarters all civilization of the white race ceases,” declared a pamphlet published by the Workingmen’s Party of California in 1880 — Cantonese restaurants were all the rage in New York. The food was cheap and fast, swiftly stir-fried in woks, a technique that remained a mystery for decades to most in the West. (One journalist, touring a Chinatown kitchen in 1880, did wonder if “the funny little things we saw at the bottom of a deep earthen jar were rat’s-tails skinned.”)
When outsiders came flocking in the 1890s, Chinese chefs altered and invented dishes to please them. This was less concession than calculation, capitalizing on opportunity. The work of immigrants — in food as in the arts — has always been dogged by accusations of impurity and inauthenticity, suggesting that there is one standard, preserved in amber, for what a dish should be or what a writer or artist with roots in another country should have to say. It’s a specious argument, as if being born into a culture were insufficient bona fides to speak of it. (Immigrants are always being asked to show their papers, in more ways than one.) The history of food, like the history of man, is a series of adaptations, to environment and circumstance. Recipes aren’t static. Immigrant cooks, often living in poverty, have always made do with what’s on hand, like the Japanese-Americans rounded up and shipped to internment camps during the Second World War, who improvised rice balls with rations of Spam, and the Korean and Filipino-Americans who, having survived on canned goods in the aftermath of war, eked out household budgets by deploying hot dogs in kimbap and banana-ketchup spaghetti.
Sometimes the nostalgia for this kind of food can be difficult to convey to those who don’t share the same history. At Bad Saint, a Filipino restaurant in Washington, D.C., the chef Tom Cunanan makes adobo with pig tails, a cheap, snubbed part of the animal that was treasured by Depression-era Filipino immigrants working in California labor camps. Diep Tran, the Vietnamese-American chef of Good Girl Dinette in Los Angeles, told me that she wishes she could serve a breakfast of nothing but baguette accompanied by condensed milk diluted with hot water, for dipping. “It’s refugee food,” she said. “Proustian, kind of like Spam. But people get upset; they think they’re being ripped off.”
Almost every Asian-American chef I spoke to — most of whom are in their late 20s to early 40s — came to the U.S. as children or were born to parents who were immigrants. (In 1952, the last racial barriers to naturalization were lifted, and in 1965, immigration quotas based on national origin — for Asia, 100 visas per country per year — were abolished.) Almost all had stories of neighbors alarmed by the smells from their families’ kitchens or classmates recoiling from their lunchboxes. “I was that kid, with ****y-smelling food,” said Jonathan Wu, the Chinese-American chef at Nom Wah Tu in New York. “I still feel that, if I’m taking the train with garlic chives in my bag.”
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Nom Wah Tea Parlor, which claims to be New York City’s first dim sum restaurant, opened on Doyers Street in 1920.
Anthony Cotsifas
So these chefs’ cooking, born of shame, rebellion and reconciliation, is not some wistful ode to an imperfectly remembered or never-known, idealized country. It’s a mixture of nostalgia and resilience. It wasn’t taught — certainly not in the way other cuisines have been traditionally taught. Graduates of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., recalled that little time was devoted to Asian cooking; at Le Cordon Bleu in London and in Paris, none. One instructor took offense when Preeti Mistry, whose Indian-inflected restaurants include Juhu Beach Club in Oakland, Calif., likened a French stew to curry. Another told David Chang that pork stock, essential to tonkotsu ramen, was “disgusting.”
Neither does their cooking have much kinship with the “fusion” cuisine of the early 1990s, when non-Asian chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Gray Kunz began folding Eastern ingredients into otherwise Western dishes. (“Fusion” is another term that sits uneasily with Asian-American chefs. “I wouldn’t call myself ‘fusion,’ ” said Maiko Kyogoku, the owner of the idiosyncratic Bessou in New York. “To describe food that way? It’s an extension of myself.”) In spirit, Asian-American cooking is closer to other American-born cuisines with tangled roots: the Lowcountry cooking of coastal South Carolina, which owes a debt to slaves from West Africa who brought over one-pot stews and ingredients like okra, peanuts and black-eyed peas; and Tex-Mex, which is not a *******ization of Mexican food but a regional variant of it, cultivated by Tejanos, descendants of Hispanics who lived in Texas when it was part of Mexico and, before that, New Spain.
There’s also no one cultural touchstone or trauma that binds Asian immigrants: no event on a national scale that has brought us together. But part of what distinguishes our experience from that of other immigrants and people of color is the fraught, intimate relationship between our countries of origin and the U.S., which has been foe and protector, oppressor and liberator, feared and adored. In 1899, the British writer Rudyard Kipling urged the U.S. to “take up the White Man’s burden” in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War:
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
[...] Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
This begot more than a century of American military intervention in East and Southeast Asia, and a history of conflicting images: Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima; the Vietcong in black pajamas and the American atrocities at My Lai; teeming refugee camps and smiling American G.I.s handing out candy, decade after decade, to throngs of dark-haired, starving children.
Any immigrant is an outsider at first. But for Asians in America, there is a starker sense of otherness. We don’t fit in to the American binary of white and black. We have been the enemy; the subjugated; the “lesser” peoples whose scramble for a foothold in society was historically seen as a menace to the American order. And yet we’ve also been the “good” immigrants, proving ourselves worthy of American beneficence — polite, humble, grateful, willing to work 20-hour days running a grocery store or a laundry or a restaurant that will never be “authentic” enough, to spend every dime on our children’s test prep so that they get into the best schools, because we believe in the promise of America, that if you work hard, you can become anyone. If you try hard enough, you might even be mistaken for white.
Very intriguing notion.Quote:
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Nom Wah Tea Parlor’s interior has remained virtually the same.
Anthony Cotsifas
Among the children of immigrants, Asians in America seem most caught in a state of limbo: no longer beholden to their parents’ countries of origin but still grasping for a role in the American narrative. There is a unique foreignness that persists, despite the presence of Asians on American soil for more than two centuries; none of us, no matter how bald our American accent, has gone through life without being asked, “Where are you from? I mean, originally?” But while this can lead to alienation, it can also have a liberating effect. When you are raised in two cultures at once — when people see in you two heritages at odds, unresolved, in abeyance — you learn to shift at will between them. You may never feel like you quite belong in either, but neither are you fully constrained. The acute awareness of borders (culinary as well as cultural) that both enclose and exclude, allows, paradoxically, a claim to borderlessness, taking freely from both sides to forge something new. For Asian-American chefs, this seesaw between the obligations of inheritance and the thrill of go-it-aloneness, between respecting your ancestors and lighting out for the hills, manifests in dishes that arguably could come only from minds fluent in two ways of life.
Thus the kaiseki at Niki Nakayama’s n/naka, in Los Angeles, always includes a pasta course. Her slyly voluptuous “carbonara” of abalone livers and egg yolks is a homage to Tokyo-style wafu spaghetti with briny pickled cod roe — only here it’s capped with shaved truffles. At Tao Yuan, in Brunswick, Me., Cara Stadler takes tiles of goat cheese made by a local creamery and sears them, as is done in Yunnan, to approximate rubing, a sturdy farmer’s cheese. But instead of merely sprinkling the cheese with sugar or salt, she counters its meatiness with a bright grace note of mint and watermelon from summer’s height. A Caesar salad might be supplanted by a canoe of romaine, grilled for a hint of smoke and loaded with dainty jako (dried baby sardines) and quail eggs as anchors, as at Bessou in New York. Or, as re-envisioned by Chris Kajioka at Senia, in Honolulu, it might be a mossy cliff of charred cabbage — a wink at an iceberg wedge — dusted with shio kombu (shredded kelp boiled in soy and mirin), soaked through with dashi and ginger, and surrounded by daubs of heady green goddess dressing and buttermilk turned to gel. It’s not so much a salad as a cheeky biography of it by the barbarian at the gates, achieving the quintessence of an American classic through Asian ingredients.
And while Asian-American cooking may not be expressed in or identified by a single set of flavors, one thing that does unite such disparate traditions is an emphasis on textures. Indeed, if the cuisine can be said to have revolutionized American food, it’s by introducing unfamiliar mouth feels — crackle where one doesn’t expect it, slime in a country that’s always shied away from that sensation — into our culinary vocabulary. Justin Yu, who recently opened Theodore Rex in Houston, rhapsodizes about “the crunch that you can hear in the back of your head”; unrendered, gelatinous animal skin, “a fun burst of fat and softness”; broths barely skimmed, or with a spoonful of fat added “to coat the lips.” The maverick Katsuya Fukushima, of Daikaya in Washington, D.C., once turned natto — a gooey, slippery skein of fermented soybeans, with the perfume of castoff socks — into an earthy caramel over soft-serve. Like Latin-American food, which made Americans crave heat, Asian-American cuisine has made “difficult” textures not only desirable but as integral to food as flavor itself. That certain ingredients still make some Western diners squeamish is part of its provocative fun.
But the question remains: Does calling this kind of cooking Asian-American cuisine deepen and contextualize our understanding of it, or is it just a label, like speaking of Asian-American art or fiction — a way of simplifying a complex story and making it a marketable cliché? The danger is fetishizing Asian features, a tendency that diminishes: If you are an exotic object or phenomenon, you may never become recognized or acknowledged as more. “White chefs are using these ingredients and saying, ‘Oh, it’s so strange,’ ” Tin Vuong, of Little Sister in Los Angeles, said. “It isn’t.” Instead of a historical matrix of Asian culinary traditions, “young cooks just see a big pantry,” Fukushima said. “Take a little bit of this, a little bit of that — there’s no soul to it.”
Chang believes that food “has the potential to sort of show that we’re all the same.” But even he isn’t entirely comfortable with the ubiquity of kimchi. “Let’s say you spent no time in Asia, you just found a recipe on YouTube,” he said. “That’s appropriation. It’s not about skin color. You have to have a story, pay respect to what it was and what it means.” At the same time, it seems reductive to expect Asian-American chefs to make food that somehow reflects their personal “story.” On season three of “Top Chef,” Hung Huynh, a Vietnamese-American contestant, was faulted for cooking that was technically dazzling but lacked explicit reference to his roots. “You were born in Vietnam,” Tom Colicchio, the head judge, said. “I don’t see any of that in your food.” (It’s hard not to hear an echo of the trope of the inscrutable Oriental, whose motives can’t be deciphered, and the common criticism of Asian-Americans at school and at work as being overly cerebral and lacking feeling.) The strictures of reality TV do demand a baring of the soul, but not all Asian-American chefs want to work with Asian flavors — and when they do, it’s not always in expected ways.
Must every Italian chef make lasagna, every French chef coq au vin? Anita Lo, who closed her fine-dining restaurant Annisa in New York earlier this year, cooked there for 17 years without fealty to one region or cultural tradition. This puzzled some diners. “I had someone come in and say, ‘Where’s the big Buddha head?’ ” she said. When publications request recipes and she submits one without Asian ingredients, the response is often, “We were really hoping for something Asian” — or Asian-ish: Anything with soy, apparently, will do. “I send in Japanese, which isn’t even my background, but that works,” she said.
Corey Lee’s “Benu” cookbook is filled with stories: of his grandmother foraging for acorns; of his mother forcing him to drink a tonic of brewed deer’s antlers; of his father bringing home live lobster for his son’s birthday, and of the joys of eating tomalley (the wet gray-green paste that acts as a lobster’s liver and pancreas) on buttered bread. All suggest that Lee’s dishes, however rarefied, are also deeply autobiographical. But Lee demurs, the way a novelist might, fending off a critic’s attempt to find in his books correlations to actual events, wanting them to stand alone as fully imagined works of art. “There’s great pressure for chefs to have a story,” he said. “Maybe there’s no story beyond, ‘I want to serve this food and it tastes good.’ ”
It’s the eternal plea of the minority, to ask to be judged not by one’s appearance or the rituals of one’s forbears but for the quality of one’s mind and powers of invention. Certainly our country was predicated on the right to shed one’s past and be reborn, to come from nothing and work your way up; in this, Asians may be among the most American of Americans. But why is the choice always between exotic caricature or rootlessness? The philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues that the embrace of “ethnic” restaurants is merely “tolerance” of a “folklorist Other deprived of its substance”: “The ‘real Other’ is by definition ‘patriarchal,’ ‘violent,’ never the Other of ethereal wisdom and charming customs.” Too often Asian-American chefs are presumed to double as educators or ambassadors, representing an entire race, culture or cuisine.
In the end, doesn’t it matter — not to others, but to ourselves — where we are from? And no, I don’t mean “originally.” I mean the forces that made us: the immigrants who raised us, with all their burdens and expectations, their exhortations to fit in but never forget who we are; and the country we grew up in, that is our only home, that taught us we are “other” but also seems, in some confused, tentative way, to want to learn something from us.
For Asian-American chefs, this is the conundrum, and the opportunity. The foods of their childhoods were once mocked and rejected by their non-Asian peers (and by their ashamed or rebellious younger selves); then accepted in dilute, placating form; and now are able to command audiences who clamor for their sensations and aggressive flavors, and who might be unnerved if they knew exactly what they were putting in their mouths. What may be most radical about Asian-American cuisine is the attitude that informs and powers it, reflecting a new cockiness in a population that has historically kept quiet and encouraged to lay low. It’s food that celebrates crunchy cartilage and gelatinous ooze, that openly stinks, that declares: This is what I like to eat. What about you? Do you dare?
This one is just in time for Thanksgiving. ;)
There's a vid. Oh yum....:o
Quote:
NOT fine dining! Disturbing footage of restaurant diners eating LIVE seafood - including squirming fish on ice being cut open - reveals grim trend in China
Horrible videos show large fish still moving as people eat their severed flesh
An octopus, eels and grubs are also seen being eaten alive or shoved into bowls
China is not the only country in which this ethically questionable practice occurs
Live oyster and lobster is eaten in Europe and America, and live fish, octopus, squid and shrimp are eaten in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Thailand
By Liz Dunphy For Mailonline
PUBLISHED: 07:38 EST, 20 November 2017 | UPDATED: 05:07 EST, 21 November 2017
A shocking video has emerged of people eating live fish as they struggle and squirm in desperation in restaurants in China.
Horrible videos show large fish still moving despite being partially cut up and laid out on plates while being prodded with chopsticks by diners.
One fish, who has half its side slashed off with its flesh laid out in strips in front of it, can be seen repeatedly opening its mouth, as if gasping for breath, as someone prods at it.
A pot of wriggling eels are dumped in a large bowl of sauce on another dining table, and some of them make a dash for freedom, squirming across the table and onto the floor.
A man picks up a an octopus from a bowl of broth and shovels the wriggling creature, which scientists say feel pain and are intelligent, into his mouth as other diners laugh and joke as he does so.
The creature's tentacles reach out from his mouth and wrap around his face, grabbing at their assailant before he bites them off.
In another clip, a fish opens its mouth repeatedly as people pick up pieces of its mutilated flesh with chopsticks and eat it.
Large grubs wriggle about in a bowl of broth in another video.
But China is not the only country in which this ethically questionable practice of eating live seafood takes place.
Oysters are eaten live in many countries, including Britain, and restaurants in Europe and America serve live lobster.
Wendy Higgins of Humane Society International told MailOnline: ‘This video is truly sickening both in terms of animal cruelty but also in terms of what humans are capable of doing to our fellow creatures.
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Table of nightmares: The fish, which have half their sides slashed off, can be seen repeatedly opening their mouths, as if gasping for breath, while people prod them with chopsticks
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A large pot of wriggling eels are dumped in a large bowl of sauce on another dining table, and some of them make a dash for freedom, squirming across the table and onto the floor
'These fish and baby squid will have endured the unspeakable horror and pain of being eaten alive, all to satisfy diners' lust for extreme cuisine. Their ordeal is protracted and disgusting.
'There are no laws to protect animals like this in China, and it is that lack of legal recognition that can in itself encourage an attitude of disrespect.
'Basic respect for animals as sentient, thinking, feeling creatures is absolutely fundamental to protecting them; without that it becomes so much easier for people to divorce themselves from the pain and suffering that they commit.
'Some of these hideous scenes in the video are not a million miles away from what we may see in the new series of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, where the live eating of grubs and bugs is broadcast to huge audiences for our entertainment.
'So whilst we absolutely should and must abhor the kind of violence we see at this restaurant in China, we should also take a good long look out ourselves.’
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House of horrors: A man picks up a an octopus from a bowl of broth and shovels the wriggling creature, which scientists say feel pain and are known to be intelligent, into his mouth as other diners laugh and joke at the table
I really don't like eating raw and squirming fishes.. is this even considered normal? Please enlighten me.
My mom loves Chinese food, every time she visits us we would always take her to a Chinese restaurant.
I don't know about normal, but when I was in Keelung, Taiwan, I once ate a live shrimp. The only reason was because I was among guests being treated by hosts at a seafood restaurant. I didn't want to come across as rude. The live shrimp was grey-colored and tasted like semi-crunchy rubber and seawater. I really didn't see the appeal of it, and I only ate the one live shrimp. I took it as a cultural experience.
Some cultures don't understand people who eat pork or beef.
Wow! I love that boobs bun. lol.
I miss eating Chinese food especially dim sum and roast pecking duck.
continued next postQuote:
Snake restaurant in Hong Kong to close after 110 years, marking end of an era
Family-run She Wong Lam in Sheung Wan was hugely popular, with actor Stephen Chow a regular customer. But its snake handler is nearly 90, and no one in the family wants to continue the business
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 11 July, 2018, 6:48pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 11 July, 2018, 7:20pm
Bernice Chan
bernice.chan@scmp.com
http://twitter.com/beijingcalling
https://cdn2.i-scmp.com/sites/defaul...?itok=J_6kPQvT
One of Hong Kong’s oldest snake restaurants is closing for good, ending more than 110 years of history in Sheung Wan.
Family-run She Wong Lam was hugely popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but with no one from the family’s younger generation keen to continue the business of looking after snakes and preparing them for soup, the restaurant will close its doors on July 15.
According to Lo Tin-yam, the fourth-generation owner, She Wong Lam’s manager, Mak Dai-kong, is in his late 80s and has decided to retire, so the Lo family feels it is the right time to close the Hillier Street shop.
“Master Mak is almost 90 and he is the boss of the shop. He has worked for four generations of our family,” Lo says by phone from Vancouver, Canada. “Since my grandfather passed away, my father [Lo Yip-wing] didn’t know much about the snake business and I know even less,” he says.
His family trusts Mak but are unfamiliar with the shop’s other employees, making it hard for them to continue the business, he explains.
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Mak joined She Wong Lam in 1948, when he was 18 years old. Photo: Oliver Tsang
Lo says the date for closing She Wong Lam was chosen by his uncle and father, the latter now in an old people’s home in Hong Kong. Lo, an accountant, and his younger sister have lived in Vancouver since he was about eight years old and he does not intend to return.
“It’s very difficult to find people to work in this particular industry. It’s not for everyone,” Lo says.
Mak joined She Wong Lam in 1948, when he was 18 years old, and the founder, Lo Tai-lam, encouraged him to help out around the shop and eat snake soup to help build his strength.
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She Wong Lam in Sheung Wan in 1972. Photo: SCMP
Mak gradually learned how to handle snakes, remove their fangs, extract the gallbladder, and make the shop’s signature snake soup.
The ingredients of snake soup include the meat of various snake species, chicken, pork, sugar cane, mandarin peel, and white pepper. It is garnished with chrysanthemum petals and finely sliced lemon leaves.
“In the past, when I saw my colleagues handling snakes, they told me I didn’t have to be afraid of them,” Mak said in an interview with the Post late last year.
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Bottles of snake wine for sale at She Wong Lam. Photo: James Wendlinger
“Once their fangs have been pulled out, they are not venomous … I remember my first attempts at handling snakes. I got bitten by them but it wasn’t painful at all. Since then, I have never been afraid of snakes.”
Sidney Cheung Chin-hung, professor and director of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has a copy of a flier from She Wong Lam promoting its snake gallbladder seasoned with ginger or pepper that dates back to 1910, and believes the shop was established in the early 1900s.
While fourth-generation owner Lo didn’t learn much about the snake business, he has a few fond memories to share about the business. The shop moved a few times during its more than 110-year history, but has always been in Sheung Wan. He also revealed how the shop got its name.
“My great-grandfather used to be busy in the back of the shop dealing with the snakes, and because people couldn’t see him, they assumed he was being lazy, which is why he got the nickname ‘Se Wong’, or ‘Snake King’,” says Lo. “She wong” is a Chinese euphemism for a lazy person.
Lo isn’t sure how or when his great-grandfather came to Hong Kong from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, but Cheung is convinced the business was founded back in the dying days of the Qing dynasty.
One of his former anthropology graduate students, Esther Chok Wing-sum, says that in 1885 there were about 115 snake shops in Guangzhou. At the turn of the century, many snake handlers, including Lo’s great-grandfather, brought their knowledge and skills to the British colony of Hong Kong.
The younger Lo attributes the family’s financial success to the hard work of his great-grandfather and grandfather. At one point She Wong Lam sold snake gallbladder and soup not only in Sheung Wan, but at two other locations in the city.
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Mak gradually learned how to handle snakes, and defang them. Photo: James Wendlinger
Hong Kong historian Cheng Po-hung says one of the shops was on the corner of Hennessy and Fleming roads in Wan Chai. The other was in Kowloon, he says, though no one we spoke to remembers the exact location.
Before the 1950s, Chok says, snake was a delicacy on par with shark’s fin and bird’s nest, which only the well-off could afford.
“A snake gallbladder was a few days’ salary at the time,” she explains. “It cost HK$20, but at that time the average person’s monthly salary was only HK$250.”
However, from the 1950s onwards, eating snake became increasingly affordable for the working class and grew more popular. “A bowl of snake soup would cost HK$8, but then it went down to HK$2 to HK$3,” Chok says.
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Snake soup served at She Wong Lam. Photo: Edmond So
Lo says there was a Chinese opera theatre in Sheung Wan in the 1960s, close to She Wong Lam, and opera singers would patronise the shop regularly, downing snake gallbladder with alcohol to boost their stamina.
Celebrities such as actor Stephen Chow Sing-chi and former senior police officer Tsang Kai-wing (actor Eric Tsang Chi-wai’s father) were regular visitors. Lo says Chow would tell the staff to contact him when they had a particularly large cobra in stock, such was his appetite for the snake.
Historian Cheng says he has tried the reptile’s gallbladder, which his friends used to buy regularly from other snake shops. “They put it in a spoon, or a shot glass, and added alcohol to it,” he says.
“One time a group of us drank the gallbladder of three different snakes mixed with alcohol … it was translucent green in colour and tasted bitter. People think it helps you become physically stronger, but the gallbladder has bacteria in it,” he says.
Despite She Wong Lam’s success, Lo’s elders were acutely aware of how important it was that a member of the next generation learn the snake trade if the business was to continue.
“My great uncle asked me when I was in my 20s if I would go into the business, otherwise no one else would do it. But I have my life in Canada. I’m 50 years old now and I don’t even live there [in Hong Kong],” he says.
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Mak extracts the gallbladder, and then makes the shop’s signature snake soup. Photo: James Wendlinger
Lo points out that other traditional trades in Hong Kong, such as making lanterns, bamboo noodles, hand-carved mahjong tiles, and neon signs, are also disappearing.
“The younger generation move away and can’t come back,” he says. “[Old] Hong Kong will disappear and instead have shops like Zara, McDonald’s and Fairwood, especially with rent being so expensive.”Quote:
The younger generation move away and can’t come back. [Old] Hong Kong will disappearLO TIN-YAM
A search on restaurant guide OpenRice shows 36 restaurants with the Chinese character for “snake” in their name still open in Hong Kong, at least four of them with more than one location. They may not necessarily be specialists like She Wong Lam, however, nor have live snakes on the premises.
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Snake boxes with the word ‘poisonous’ on them at She Wong Lam in Sheung Wan. Photo: James Wendlinger
Historian Cheng thinks there is still a decent number of places to get a bowl of snake soup, and doesn’t expect them all to close any time soon. He says the owners of Shia Wong Hip in Sham Shui Po, for example, have taught their siblings the snake trade, and adds there are still many snake shops in that neighbourhood and in Yau Ma Tei.
After the closure of She Wong Lam, the Lo family, which owns the shop space, will rent it out. In the meantime, Lo says, they have contacted the Hong Kong Museum of History about collecting the snake cabinets, cages and tables. The wooden cabinets are more than 100 years old.
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Diners enjoy bowls of snake soup at She Wong Lam. Photo: AFP
Lo says Mak designed his own pocket knife to make a sharp slit to extract the snake’s gallbladder, and to skin it quickly and efficiently. According to Cheng, designing their own knives is common practice among those in the snake business.
For Lo, the closure of She Wong Lam is also the end of a long chapter in the family’s history, and tinged with sadness. Five years ago, Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK made a documentary featuring Lo and his son Lo Yun-hei, then three years old, visiting the shop. At the time he hoped the business would continue to the fifth generation.
The reality is that the family respects Mak’s wishes to retire, and Lo hopes to keep the shop’s name alive. “I do have the intention to move back to Hong Kong when I retire, and I still have the rights to the name, so maybe I’ll open a restaurant with the same name,” Lo says.
Chinese food
snakes
I'm starving!!! I want to go out now and eat at the nearest Chinese restaurant. We have a small one here about 5 minutes away.
This explains a great mystery to me. I've seen Q before in ads and such and never put this together.Quote:
In Italy, ‘Al Dente’ Is Prized. In Taiwan, It’s All About Food That’s ‘Q.’
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Taiwanese tapioca for sale at the Lehua Night Market in Taipei. It has the prized “Q” texture of Taiwanese food.CreditCreditBilly H.C. Kwok for The New York Times
By Amy Qin
Oct. 4, 2018
NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan — As dusk falls at Lehua Night Market, the fluorescent lights flicker on and the hungry customers start trickling in, anxious for a taste of the local delicacies that give this island its reputation as one of Asia’s finest culinary capitals.
Neatly arranged pyramids of plump fish balls. Bowls brimming with tapioca balls bathed in lightly sweetened syrup. Sizzling oyster omelets, hot off the griddle. Deep-fried sweet potato puffs, still dripping with oil.
Take a bite of any of these dishes and you’ll discover a unique texture. But how exactly do you describe that perfectly calibrated “mouth feel” so sought after by local cooks and eaters alike?
Slippery? Chewy? Globby? Not exactly the most flattering adjectives in the culinary world.
Luckily, the Taiwanese have a word for this texture. Well, actually, it’s not a word, it’s a letter — one that even non-Chinese speakers can pronounce.
It’s “Q.”
“It’s difficult to explain what Q means exactly,” said Liu Yen-ling, a manager at Chun Shui Tang, a popular teahouse chain that claims to have invented tapioca milk tea in Taiwan. “Basically it means springy, soft, elastic.”
Q texture is to Taiwanese what umami is to Japanese and al dente is to Italians — that is, cherished and essential. Around Taiwan, the letter Q can often be glimpsed amid a jumble of Chinese characters on shop signs and food packages and in convenience stores and advertisements.
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Q bars, Taiwanese tapioca and sesame doughnuts.Credit Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times
The texture is found in both savory and sweet foods, and is most often used to describe foods that contain some kind of starch like noodles, tapioca pearls and fish balls. If something is really chewy or extra Q, then it could be called QQ. Often, Q and QQ are used interchangeably.
“You can tell if bubble milk tea is good based on how Q the tapioca pearls are,” Mr. Liu said. “If the texture is perfect, it can be very satisfying.”
André Chiang, a Michelin-star chef and owner of RAW in Taipei, said he had recently been experimenting with the texture at his restaurant, which uses only locally sourced Taiwanese ingredients.
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At the night market in Taipei. Q texture is to Taiwanese what umami is to Japanese and al dente is to Italians — that is, cherished and essential.Credit Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times
One dish he was trying out for the restaurant’s new menu featured langoustine, burned onion juice and white tapioca pearls that are cooked to bubbly Q perfection.
“It’s like al dente but not quite,” Mr. Chiang said. “It’s to the tooth but there’s also that added element of bounciness.”
Q is so well established in Taiwan that many in Hong Kong and over the strait in mainland China use the term as well.
Elsewhere in Asia, it is a familiar texture, though the term itself may not be used. Tteok-bokki, a Korean stir-fried rice cake, and mochi, a Japanese rice cake, for example, could also be considered Q. In Western cuisine, the texture is less commonly found, though one could describe foods like gummy bears and certain kinds of pasta as Q.
The origins of the term Q are unclear. Some say it comes from the Taiwanese Hokkien word k’iu. Say Q to an elderly Taiwanese, and chances are he or she will know the term. But no one can quite explain how and when the 17th letter of the English alphabet became shorthand for describing the texture of tapioca balls and gummy candies.
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Milk curd, happy QQ balls (sweet potato balls) and konjac.Credit Billy H.C. Kwok for NYT; Ashley Pon for NYT; Billy H.C. Kwok for NYT
With the rapid proliferation of bubble milk tea shops and other Asian snack shops across the United States over the years, there has emerged a broader appreciation for this once “exotic” texture, even if the vocabulary to describe that texture has not exactly caught up.
“Most of my American friends like bubble milk tea,” said Tina Fong, a co-founder of Taipei Eats, which offers food tours around the city. “But when there’s Q texture in a savory dish, it can still be a bit strange to them. It really depends on the person.”
When it comes to the Chinese language, the letter Q is surprisingly versatile, and not used only to describe food. For example, many in China and Taiwan are familiar with 阿Q, or Ah Q, the protagonist of one of China’s most famous novellas by the writer Lu Xun.
After the publication of “The True Story of Ah Q” in the early 1920s, Ah Q became a symbol of the backwardness of Chinese culture. While the story’s narrator confesses to not knowing the origin of Ah Q’s name, some scholars say Lu Xun may have chosen Q as an implicit reference to its ****nym queue, or the braided ponytail that Chinese men were forced to wear to show their subjugation to the ruling Qing dynasty.
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Tapioca pearls and bubble milk tea at Chun Shui Tang teahouse in Taipei, left and middle. A bowl of beef noodle at Taipei’s Lin Dong Fang beef noodle shop.Credit Ashley Pon for The New York Times
Some have also interpreted Lu Xun’s Q as a pictogram of a head with a pigtail.
There are many other uses for the term Q in Chinese as well. It could be used, for example, as shorthand for the English word cute, or to refer to the once-popular QQ messaging service from Tencent or the QQ minicar model from the Chinese carmaker Chery.
“Whether Q may be considered a Chinese character or not, it certainly has become a part of the Chinese writing system,” Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language at the University of Pennsylvania, once wrote in a blog post.
Among Taiwanese, the appreciation for Q texture starts at a young age. On a recent sticky evening at Lehua Night Market, crowds ambled through the carnival-like pedestrian street, which was lined on both sides with vendors hawking things like hats, cellphone cases and, of course, delicious snacks.
A gaggle of mini revelers zeroed in on a stand with a neon sign that read “QQ popsicles.” Asked why Q texture was so appealing to Taiwanese, Lu Wei-chen, the owner of the stand, smiled as she handed a bright red jelly bar to a delighted toddler.
“It’s simple,” she said. “When you eat it, you will be in a good mood.”
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Vermicelli and pig blood cake for sale at the night market.Credit Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times
Follow Amy Qin on Twitter: @amyyqin
Karoline Kan contributed research from Beijing.
THREADS
Chinese food
Bubble Tea
...snake loose in the restaurant.
I hope that 'brave uncle' got his meal comped, at least.Quote:
Live snake escapes from Guangzhou restaurant’s kitchen, gets caught by customer
At least you know your snakehead soup is fresh!
by Alex Linder October 5, 2018
https://i0.wp.com/shanghai.ist/wp-co...g?w=1024&ssl=1
Recently, a live snake escaped from the restaurant of a kitchen only to be caught and returned by one customer. This happened where else but in Guangdong province.
Video shows that the snake’s escape caused quite a stir in the Guangzhou restaurant, causing some diners to flee and others to step forward to help catch the creature. In the end, it was a brave uncle who snared the serpent and presented it back to restaurant staff.
In China, the people of Guangdong have a well-earned reputation as adventurous eaters — a popular saying goes that they will “eat anything that has four legs except for a table, anything that flies except for an airplane, and anything that swims except for a submarine — while restaurants there do not have such an impressive reputation for food safety, at least you know that the snakehead soup is made fresh.
THREADS
snakes
Chinese Food
HK$800 Ozaki beef sandwich. HK$800= $102.16 USD :eek:
Quote:
Hong Kong label chasers lap up luxury food trends: Wagyu, white truffles, Wuliangye
Always keen to try the next new and trendy thing, Hongkongers don’t mind having their egos exploited if it also means proving their crazy rich credentials
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 03 October, 2018, 12:31pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 04 October, 2018, 7:10pm
Andrew Sun
https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/defaul...?itok=reJIUcQ8
Hong Kong people want the best of everything and they know the brand names to prove it. From fashion to jewellery to restaurants by celebrity chefs, there is no better way for them to prove their crazy rich credentials than to engage in label chasing.
Bars and restaurant owners are as aware of this tendency as any other type of business. They’re not afraid to exploit our egos by pushing on us their most ostentatious ingredients. After all, Hongkongers don’t just enjoy wearing bling, they like to eat it too.
When red wine got a little too mass market for the oenophile nerds – I mean, connoisseurs – a snifter of whisky became the routine drink in expensive bars. Trend snobs would boast about single malts, dusty bottles from obscure distilleries, and the impressive number of years their drink was aged in oak barrels. Then, when the oracles of alcohol declared the best stuff was made in Japan, the lemmings started looking eastward.
As that fad plays itself out, booze brands are now pushing other bandwagon products. Have you noticed Chinese baijiu is suddenly being used in more cocktails? I suppose it’s to wean us before suggesting we should do the alcohol in straight-up shots. Once you’re hooked, naturally you’ll want to move some of the whisky bottles to make room in the cabinet for some Mao-tai and Wuliangye.
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When wine got too widespread, oenophile nerds starting reaching for the single malts. Is luxury Chinese baijiu next? Photo: Alamy
The same marketing trick happens with food, too. I remember only being able to order buffalo mozzarella in restaurants. Now it’s available in supermarkets, so the fancy trattorias want to sell me burrata instead. Stuffing cream into mozzarella is, of course, more premium and, naturally, pricier. And just like that, mozzarella is relegated to second-class status.
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Burrata – a cut above your mass market mozzarella. Photo: Alamy
I also remember when Kobe was the best beef you could eat. We were lured with mythic stories about the cows being massaged and fed beer. Then wagyu came along. Even though Kobe is technically a type of wagyu (which means “Japanese breeds of beef”), the label stuck and people who don’t know any better think wagyu is more elevated than Kobe.
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Is wagyu better than Kobe? Who cares – as long as it’s trendier.
As wagyu started selling by the cattle load, producers began raising them in other places. In Australia, it was crossed with cattle breeds like Angus, so wagyu suddenly started appearing in steakhouses and French restaurants. Burger joints used it to make really marbled patties for their luxury sliders. At Repulse Bay’s Fratelli pasta bar, they even have an Italian wagyu beef on the menu. Will a McWagyu be next?
This summer, a hot new beef name arrived in Hong Kong. Elephant Grounds’ pop-up cafe with Japanese brand Wagyumafia introduced us to an HK$800 Ozaki beef sandwich. What is Ozaki? It’s wagyu raised in Miyazaki in southwest Japan, but specifically on a farm owned by rancher Muneharu Ozaki. You want exclusive? Post pop-up, the beef is only available in one Causeway Bay restaurant, Marble.
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A piece of the HK$800 Ozaki beef sandwich from the Elephant Grounds pop-up in Causeway Bay. Photo: Bernice Chan
But the most successfully marketed luxury ingredient in Hong Kong has to be truffles. Around this time every year, restaurants with Michelin stars (or Michelin-star ambitions) will start shaving white truffles all over their dishes for status-seeking diners who essentially tell them, “Here’s my money, please show everyone what a big deal I am.”
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If you want a Michelin star, stick white truffle on the menu. Photo: Alamy
We can thank 8½ Otto e Mezzo chef Umberto Bombana for introducing us to this heavenly aromatic fungus; he was using white truffles way back in his days at Toscana, when the Ritz-Carlton was in Central. But his annual Alba truffle auctions are now little more than an excuse for tycoons to compare the size of their … wallets.
As the truffle obsession has grown, the rest of the year we want black truffles from France, Australia and even China. To give the grovelling masses a taste, there are synthetically simulated bottles of truffle oil to use with pizzas and pastas. Personally, too much truffle makes me slightly nauseated, so no thanks to all those eight-course truffle meals so popular in Hong Kong.
Of course, I say that because I’m broke. If I wasn’t, maybe I would be ordering an Ozaki steak marinated in 30-year-old whisky, topped with burrata, white truffles and plenty of gold leaf.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Pursuit of the best of everything leaves us vulnerable to fads
I don't eat ice cream any more for dietary reasons, but I would give this a taste. I love vinegar. I guess it's the Chinese in me. ;)Quote:
Shanxi shop leaves a sweet taste with its vinegar ice cream
'Delicious' and 'sweet and sour'
by Jethro Kang October 15, 2018 in Food
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In China, vinegar is a no-brainer addition to everything from noodles to breaded pork cutlets, but a store in northern China is using it to flavor something rather unconventional: ice cream.
A dessert shop in Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shanxi, has recently created the sweet treat with the sour condiment as the highlight.
The ice cream is made from milk, sorghum, peas, barley, and Lao Chen Cu (老陈醋), a type of aged vinegar the province is famous for.
“We use mature vinegar that has been fermented for three years to five years,” store employee Chen Yichao told Xinhua News Agency.
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According to Chen, it took many experiments to make the vinegar ice cream palatable.
“Some people don’t like the flavor,” he said, “but we are catering to those who dare to try new things.”
There seems to be a lot of adventurous eaters: over 200 cones are sold everyday, according to China Global Television Network, and Chen said it accounted for at least 60 percent of their total daily sales. Each vinegar ice cream cone costs ¥10.
In a Weibo video by China News, a lady described the flavor as “delicious” and “sweet and sour.”
Lao Chen vinegar is considered to be one of the four famous vinegars in China. It has a history of over 3,000 years and it’s thought to be the first style of vinegar in the world.
[Photos via CGTN]
THREADS
Addiction to ice cream...
Chinese food
This article is a few months old but rat lungworm is back in the news with another recent death of an Australian who ate a slug on a dare.
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Two people got rat lungworm from eating raw centipedes. Could you be next?
The answer is yes—even if you don't like eating bugs.
By Sara Chodosh July 31, 2018
https://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci....NIJcH&fc=50,50
A beautiful lungworm.
Punlop Anusonpornperm
Rat lungworm is, thankfully, one of the few parasites that sounds more disgusting than it is. Unfortunately, it’s even more terrifying than its gross name would suggest.
Two poor humans who recently got infected—as reported Monday in the journal American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene—contracted the parasite by eating raw centipedes, which might give you a false sense of security. ‘I don’t eat centipedes,’ you think, foolishly. Nor do you likely live in a small rural town in Guangzhou, China, where the mother and son pair reported to the hospital with persistent headaches. (Of course, you may live in a small rural town in Guangzhou and/or enjoy the occasional centipede snack, but our reader analytics tell us this is statistically unlikely).
But rat lungworm isn’t confined to Asia and the Caribbean anymore: It’s in the U.S., too. And you don’t have to indulge in conscious entomophagy for the disease to strike you.
First, though, let’s talk about what the heck rat lungworm is. As the name implies, the parasitic roundworm that causes angiostrongyliasis (the scientific name for the disease) lives inside rat lungs, specifically inside the pulmonary blood vessels. Infected rats excrete the worms in their feces, where it can go on to infect other critters like snails, slugs, frogs and, yes, centipedes. Cooking any of these animals kills the parasite, so escargot fans needn’t worry, but eating any of them raw may very well pass the roundworms on to you. You, a human, are what epidemiologists call an incidental host. Angiostrongylus cantonensis isn’t trying to infect you, but if it finds itself in your bloodstream it’ll make itself at home.
Once inside you, the worms can get into your central nervous system, where they can cause eosinophilic meningitis. Meningitis is, generally, inflammation of the meninges, which is the membrane surrounding your brain and spinal cord. The eosinophilic type is rare and is so-called because it involves a proliferation of eosinophils, a type of white blood cell that fights parasites. That is, in fact, how many cases of rat lungworm are diagnosed in humans. There’s no blood test, so diagnosis relies on doctors picking up on certain clues enough to think to test the cerebrospinal fluid for high levels of eosinophils.
That was the case for this mother and son, who reported to the hospital a few weeks apart complaining of persistent headaches. The mother, 78, also had cognitive impairment and sleepiness. The son, 46, had some neck rigidity. It was only after questioning that the doctors discovered both had eaten raw centipedes in the previous days, and thought to look at their cerebrospinal fluid.
Those symptoms aren’t exactly typical of rat lungworm, though. The neck stiffness and headaches are classic signs of meningitis in general—the inflammation in the meninges causes both. But most people with meningitis also have much more serious symptoms. Many report nausea, vomiting, fever, abnormal sensations in the arms and legs, and changes to vision. As the disease progresses, some people can develop other neurological problems and can even die. That being said, rat lungworm isn’t always horrifying. It doesn’t even always cause meningitis. Some people don’t have any symptoms, others get minor headaches or a stiff neck, but their bodies mostly fight off the parasite without them ever noticing.
The other parasite that causes rat lungworm, Angiostrongylus costaricensis, can also cause abdominal pain since it often travels to the intestines. The Centers for Disease Control notes that the pain can be severe enough to mimic appendicitis, and it’s often only once surgeons remove the appendix that they realize what’s actually causing the pain. If the worms stick around, though, people can develop internal hemorrhaging from their intestines as the worms get stuck in capillaries and cause inflammatory reactions as they die. (Okay, maybe this is grosser than it sounds after all…).
This used to be problem mostly in Asia and the Caribbean. That’s where the parasite circulated between the rat and snail/slug populations. A 2013 study found that the disease is spreading, though, largely as a result of global shipping patterns in cargo ships and planes, which can carry rats and snails or slugs without anyone realizing. That same study found infected apple snails in New Orleans and infected flatworms in Hawai’i, as well as other infected mollusks and many, many rats. A 2015 study found the parasite in the Giant African Land Snails that hang out in Florida, too. Some researchers have expressed concern that climate change could expand the reach of these critters, thus also broadening the area that the parasite can come in contact with humans.
Now, you may be thinking at this point that you still don’t eat uncooked snails and slugs. To that we will say that you don’t eat uncooked snails and slugs intentionally. Some people certainly do eat these creatures raw, whether for supposed medicinal purposes (which was why the two people in the case report consumed the centipedes raw) or on a dare, or simply because they enjoy it (no judgement). But many of us have probably eaten some raw slug unintentionally on a bit of poorly-washed lettuce. And you don’t have to eat the slug or snail itself—larvae can hide inside the slime. You can get infected without even realizing it. Besides, it’s not just slugs and snails. Shrimp, frogs, and crabs can give you the disease, too, and so can water that’s harbored any of those animals.
People living in Hawai’i have already gotten infected (and so did one teen who was just on vacation there). Several people have ended up in comas, and a study of the 84 cases of rat lungworm in Hawai’i from January 2001 to February 2005, researchers found that at least 24 of the cases were attributable to A. cantonensis.
These cases don’t seem to have been treated for the parasite specifically, but rather were given medicine to improve their symptoms. Similarly, the CDC doesn’t list a specific treatment for rat lungworm. Both of the Chinese patients in this recent case study were treated with albendazole (an anti-parasitic) for 21 days and dexamethasone (an anti-inflammatory steroid) for 15 days, which seems to have resolved the disease.
If you live around the Gulf of Mexico or in Hawai’i, rat lungworm could be a growing problem for you. So yes, avoid eating raw or undercooked slugs or snails (not that most of us would know the proper cooking technique for a garden slug), but also don’t drink from the garden hose or handle any of these critters that you find near your house without washing your hands afterwards. Thoroughly wash all your produce, too. And maybe just stay away from raw centipedes generally.
It's about time...:)
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The Launch Of The MICHELIN Guide Fine Cantonese Food
This special edition compiles the best addresses for Cantonese cuisine across 15 countries in Asia, Europe and the United States.
13 November 2018
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Michelin has just unveiled the latest edition of its MICHELIN Guides with a new title dedicated to one of the world’s most celebrated cuisines: The MICHELIN Guide Fine Cantonese Food.
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This is the first time that the teams of the MICHELIN Guide have created a selection that does not cover a particular geographical area but which compiles the best addresses offering a regional specialty.
Gwendal Poullennec, International Director of the MICHELIN Guides comments: "The MICHELIN Guide is now acclaiming, internationally, Cantonese gastronomy, which enjoys a worldwide reputation and is appreciated both in Asia, Europe, North America and in the Pacific”.
The selection lists some 291 establishments from different editions of the Guide, of which 78 are starred restaurants, 62 are Bib Gourmand restaurants and 151 are restaurants awarded a MICHELIN Plate.
These include the four Cantonese establishments around the world with the highest three-Michelin-star status: The Eight in the Grand Lisboa Hotel in Macau, Lung King Heen and T’ang Court in Hong Kong, and Le Palais in Taipei.
These different addresses are located in 15 countries from China to the United States through Italy. Asia has the largest number of starred Cantonese restaurants with 69 establishments, while Europe has eight and the United States one.
This special edition of the MICHELIN Guide pays tribute to one of the most famous Chinese cuisines that has seduced gourmets from around the world, demonstrating the expertise of the Michelin inspectors and their ability to appreciate the most varied cuisines with a universal criteria.
Banner image courtesy of Lung King Heen.
Written by Rachel Tan
Rachel Tan is Digital Associate Editor at the Michelin Guide Singapore. A former food magazine writer, she has a degree in communications for journalism but is a graduate of the school of hard knocks in the kitchen. When not at the keyboard, she might be found devouring food fiction or slaving over the stove with a kid on her hip. In the words of Anais Nin, she writes to taste life twice.
I do think poorly of P.F Chang's too, but just because it's overpriced. I'll never eat at Lucky Cricket. I'm not convinced that Zimmern can even make a decent dish of crickets. That's not because he's white, mind you, it's because his thinking is too narrow.Quote:
Andrew Zimmern apologizes after criticized for 'offensive' comments about Chinese restaurants
The celebrity chef's remarks about the quality of Chinese-American restaurants, such as P.F. Chang's, were criticized for being culturally insensitive.
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Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" host Andrew Zimmern, a four-time James Beard award-winning chef, samples Taiwanese noodle soup and pork roll at Happy Stony Noodle in Elmhurst, Queens in New York on July 20, 2017.Kathy Willens / AP file
Nov. 27, 2018 / 3:14 PM PST
By Agnes Constante
Celebrity chef and “Bizarre Foods” host Andrew Zimmern has apologized for controversial remarks he made about Chinese-American restaurants
“The upset that is felt in the Chinese American community is reasonable, legitimate and understandable, and I regret that I have been the one to cause it,” Zimmern wrote in a statement posted to Facebook on Monday. “That is the very last thing I would ever want to do.”
The apology follows Zimmern's interview with Fast Company, published last week, where he discussed the opening of his latest restaurant Lucky Cricket, a Chinese restaurant that includes a Tiki bar, at a mall in a Minnesota suburb. The goal, he said, was to introduce Midwesterners to "hot chili oil, introduce them to a hand-cut noodle, and introduce them to a real roast duck," and to open 200 of those restaurants across middle America.
“I think I'm saving the souls of all the people from having to dine at these horses--- restaurants masquerading as Chinese food that are in the Midwest,” he said.
Zimmern's remarks were widely criticized for being culturally insensitive.Quote:
Angry Asian Man
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@angryasianman
To quote @hooleil: "If a dish hasn't been eaten or reimagined by a white person, does it really exist?" https://www.eater.com/2018/11/20/181...hain-minnesota …
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3:30 PM - Nov 20, 2018
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Why Does Andrew Zimmern Get to Create the Next P.F. Chang’s?
The chef and TV host wades into questions of appropriation with his new Chinese restaurant chain, Lucky Cricket
eater.com
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"The Midwest’s 'horses--- restaurants' are what paved the way for Zimmern’s venture and more broadly, Chinese cuisine in America," Washington Post contributor Ruth Tam wrote in response. "Chinese American food may have originated in the nation’s coastal cities, where immigrants first opened shop, but I’d argue that this cuisine’s ability to thrive in the Midwest with fewer Asian patrons cemented its lasting role in this country. These 'horses---' restaurants may not clear Zimmern’s bar for authenticity, but despite adversity, they created a time-tested model for immigrant food and helped make Chinese food not only ubiquitous, but part of American identity."
Eater restaurant editor Hillary Dixler Canavan also criticized Zimmern for inaccurately portraying the Chinese-American restaurant experience. During Zimmern's interview with Fast Company, he said, “Someone else is going to be the next P.F. Chang's, and I don't want them to blow it. And is it up to me to do it? …. I certainly think I'm in the conversation. And just because I'm not Chinese, I leave that to the rest of the world to judge.”Quote:
Serena Dai
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@ssdai
So Andrew Zimmern basically called into question a Chinese guy's Chinese-ness and authority to sell Chinese food — while promoting his own authority to sell Chinese food as a woke white guy
Eater
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@Eater
Andrew Zimmern wades into questions of appropriation with the launch of his new Chinese restaurant chain Lucky Cricket https://www.eater.com/2018/11/20/181...source=twitter …
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He also suggested that P.F. Chang's was a “ripoff” because it was owned by the son — “a rich, American kid on the inside” — of culinary figure Cecilia Chang, who is credited with introducing America to traditional Chinese cuisine.
"With one glib comment, Zimmern basically erases [Philip] Chiang’s experience of race in America because he was from a rich family," Dixler Canavan wrote. "Calling Chiang’s cultural purity into question in order to give his own work on Lucky Cricket a pass is deeply misguided, if not outrageously offensive."
She added, “Zimmern not only makes a value judgment about authenticity … but he also makes it without questioning why he gets to pass judgment in the first place. That act of 'translating' on behalf of the presumably white audience — the idea that American diners need to have something unfamiliar 'made more palatable' to get them to the table — has shades of a strange, increasingly outdated form of cultural elitism.”
In his apology, Zimmern said he did not intend to portray himself as the expert of quality Chinese or Chinese-American food or culture, and that some of what he said was taken out of context.
He noted that many people in Minnesota only know the Chinese food found at airports and malls.
“For those folks, I hope to open their eyes to the greatness of Chinese and Chinese-American cuisines and the people who put it on the plate,” he said. “And hopefully, since Americans in general inhale other cultures first through their mouths, if they can love the food they can become more accepting and understanding of the people.”
Follow NBC Asian America on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.
CORRECTION (Nov. 28, 2018, 10:26 a.m. ET): An earlier version of a photo caption in this article misspelled the name of a TV show hosted by Andrew Zimmern. The show is "Bizarre Foods," not "Bizzare Foods."