A man who has eaten at more than 7,300 Chinese restaurants | Hacker News Reader

A man who has eaten at more than 7,300 Chinese restaurants

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115 pointsrustcharm29 comments

That has an interesting trivia tidbit revealed about real estate in there - foreign investment in USA residential real estate has shifted from 10% Chinese to 30% Chinese in ten years.

Also, I feel something is missing from the story. Just as a statement of fact and not a criticism - his personal taste is pedestrian not adventurous - his favorite dishes are noodles without sauce and rice with soy sauce. I would have loved to have heard what his wife (if she is still around) thought about their shared hobby.

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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/chop-suey...

The above article was posted on HN awhile ago. Author goes to number of small town chinese restaurants in Canada and tells their stories. Very long read. Not sure why I liked it so much, but was a good relaxing read.

Yeah, maybe he does have some profound insights into Chinese food just by virtue of volume, but the fact that he doesn't like spicy food and his favorite dish is soy sauce and rice means that I'm probably not going to trust him for food advice. Kind of a shame actually.

Maybe soy sauce on rice can be done really well? A lot of my favorite rice dishes are equally plain sounding (saffron with rice, coconut oil rice, and even japanese donburi are mostly "just" soy sauce and rice).

If it's literally just plain soy sauce on plain rice though, it's probably just nostalgia over childhood poverty meals. It's not bad but you don't do it by choice!

I am second generation Chinese from the same region as Chan, and I, too, did not enjoy most of the regional dishes my parents gave me and actually chose to eat soy sauce on plain rice when the dishes were unpalatable to me. I mean actual poverty meals but my bias/ignorance is showing because it's actually not clear from the article if that's what he meant or if he meant what you are describing.

This is fascinating to me. When my kids don't want to eat what we are serving they will often have carrots or broccoli with ranch dressing instead. I never stopped to wonder what kids in other cultures eat in similar circumstances.

Side note: soy sauce and butter on rice [1] can be really good. It doesn't sound that good, and I didn't believe it could be good until I tried it.

[1] https://norioonwine.blogspot.com/2010/11/rice-with-butter-an...

I was hesitant to mention the butter part in my post (I realize it would sound weird to most Americans), that is what I ate as a child, too.

Rice is one of the most important foods in the world. I'm not sure you understand it's significance.

Sure, and bread is the most important food in western society, but if a French food critic's favorite dish was a baguette with jam, I'd question their judgement a little.

You underestimate how important bread still is in French cuisine. I was just in Paris and complained to the concierge at our high end hotel about a bad restaurant recommendation. He said he didn't need to hear anymore about how bad the meal was after I said the bread was bad (and stale). In other simple French food news, Joel Robouchon is known for saying his last meal would be a good potato with good butter.

And rice is profoundly important in Chinese culture :D. But just because a restaurant has good bread/rice doesn't mean it's good. Good bread/rice is the baseline, not the goal.

From what I understand, rice is the most important ingredient to sushi as well. (More so than the fish)

I was just thinking, "what's wrong with that?". I'm French, though.

> He cannot speak Chinese. He adheres strictly to a lifelong low-sugar, low-cholesterol diet.

I'm no expert on cholesterol, but does fried Chinese food not have the same cholesterol level as other fried food?

Chinese food can be verryyyy oily, but cantonese food tend to be healthier I find. It's possible that he sticks to vegetable dishes or steamed food.

Cantonese invented sweet and sour pork, which is very much fried. I think you’ll find healthy and unhealthy options in most Chinese styles fairly equally. Now the stuff they sell at restaurants in the states is another story, but that is more about clientele.

> but that is more about clientele.

Yeah, absolutely agreed. Most 'traditional cuisines' tend to be fairly healthy. My pet theory on this is along the lines of an evolutionary standpoint.. if it wasn't healthy, the people eating it would have been more likely to die off.

Unfortunately North American's got all the delicious foods from all the cultures that immigrated :)

Traditional food for the average person is very healthy. Of course, the average Cantonese person was very poor until decades ago. Most of the dishes that have made it abroad usually consists of tastier fare for a more wealthy population.

We know a wealthy Chinese woman as far back as 600BCE had high cholesterol and a heart attack. https://allthatsinteresting.com/xin-zhui-lady-dai

I've never seen sweet and sour pork in hk (and people there refer to it as western cuisine)

Cholesterol is added via animal fat (e.g. frying in lard, tallow, or butter), not by the process of frying. Plants do not contain cholesterol.

> Plants do not contain cholesterol.

Yes, they do. Source: Cholesterol and Plants by Behrman et al.

Isn't this a bit pendantic? I think cholesterol occurs in plants, but at levels that are probably insignificant to human diet.

Cholesterol is not really a diet ingredient, but a substance that is created and maintained by your body. It's vital to functions such as learning, memory, and repairing blood vessels. Almost all cells in your body can make cholesterol.

Eating foods with cholesterol does not directly correlate to your body's own level of cholesterol. If someone has high cholesterol, it's likely a symptom of a different problem.

I'd be much more worried about how well rice and "low-sugar" play together.

Strictly by the definitions of nutrients, "white" carbs and sugar are not synonymous.

Chan is also a friendly figure on Twitter and will chat about restaurants (located almost anywhere) with anyone.

If I'm not mistaken: https://twitter.com/chandavkl

Well this is David Chan and the article has some errors. Like soy sauce rice was my favorite AS A KID, I do like food and do return to some restaurtants

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