>The "local Chinese restaurant" is a much more franchised thing than most people are aware of
This is interesting (but also makes sense) -- do you happen to have an article?
This is interesting (but also makes sense) -- do you happen to have an article?
There are immigrant associations that will take recent Chinese immigrants, train them to cook the US staples, help them find a new "territory", and finance the restaurant. It's really fascinating.
https://www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/bulk-pataks-balti-curry-p...
It's a shame, because a lot of the dishes have lost a lot of their subtlety and especially regional variation.
It's getting a bit better but there's still a long way to go even in the cities that have more Chinese options (NYC, west coast cities)
In the medium-sized city where I live, there is a standard American Chinese place by a university which is frankly not very good even for American Chinese food, but was owned by people from sichuan and would make off menu sichuan dishes for immigrant students. But they noticed non-immigrant Americans ordering them too, and wisely noticed the general trend going on, and the same owners up a different place a few miles away with actual sichuan food and prices 2x+ higher, which has been very successful. :)
In Philadelphia there's also the popular Han Dynasty chain of sichuan places.
I'd imagine even the places with food closer to "actual" sichuan food, if they are popular with non-Chinese people, have "Americanized" to some extent. I couldn't say as they are my only exposure to it! But I know sometimes I get something where the flavors/textures are just TOO different than what I'm used to, and I just don't like it!
If you can't find a decent restaurant, you could try to make stuff on your own. Search foursquare for "Asian supermarket", it will likely carry real Chinese ingredients even if it is primarily Vietnamese or Korean. As far as what to cook, I think https://omnivorescookbook.com/ always comes up with something pretty good. I also swear by the Mission Chinese cookbook. While some of those recipes aren't exactly authentic, they are close enough (and the author explains the ways they differ, like they have a recipe for kung pao pastrami - you're not going to find pastrami in China, but the kung pao part is pretty close).
China is also a huge place that has many regional variations. Just like BBQ in Texas is different from BBQ in Eastern North Carolina, it's hard to say what is or isn't authentic in terms of Chinese cuisine, or what is authentic to a particular regions, etc. I'm sure they're arguing about it over there, too.
I'm not exactly qualified to judge their authenticity (although I've been taken by a Taiwanese acquaintance to more than one in the past - no names, sorry), but a lot of them are in immigrant communities where the primary customers seem to be people of those ethnic backgrounds, not "average Americans".
One of the reasons I love living in Toronto: its many ethnic neighbourhoods from just about every nationality on earth e.g. Hungarian, Vietnamese, Iranian, Jamaican. Perhaps only matched by NYC, their local restaurants are 100% authentic to the point of importing fresh ingredients almost daily.
Their heavy reliance on immigrants. Imagine moving to another country eager to start a restaurant featuring the food you've spent years cooking only to show up and be told you need to learn all their recipes and call it American cuisine.
Why Fruits and Veggies Are So Cheap in Chinatown - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063 - June 2016 (237 comments)
The Kitchen Network: America’s Underground Chinese Restaurant Workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425246 - Oct 2014 (39 comments)
Parts of it are incredibly obvious though, things like interior design, the Chinese Zodiac place mats, fortune cookies and Sriracha.