Yes, I know the mexican food in NY isnt as good as California. Cal-Mex in NY isnt really new either. There are good mexican spots weirdly near me outside of NYC that would rival places in...
Yes, I know the mexican food in NY isnt as good as California. Cal-Mex in NY isnt really new either.
There are good mexican spots weirdly near me outside of NYC that would rival places in California. But all this article does is drummed the tired forced rivalry NYC vs CA. A more interesting article would have delved deeper why mexican food isn't the same in CA. Is it the ingredients? Is it the audience? Or the places this food critic is going to.
I roll my eyes everytime I see an article that has a NY vs LA undertone. This articles isn't an exception. There's not much going on this article that hasn't been said before.
Hot take inbound. It doesn't matter who is in the kitchen, it matters who is in the dining seats. Almost every Mexican restaurant in California has mexican or central american cooks in the...
Hot take inbound.
It doesn't matter who is in the kitchen, it matters who is in the dining seats. Almost every Mexican restaurant in California has mexican or central american cooks in the kitchen, some are incredible and some are terrible. My indicator for a good Mexican restaurant is if Mexican families are eating at the restaurant, they cook for the audience. Mexican food in New York is largely for non-Mexican audiences and I'd guess largely white audiences and I think the quality/style would reflect that.
This is even more the case the less options you have in a cuisine, in my experience. I live in Berlin, which makes Ohio look like California when it comes to Latin food options. The only good taco...
This is even more the case the less options you have in a cuisine, in my experience. I live in Berlin, which makes Ohio look like California when it comes to Latin food options. The only good taco place I've found was a food hall filled with Mexicans. When options are sparse you have to work even harder to find where the immigrant communities go.
That is my bar for just about any “ethnic” restaurant out there. If I am going to a Chinese restaurant and I don’t see any Chinese people there, it’s not a good sign. The same was true with...
That is my bar for just about any “ethnic” restaurant out there. If I am going to a Chinese restaurant and I don’t see any Chinese people there, it’s not a good sign. The same was true with Ethiopian food or anything else I wanted to try.
That’s not to say that the restaurants that don’t aren’t good, and more like they just aren’t right. They don’t have the je ne sais quoi.
I had a boss who knew Chinese and we would go to Chinese restaurants in the Raleigh-Durham area and he would order from a menu in Chinese and get food that was similar to the “Chinese food” I’m...
I had a boss who knew Chinese and we would go to Chinese restaurants in the Raleigh-Durham area and he would order from a menu in Chinese and get food that was similar to the “Chinese food” I’m used to in that it was made out of chopped vegetables and meat on a bed of rice but instead of the sauces I was used to it seemed to be flavored with some sort of powder.
That is, Chinese people are used to something different from the “Chinese food” we eat in the west and I wouldn’t say it is better or worse but it is different.
I'm Taiwanese American but my palate towards Asian food is considered very Eastern. Western Chinese food is generally more strong in flavors and tends to be on the sweeter side than traditional...
I'm Taiwanese American but my palate towards Asian food is considered very Eastern.
Western Chinese food is generally more strong in flavors and tends to be on the sweeter side than traditional Eastern food. Not to say that there isn't strong flavors though, things like mala come to mind. But there's a reason that in the "not too sweet" is a (compliment) meme in Asian circles lol.
I'd argue that the term Chinese food is reductive though, there's sooooo many distinct regions and styles of foods and flavors.
I live in an extremely large Asian area in California, to the point that it might be just a bit too easy to guess if you are familiar with the area. As such I have been able to live through a...
I live in an extremely large Asian area in California, to the point that it might be just a bit too easy to guess if you are familiar with the area. As such I have been able to live through a virtual food tour of all of Asia, sans Russia.
As such I would say that American Chinese food is worse… but only insomuch as it tends to be fast food à la Panda Express, where most of the options are breaded and deep fried then coated with a sickly sweet sauce kept under heat lamps so it’s soggy when you get them. Authentic restaurants may serve a few dishes somewhat like that, but overall they tend to have at least twice as many options available and they are prepared to order.
Obviously, though, YMMV. It’s not like I haven’t been to a terrible authentic Chinese place before. But personally I find that low quality authentic food tends to taste better than the best quality Americanized Chinese food. The place I live in also biases me because there aren’t really any sit-down American Chinese restaurants.
Honestly I have Panda Express-style takeout about once every two weeks or so, it's not like it's bad food! And all the places around me are staffed and owned by Chinese families. It's a weird...
Honestly I have Panda Express-style takeout about once every two weeks or so, it's not like it's bad food! And all the places around me are staffed and owned by Chinese families.
It's a weird thing for me to think about sometimes. I enjoy the food for what it is, but I really hope that people don't look at that and think that General Tso's chicken is legitimate authentic Chinese food that replaces going to an Asian country.
I'm now deeply curious what the dish you had was. I'm a white American but I majored in Chinese and have a lot of interest in Chinese food, and I'm really curious because it doesn't immediately...
I'm now deeply curious what the dish you had was. I'm a white American but I majored in Chinese and have a lot of interest in Chinese food, and I'm really curious because it doesn't immediately strike me as something I recognize. American Chinese food does definitely go way heavier on the sauces (and on deep-frying) compared to more authentic stuff. But like @phoenixrises said, there's a ton of distinct regions and flavors within Chinese food. When I studied abroad in Shanghai, we went to a restaurant that served northwestern Chinese cuisine, and it was both phenomenal and wildly different from local food.
Also, the more authentic Chinese places in the states tend to have the more interesting authentic dishes on the section of the menu called "chef's specials" (or something similar). It's usually near the end. If you can't read Chinese, that's usually a better bet at getting something interesting, at least at places authentic enough that actual Chinese people eat there.
Learning the Chinese name for a favorite dish is a cheat code though, you can absolutely order off-menu a lot of places as long as it doesn't have anything they wouldn't have on-hand ingredient-wise. I used to always get fish-flavored eggplant at our local authentic place when I was in college after someone else in the Chinese department ordered it at a group thing, and it was never on their menu iirc.
Fwiw, if you're interested in Chinese cuisine, I highly recommend the YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified. They're probably the best English-language resource out there for people who want to cook Chinese food at home, and they do their research. Their cuisine choices definitely tend to skew towards southern China and more specifically Cantonese food, but it's super educational and interesting even if you don't end up trying out any of their recipes (I've done only a few so far).
If anyone wants things in written form too, I highly highly recommend All Under Heaven by Carolyn Phillips It's literally a textbook, almost exhausting to go through, but I found that it's very...
Oh there's good BBQ to be had, but its almost never at a business. BBQ is also one of those things that tends to be a victim of success. If you need to make quantity, quality starts suffering.
Oh there's good BBQ to be had, but its almost never at a business.
BBQ is also one of those things that tends to be a victim of success. If you need to make quantity, quality starts suffering.
As an upstate NYer the LA-NY war over Mexican food is quite salient to me. I spent a year traveling to LA frequently for work and got up one Saturday and looked for food and found some guy at the...
As an upstate NYer the LA-NY war over Mexican food is quite salient to me.
I spent a year traveling to LA frequently for work and got up one Saturday and looked for food and found some guy at the “farmer’s market” shouting “Tamale! Tamale!” I had never had a Tamale before but they looked so good and they were so good.
I travel to NYC for work and it is usually a disappointment to find a California-style tacquiera that might have nice service and decor but somehow the food falls short.
Ithaca recently got an outdoor taco stand which is the closest thing I’ve seen to an LA taco stand that I’ve seen anywhere.
Upstate has decent mexican spots in the hispanic neighborhoods. Theres a burrito spot in Newburgh that was probably the closest thing I could find that would comparable to one I had LA/SF. They...
Upstate has decent mexican spots in the hispanic neighborhoods. Theres a burrito spot in Newburgh that was probably the closest thing I could find that would comparable to one I had LA/SF. They are around, but also hard to find.
Also, homemade tamale hits different. I had my first tamale when I was working in Chinatown. My coworker wife made them by scratch and nothing else has hit that spot in a long time.
What an odd comparison. Ocean swimming is hardly comparable to a backyard pool? Unless you have a massive wave generator and a diverse range of wild animals living in your pool.
Going out for Mexican in New York would be like swimming in the ocean when my parents’ house already has a pool.
What an odd comparison. Ocean swimming is hardly comparable to a backyard pool? Unless you have a massive wave generator and a diverse range of wild animals living in your pool.
Yes, I know the mexican food in NY isnt as good as California. Cal-Mex in NY isnt really new either.
There are good mexican spots weirdly near me outside of NYC that would rival places in California. But all this article does is drummed the tired forced rivalry NYC vs CA. A more interesting article would have delved deeper why mexican food isn't the same in CA. Is it the ingredients? Is it the audience? Or the places this food critic is going to.
I roll my eyes everytime I see an article that has a NY vs LA undertone. This articles isn't an exception. There's not much going on this article that hasn't been said before.
Hot take inbound.
It doesn't matter who is in the kitchen, it matters who is in the dining seats. Almost every Mexican restaurant in California has mexican or central american cooks in the kitchen, some are incredible and some are terrible. My indicator for a good Mexican restaurant is if Mexican families are eating at the restaurant, they cook for the audience. Mexican food in New York is largely for non-Mexican audiences and I'd guess largely white audiences and I think the quality/style would reflect that.
This is even more the case the less options you have in a cuisine, in my experience. I live in Berlin, which makes Ohio look like California when it comes to Latin food options. The only good taco place I've found was a food hall filled with Mexicans. When options are sparse you have to work even harder to find where the immigrant communities go.
That is my bar for just about any “ethnic” restaurant out there. If I am going to a Chinese restaurant and I don’t see any Chinese people there, it’s not a good sign. The same was true with Ethiopian food or anything else I wanted to try.
That’s not to say that the restaurants that don’t aren’t good, and more like they just aren’t right. They don’t have the je ne sais quoi.
I had a boss who knew Chinese and we would go to Chinese restaurants in the Raleigh-Durham area and he would order from a menu in Chinese and get food that was similar to the “Chinese food” I’m used to in that it was made out of chopped vegetables and meat on a bed of rice but instead of the sauces I was used to it seemed to be flavored with some sort of powder.
That is, Chinese people are used to something different from the “Chinese food” we eat in the west and I wouldn’t say it is better or worse but it is different.
I'm Taiwanese American but my palate towards Asian food is considered very Eastern.
Western Chinese food is generally more strong in flavors and tends to be on the sweeter side than traditional Eastern food. Not to say that there isn't strong flavors though, things like mala come to mind. But there's a reason that in the "not too sweet" is a (compliment) meme in Asian circles lol.
I'd argue that the term Chinese food is reductive though, there's sooooo many distinct regions and styles of foods and flavors.
I live in an extremely large Asian area in California, to the point that it might be just a bit too easy to guess if you are familiar with the area. As such I have been able to live through a virtual food tour of all of Asia, sans Russia.
As such I would say that American Chinese food is worse… but only insomuch as it tends to be fast food à la Panda Express, where most of the options are breaded and deep fried then coated with a sickly sweet sauce kept under heat lamps so it’s soggy when you get them. Authentic restaurants may serve a few dishes somewhat like that, but overall they tend to have at least twice as many options available and they are prepared to order.
Obviously, though, YMMV. It’s not like I haven’t been to a terrible authentic Chinese place before. But personally I find that low quality authentic food tends to taste better than the best quality Americanized Chinese food. The place I live in also biases me because there aren’t really any sit-down American Chinese restaurants.
Honestly I have Panda Express-style takeout about once every two weeks or so, it's not like it's bad food! And all the places around me are staffed and owned by Chinese families.
It's a weird thing for me to think about sometimes. I enjoy the food for what it is, but I really hope that people don't look at that and think that General Tso's chicken is legitimate authentic Chinese food that replaces going to an Asian country.
I'm now deeply curious what the dish you had was. I'm a white American but I majored in Chinese and have a lot of interest in Chinese food, and I'm really curious because it doesn't immediately strike me as something I recognize. American Chinese food does definitely go way heavier on the sauces (and on deep-frying) compared to more authentic stuff. But like @phoenixrises said, there's a ton of distinct regions and flavors within Chinese food. When I studied abroad in Shanghai, we went to a restaurant that served northwestern Chinese cuisine, and it was both phenomenal and wildly different from local food.
Also, the more authentic Chinese places in the states tend to have the more interesting authentic dishes on the section of the menu called "chef's specials" (or something similar). It's usually near the end. If you can't read Chinese, that's usually a better bet at getting something interesting, at least at places authentic enough that actual Chinese people eat there.
Learning the Chinese name for a favorite dish is a cheat code though, you can absolutely order off-menu a lot of places as long as it doesn't have anything they wouldn't have on-hand ingredient-wise. I used to always get fish-flavored eggplant at our local authentic place when I was in college after someone else in the Chinese department ordered it at a group thing, and it was never on their menu iirc.
Fwiw, if you're interested in Chinese cuisine, I highly recommend the YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified. They're probably the best English-language resource out there for people who want to cook Chinese food at home, and they do their research. Their cuisine choices definitely tend to skew towards southern China and more specifically Cantonese food, but it's super educational and interesting even if you don't end up trying out any of their recipes (I've done only a few so far).
If anyone wants things in written form too, I highly highly recommend All Under Heaven by Carolyn Phillips
It's literally a textbook, almost exhausting to go through, but I found that it's very well researched and thorough.
This is probably why almost all BBQ places north of Virginia are so terrible.
The best you can do in upstate NY is hire somebody to roast a pig for your party.
Oh there's good BBQ to be had, but its almost never at a business.
BBQ is also one of those things that tends to be a victim of success. If you need to make quantity, quality starts suffering.
Heck, you can expand that to just about every restaurant in California regardless of what food is being served.
True, I was just trying to get at why Mexican food would be different in CA vs NY.
As an upstate NYer the LA-NY war over Mexican food is quite salient to me.
I spent a year traveling to LA frequently for work and got up one Saturday and looked for food and found some guy at the “farmer’s market” shouting “Tamale! Tamale!” I had never had a Tamale before but they looked so good and they were so good.
I travel to NYC for work and it is usually a disappointment to find a California-style tacquiera that might have nice service and decor but somehow the food falls short.
Ithaca recently got an outdoor taco stand which is the closest thing I’ve seen to an LA taco stand that I’ve seen anywhere.
Upstate has decent mexican spots in the hispanic neighborhoods. Theres a burrito spot in Newburgh that was probably the closest thing I could find that would comparable to one I had LA/SF. They are around, but also hard to find.
Also, homemade tamale hits different. I had my first tamale when I was working in Chinatown. My coworker wife made them by scratch and nothing else has hit that spot in a long time.
What an odd comparison. Ocean swimming is hardly comparable to a backyard pool? Unless you have a massive wave generator and a diverse range of wild animals living in your pool.
Even then...the ocean can kill you in ways that are virtually impossible to simulate.
Swimming in the ocean is a lot like giving a bear a hug.
Something I desperately want to do even though it’s incredibly dangerous?
Sounds about right. Right up there with 'tickle raccoon tummies.'
Riptides are no joke people.
Use https://archive.ph/pmxXZ if the above link doesn't work.