Top Ten Tips - Eat Chinese Food Like A Pro
By Tip Dude | Dec 28, 2007
Categories: Budget, Cheap, Chinese, City, Etiquette, Food, Language, Restaurants, Tips, Travel
Tip Dude likes Chinese food. Actually, just Asian food in general. But how do you know if a place is any good or not? In most major cities, there are enough Chinese takeout places and restaurants to fill two pages of the local phone book. How do you avoid paying too much? How do you know what you’re eating? Tip Dude learned all of his tips and tricks from real Chinese people that he went to college with. Here is how you eat Asian fair like a seasoned professional:
- Understand The Two Kinds Of Chinese Foods - The type that is made in a big factory in Nebraska and shipped frozen to the restaurant in a box truck, and the type that is made in a local kitchen from ingredients that you might find in a local farmer’s market. The former has a more fast-food type feel, tends to be more uniform and are less likely to taste strange to the American palate. The latter has a more home-cooked feel and may contain exotic ingredients like duck, sea cucumber and pig’s feet. Most people have a distinct preference for one or the other. Try to understand your taste preferences and pick appropriately. As a rule of thumb, if a place has Chinese characters in the menu, they serve the homemade kind. If you like the fast-food kind, try looking in the food court of your local mall.
- Look In Chinatown - Most American cities have a section of town that’s called ‘Chinatown’. Even small cities in the Midwest tend to have a section of town where the small immigrant population hangs out. If you like the homemade kind of Chinese food, look there. To find the Chinatown, consulting the transit map is usually a good way - there are stations called “Chinatown” in Boston, Washington and San Francisco. In New York, the Chinatown station is called Canal Street, and in London, it’s called Tottenham Court Road. The Chinatown in large cities tend to be sufficiently Americanized such that you will find good food that’s acceptable to the American palate, yet hasn’t lost too much of its ethnic flavor. If you really can’t find the Chinatown, you might ask an Asian co-worker or friend if they know a good Asian place to eat in town; most will not be offended, if you seem genuinely interested to learn about their food culture.
- Try All-You-Can-Eat Chinese Buffets - There’s two rationale for finding a place like this. Firstly, the per-head charge tends to be between $7 and $20, making it quite competitive for those who are not necessarily looking for a “restaurant” experience, but just want to eat. Secondly, if you’re not sure what you like, it affords you an opportunity to try variety of dishes (some familar, some strange) without the potentially embarrassing situation of having to doggie bag most of it. In suburban areas, you will find all-you-can-eat buffets by driving around all of the plazas, especially ones near highway exit ramps. They usually have large signs saying ”All You Can Eat” and a cheaper price during lunch hour. In the city, these can be harder to find for a variety of reasons. Some of these places will have only hot dishes; others would have a sushi bar or a seafood bar, and may charge extra. Be sure to ask about their pricing policy before committing to eating there. Also: most places are annoying about the per-head charge, so if you bring a small child, it’s still counted as an additional person. There are generally no half-prices.
- Try Lunch Specials and Combos - This is originally a French concept called prix fixe, where you get a set menu for a set price, but the Chinese have taken it to a whole new level. It is almost standard for Asian food outlets to have a page at the back of the menu dedicated to set menu combinations that you can only get during lunch times. Some outlets also allow you to pick a combo at dinner time but charge a little more. Typically, the combo contains rice (white or fried), one single dish (like Kung Pao chicken) and a choice of a number of appetiziers (like a beef teriyaki or chicken fingers). Combos generally run from $4 to $8, depending on time of day, number of items and quality of items. The set menu is typically much cheaper than ordering the items separately. Think of it as just ordering the main dish and getting free rice and appetizers with it. The rumors about how they re-use last night’s leftovers in today’s lunch specials are basically unsubstantiated; most of the operators have a low enough cost function that they can cook to order for that amount. Strange as it may seem, a few key ingredients plus the appropriate condiments can be easily assembled into the wide variety of dishes you see on the lunch combo menu.
- Read Posted Signs in The Restaurant - There is an old saying amongst city Asians… the printed menu is for the tourists and the wall is for the locals. It is not uncommon to find the same or very similar dishes posted on the wall as a “Special of the Day” or just on a separate menu that has lower prices than that shown in the printed menu. Sometimes, the posted signs are in Chinese, which is not helpful if you can’t read it. But most of the time, the signs also show English translation. So, if you already know what you want, glance at the wall to see if that same dish or a similar one is available for less. In fact, this same tip applies at some Greek diners and burger joints, too.
- Know Your Prices - This is kind of an odd thing to mention here, but it’s important. Tip Dude hangs out in the Bronx and has observed a series of different prices being charged for very similar dishes. One vendor was charging $8 for the basic combo. Another vendor, a few blocks away, was charging $5.50 for basically the same combo. Since Chinese take-outs generally provide the same fare, it’s not like the higher priced one is somehow better. In fact, quite frequently, there is no correlation whatsoever between quality and price. If you like white-meat chicken, you will need to find out (by trying, not by asking - see the next tip) which restaurant serves only white-meat and keep going back to the same one. The chances are it wouldn’t be the most expensive outlet in the neighborhood.
- Don’t Bother With Special Requests - If you’re allegric to MSG, or just generally allegric to many things, you’re going to have a problem eating Chinese food. Unfortunately, many restaurants probably use synthetic flavoring. Walk down the international grocery aisle and you will see the full range of flavoring compounds now available - some natural, others not so natural, most of it made in the “New Jersey of China,” a productive region of chemical industrial concerns in the southern China. The chemical composition of some of these flavors are a closely guarded secret, and you probably won’t even know if they change the formulation. Even if you do tell them “No MSG,” the chef may or may not know whether any of the bottled sauces they are using contains MSG or not. Thus, if you’re ordering Chinese food, you should know your own limits. Avoiding specific raw ingredients such as shellfish is easy, but avoiding synthetic flavors that may or may not cause a reaction is not so easy. If you’re not sure, ask your doctor on what is the best way to avoid allegric reactions. Tip Dude has had several allergic reaction to foods that seemed innocent enough - none of it from Chinese food, mind you - both times from food served in an Irish Bar, and both times the allergin was never identified. That aside, most Chinese food vendors would likely be confused by special requests, due to a combination of the language barrier and not being used to a “customized” approach to catering. Just order off of the menu; if the food made you sick, try a different item or a different restaurant.
- Use The Menu Numbers - There is a reason why they print the menu numbers in the restaurants. As discussed previously, the language barrier can be a real problem, especially in the more ethnic neighborhoods. If you use the numbers, it reduces the chances of your order being incorrectly filled. If you are not sure what something is, don’t order it. Asking for an explanation is likely to generate puzzled looks, because most dishes are very hard to explain. The basic make up for a Chinese dish is to use a meat, a variety of vegetables and condiments, and add a sauce to it to bind the ingredients together. For example, Kung Pao chicken is made from diced chicken, diced vegetable medley, cashew nuts or peanuts and chopped chilli peppers. Satay chicken is made from diced chicken, likely sliced bell peppers, and satay sauce. Satay sauce is apparently a combination of ground up shellfish, pepper, peanut, salt, oil, ginger, mustard, onion, herbs, lilac, orange skin and coconut. (Tip Dude personally remembers the shellfish part, but orange skin and coconut… who knows?) Most restaurants would simply purchase a gallon drum of Satay sauce and serve it in Satay chicken. So you have to know before you order whether you like Satay or not - no one can be expected to explain that without having worked in a Satay manufacturing facility! (One commercial Satay manufacturer is Bull’s Head Brand.) It would be like walking into a dinner and asked the waiter, “What’s in Coca-Cola?”
- Bug The Server - This is more of a cultural tip. In China, it is sort of like New York - people are busy and you will have to get the waiter’s attention in order to be served. If you go to a very ethnic restaurant, you would expect the same atmosphere - there are few servers, and they’re busy serving other customers, so you would need to indicate that you need to be served. One way to do this is just to close the menu and see if they notice. If not, don’t be afraid to raise your hand or otherwise make eye contact with a server. Obviously, don’t be obnoxious about it, because these guys have a hard job - but you do have to make your presence known, or they’ll be too busy serving the other 19 tables to notice that you’ve been sitting and talking for a while with no food.
- Use The Open Teapot Signal - This is something that a Chinese classmate once told Tip Dude, and it has worked every time. In a real Chinese restaurant, they serve jasmine tea in pots. If you needed a pot refilled, simply put the pot on the table with the stainless lid in the upright open position. The server will come by and remove the pot and bring it back with fresh tea, lid closed. Jasmine tea refills are always free. If you do this and it doesn’t work, the place isn’t a real Chinese restaurant!
How do you eat your Chinese food?
Other Tips To Check Out:
