There are some forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States — more than the number of McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs combined.
That is from the often quite interesting The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, by Jennifer 8. Lee (yes, readers, her middle initial is the number "8"). Of course arguably most of these restaurants do not count as Chinese food at all.
At the end of the book the author undertakes a global pilgrimage to discover the very best Chinese restaurant outside of China. The winner?: Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine, just outside of Vancouver. The number two choice came — justly — in Mumbai (Nelson Wang’s China Garden). I’ve never been to Richmond but I believe all of my top picks would come in India. Hunan, in London, deserves consideration as well. The author is correct that Chinese chefs, for whatever reason, do not flourish in France. Recommended.
I must wonder how far exactly her global pilgrimage was. And what counts as Chinese food. One would imagine restaurants in Taiwan can easily trump Canadian ones. Though, thorny cross-straits issues aside, wouldn’t other slivers of greater China like Singapore do better?
Granted, Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese food are the kind you can never find in China…
Funny, I was discussing the subject of Chinese restaurants in France with a friend recently (I live in France). The above poster is correct: Vietnamese food has filled the Chinese-food niche.
I’m not sure there’s a sufficiently large market for authentic, high-quality Chinese food in France – not only does does that word association sound like an oxymoron in our collective psyches, but it’s received a lot of bad press, mostly documenting the squalid conditions in which some of the food is prepared. Though the power of generalisation.. I think it might be too late for higher-quality, affordable food from mainland Asia to flourish.
I’d say that pricing is an important factor with Asian cuisine in France – we need reassurance. Unsurprisingly Japanese cuisine, which is invariably more expensive doesn’t suffer from the same image problems.
We also don’t seem to clearly identify the cuisines of different Asian countries – upmarket restaurants aside, I have not yet come upon a restaurant that didn’t also serve Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese of even Indian dishes as well.
Just to give you an idea, Chinese food ranks below McDonald’s for a lot of the youth here..
As a life long New Yorker, as far as my city is concerned I’d vote for Wo-Hop followed by Hop-Kee, which is a VERY close second. Both are located on Mott Street. I’m sure most of my fellow Manhattanites would agree.
I cannot consider most of them ‘Chinese restaurants’ when neither the chefs nor the cuisine are Chinese.
Well, people would still talk about her. But they’d call her “General Lee” and perhaps that’s not the type of name association she wants.
Mike, even without having tried those two places or the Chinese food in flushing, I’d still bet that Flushing has better Chinese food than Manhattan.
For me, an overseas Chinese, Vietnamese food hits the same spot in my head as Chinese food does. The principle difference between the two is that a Vietnamese restaurant usually prefers a name ending with 5, for example, 65, 75, 95, etc. while a Chinese restaurant usually prefers a name with 8 in it.
Tyler,
Admit it, you’re a fan of the Colbert Report! She was Stephen’s guest last night.
The best Chinese food I’ve had, bearing in mind I don’t have much variety in my Chinese dining experiences, was hands-down in Saudi Arabia. Admittedly, it isn’t the easiest of countries to gain access to when writing a global culinary guide and I’m not sure the (relatively small) amount of Chinese restaurants there are worth the hassle.
But it was good.
Hunan in London is very good.
Comments on this entry are closed.