Text 28598, 97 rader
Skriven 2012-08-22 22:57:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: The best Chinese food
=============================
One man's opinion...

I can't agree 100% with his take on Canadian places being
universally better than American as I have never ordered Chinese
food during an American trip but I have read Michael's many glowing
reviews of Otto's. But all the same it makes an interesting read:

How to find a good Chinese restaurant - from a man who's eaten in
more than 6,000 of them.

CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH, The Globe and Mail

David R. Chan, a 64-year-old accountant and tax lawyer based in Los
Angeles, travels on his stomach - he's eaten in more than 6,000
Chinese restaurants across the U.S. and Canada. Mr. Chan, a
third-generation American (his grandfather came over from Taishan,
China in 1900), recently made headlines when he detailed his nearly
lifelong quest to a reporter. (He documents each meal on an Excel
spreadsheet.) When he's on the road he often eats at four or five
different restaurants daily.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Mr. Chan's findings is his
opinion of Canada's Chinese restaurants: They're far better than
anything in the U.S., he says. We reached him in his office last
week.

You wrote in an article recently that if you were to rank the 10 top
Chinese restaurants in North America, every last one would be north
of the border. What makes the Chinese food in Canada so good?

From 1882 to 1943 it was pretty much illegal for anybody of Chinese
descent to immigrate to the U.S. The only Chinese food you had in
the U.S. until the mid-'60s when they changed the immigration laws
was this old-style Taishanese, rural Cantonese food, from the early
waves of immigrants. In Canada, you had Hong Kong influence coming
over earlier than in the U.S.

My first visit to Canada in 1970 was to Vancouver, and even though
by today's standards the Chinese food in Vancouver then would be
considered primitive, it still was clearly better. The panic about
the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1999 created a panic
there, and anybody who could leave Hong Kong did so. On my next
visit to Vancouver in 1993, the food was so good that when I came
back, I told people that the average food in a Vancouver food court
was clearly superior than the best Chinese restaurant in Los
Angeles.

In Vancouver, I love Sun Sui Wah - I think everybody knows that
place. There's a place my wife's relatives took us called Landmark
Hot Pot House. It was probably the most fabulous meal I've had. In
Toronto, Casa-Imperial, Casa-Victoria, Lai Wah Heen. And there was a
cafe place I really liked in Richmond Hill called Judy Cuisine. It
was really good, stuff I'd never seen before.

Do Chinatowns ever have good food?

There are very few good Chinese restaurants located in core
Chinatowns in the U.S. or Canada. That's clearly the case in Toronto
and Vancouver, and it's clearly the case in New York, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Their function is,
number one, tourists. I hate to say this, but you have to dumb the
food down a little bit. And secondly, the Chinese who still maintain
ties with Chinatowns tend to be the Taishanese - us older folk.

Are there any sure-fire indicators that a Chinese place is going to
be good?

There's the old saying that if you see a Chinese restaurant that's
full of Chinese people it's got to be good. That was my operating
rule until my first trip to New York. We walk into this place in New
York Chinatown and it's jammed full of Chinese people, and the
food's not very good. The reason why it's so busy is that it was
cheap and the portions were gigantic. If you see a lot of Chinese
people in a Chinese restaurant, that's a good sign but it's not
conclusive. If a Chinese restaurant serves dim sum, it's probably
quite good, because in all my travels I have only found one dim sum
restaurant anywhere that was not catering to Chinese diners looking
for authentic Chinese food.

The best thing to do is once you find a good Chinese restaurant,
most of them have throwaway Chinese newspapers. If you see who
advertises in them, well you know these places are trying to attract
Chinese people looking for authentic Chinese food. Even though I
don't speak Chinese or read Chinese, the ads have a name and address
and that's good enough for me.
                               

Cheers

YK Jim


... I made that great authentic [wink] Chinese dish, cashew chicken.

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