Some good comments, DC, and I'm glad we're all taking this in a
non-confrontive way. I guess my chief puzzlement is that restaurant owners
seem to be missing a really good business opportunity, that of educating
customers in the more authentic dishes and profiting from them -- and that
seems, somehow, un-Chinese :-).

"DC." > wrote ... with snippage
> "ggull" > wrote...
> <snip>
>> (2) I've had some interesting discussions with Chinese friends on why
>> "Chinese restaurant" food bears so little resemblance to real Chinese
> food,
>> or at least is so limited.
>
> It's simple.... we(Chinese) have 2 types of food in most Chinese
> restaurants
> across the world incl. in HK, we have restaurant styled food & home styled
> food. You'll more often then not find home styled food on the Chinese only
> menu, well that's how it is here in the UK.
There may be something in that, which is too bad. From my small data base,
it may also be that the Chinese-only menu has more of the 'weird' stuff,
like that pork kidney dish I mentioned (which I think, incidentally, many
people would like if simply given, but might not order if described as 'pork
kidney with fried doughnut and xxx'). I'll have to pay more attention if I
get a chance again.

>> restaurant managers think this is what their customers want, and that
>> they
>> would be put off by more authentic dishes, so that's what they offer; and
>> the customers think that that is what Chinese food is, so that's what
>> they
>> demand.
>
> Probably true but if you grew up eating *westernised* Chinese food say 20,
> 30, 40yrs ago in the States or UK & not had the real thing before, you'd
> think what you're eating was the real thing anyway.
My point exactly.

>Then people started
> going on long haul holidays & it also became easier to import some hard to
> get ingredients from Asia & we now have the 2 menu secenario.
Overall, this timing seems about right, especially for 'exotic' regional
cuisines like Szechuan. But some of the restaurants I'm thinking of seem to
be pretty old style, in business for many years.

>There's also
> more recently arrived Chinese now in the States & UK, so there's a demand
> for more *authentic* Chinese food. This thing about having 2 menus... well
> it's just food developing & tastes evolving.
I guess my 'complaint' .. or maybe better 'regret' .. is not that the food
and taste are evolving, but that it had to go into 2 segregated menus,
rather than evolving and expanding the overall menu.

>We now have *westernised*
> Chinese food in Asia too & some are really good like deep fried oatmeal
> coated prawns flavoured with butter or how about deep fried prawn
> wantons/dumplings served with salad cream/sauce.
Hey, nothing against fusion!

>> Historically, at least in the US, I have a hunch it goes back to
>> the 19th and early 20th century, when Chinese restaurants were founded
>> basically by batchelors who had never actually learned to cook, were just
>> going by memories of what their moms had made and a few key ingredients
> (soy
>> sauce, etc).
>
> Hehee... not quite true... i've done a bit of research into this, Chinese
> men were expected to travel & look for work, some went overseas to earn
> money & send money back to family in China/Asia. Once settled in new
> pastures, they would or might consider bringing the wife/women or family
> over.
Unfortunately, in the US this was not legal for many years, from early on up
to post-WWI.

>These men knew how to cook, you'll only have to read about the
> Hainanese cooks in colonial days in service with the British across Asia &
> beyond. The main problems for Chinese cooking overseas/in the West in the
> early days were getting their Chinese ingredients.

OK, maybe the batchelors had more basic survival skills than I gave them
credit for. But still, at least in 19th century and early 20th century US,
which is when our 'Chinese restaurant' style seems to have risen, From the
histories I've seen and read I really don't get the impression there were a
lot of real chefs among the immigrants. They weren't brought over by
returning colonialists nostalgic for the old days, but were largely
economically driven, the desperate poor, third sons and dispossessed. Or
who knows, maybe there were some restaurant workers as well,displaced by
economic turmoil back home (hey, if you're starving already you don't go out
to eat). But what kind of professional cooking would they have done? Fancy
banquet, upper-class stuff or more basic? I realize I know nothing about
how Chinese ate outside the home back then.

> Even till this day, this
> still rings true, i've travelled across Europe & found that in countries
> which did not have colonies in Asia, there are very small Chinese/Asian
> communities in these countries
Again, I think the US experience has been somewhat different in several
respects. No colonial (merely 'imperialistic') relation per se, immigration
to a fairly wide-open labor hungry west coast followed by backlash
restrictions, etc.

>> There also seems to be a certain element of snobbery
>> and exclusivity, not wanting to share the 'good stuff' with the
> barbarians.
>
> Now that bit might be true... i certainly wouldn't want to share my
> chicken
> feet, duck tongues & stinky shrimp paste with any barbarians, heheeee...
But you'd be surprised what we barbarians can enjoy :-) .. at least one
Chinese friend has (unsuccessfully) tried to gross me out, though I"m not
sure about the stinky shrimp paste.

>> (2) more humorous notes: At a conference in San Francisco, a colleague
> from
>> Hong Kong invited me to a restaurant he had eaten at and liked, 'just
>> like
>> home'. We were apparently treated wholly differently because he now had
>> a
>> 'foreigner' with him -- seated in different section (actually a whole
>> different floor), given different menus, rice on plates instead of rice
>> bowls, etc. <snip>
> I wouldn't call the above example racist... it's just that you'll probably
> feel more comfortable eating with a mixed crowd then in a Chinese speaking
> only dining area...
I wasn't saying racist, exactly. And it was the Hong Kong friend (he'd been
in the US a few years, but in a kind of backwater, and relished San
Francisco's Chinatown) who called this to my attention and seemed put out
about it; I think he wanted to introduce me to some 'real' hometown HK food,
and felt he should not be stigmatized by association.
And I have eaten in pure Chinese dining rooms, where I was the only or one
of 2 or 3 Euros, and it's really what the people at your table are speaking
that counts. With a Chinese speaking member of the party, that shouldn't
make a difference.

> we are pretty messy eaters, we shout, talk with our
> mouths full & shovel rice from bowl to mouth in 10secs flat. Some elderly
> gents even Umm... have rather disgusting behaviours like snort & clear
> their
> noses or thoats in public.
You must not have dined wiht a lot of American families or family style
restaurants :-). We ain't no fancy cheese-eating Europeans.
And the other floor -- it was really more of a different level, in plain
view -- seemed pretty polished, no shouting or disgusting behavior that I
noticed.

But to be fair & on the practical side of
> things... Chinese speaking waiters work the Chinese areas while bilingual
> waiters
We only wish!
.... do the dining rooms/halls/floors with the mixed crowds. And hence...
> we're back to the 2 menus scenario.
If one really had bilingual waiters, it would seem possible to offer the
full menu in the 'mixed' room as well. I think part of the problem is just
that it would be an extra effort, at least initially, to make the "Chinese
only" menu accessible to non-speakers. Plus, it's just a tradition that has
become "the way things are". If business is ok, why rock the boat?