"ggull" > wrote in message
...
> 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 :-).

Non-confrontative is the way to go if you want to continue posting in
newsgroups in my opinion

A few *classier* Chinese rests. do that in the UK, they make an effort to
educate or promote more authentic Chinese dishes to customers. I've also
noticed that these rests. have better English speaking managers/head waiters
who would take the time to explain the menu if asked. Some even have their
Chinese only home cooked styled menus written out in English... & i have to
ask the waiter if this dish is the same one on the Chinese menu.... because
some dishes have fancy Chinese names & you simply can't translate that into
English... goes to show you can't win em all ; )

But in general, I guess a large portion of their business are regular
customers who are only interested in sweet & sour & blackbean sauce dishes.
We can only hope that authentic Chinese food will take off like Thai food
after tourism to Thailand hit an all time high 10 or so years ago. We now
have Thai food (although not neccessary the best quality but still better
then nothing) in pubs & bars in the UK. Funny that... *exotic* food/cuisine
seems to be inextricably(sp?) linked to drinks/alcohol here in the UK...
probably due to the fact that people can now fly to Asia rather cheaply, get
a beach holiday, get drunk cheaply & have tasty local food.

Oh another thing... food in China can vary from region to region & from
countryside to cities. So not everything is appealing to the western eye &
taste buds. For example i had local river fish in a streetside cafe in
Canton, sure the sauce was tasty but the fish tasted muddy, i.e. taste of
the river, not fishy as in a stale old fish but muddy. The same dish in a
expensive restaurant tasted great. The reason being they kept their fishes
in runing water tanks which adorn the restaurant's entrance & this *washed
out* the muddy river taste after a few days to a week.

again my 2 chopstix worth of commentary.

DC.