What I learned eating at 8,000 Chinese restaurants

[Jilly_in_VA]

Many people in America love Chinese food, but David R Chan is perhaps in a league of his own.

Mr Chan, a 72-year-old former tax lawyer based in Los Angeles, claims to have dined at nearly 8,000 Chinese restaurants across the US and counting. Each is archived in a spreadsheet that he has maintained for four decades, along with thousands of restaurant business cards and menus.

If you visit one Chinese restaurant per day, it would take more than 20 years to reach his current count - 7,812 restaurants.

From pineapple buns and pork belly to chicken feet and tea-smoked duck, the Chinese restaurant "collector" documents his food conquests almost daily on his social media accounts.


Though his food journey started as part of a search for his identity as a Chinese American, Mr Chan said, over the years it has become itself a chronicle of the rise of Chinese food and changing dynamics of Chinese culture in America.

Mr Chan isn't a typical Chinese food critic, and he insists he isn't even a foodie. He has no aptitude for using chopsticks, he said, has given up tea to avoid caffeine and adheres to a low-sugar, low-cholesterol diet.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59356176

[MenloParque]

1. Mr. Chan is spot on about San Gabriel Valley and it's amazing Chinese food.

I will only eat authentic Chinese food in SF, LA, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC, and Queens, NY. The worst I’ve had was in Minnesota and Iowa. I hate gloppy, sauce laden Orange Chicken Sweet and Sour type of Chinese food 🤮

[electric_blue68]

23. I went to Flushing Queens to...

eat at this basement level market of food stalls (with seating areas). I had some kind of lamb with noodles, and and a bit of spicyish sauce. I can't remember what my sis had. I liked it, too. This might have been in '17, or '18.

Hopefully now that I've remembered it we can go in the late Spring, early Summer get food and go sit somewhere outside! 🥟 🍚🍜

Thanks for helping me remeber! 👍

[brooklynite]

27. Lamb with noodles sounds like Xian

[electric_blue68]

28. Ah 👍...

Good to know. It'd be my first then.

I might have had some Hunan somewhere over 5 decades.
Yet to try Fujian.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. I'm Impressed!

8,000 different restaurants of a single cuisine.
I know it's a job to eat at those places, but still...
That's a different place, every day for nearly 22 years!!!
That's dedication to the craft.
Besides, I'm jealous!

[BlueCheeseAgain]

7. Imagine if he ate both lunch and dinner at Chinese restaurants!

[ProfessorGAC]

20. Aha!

Now we've whittled it down to 11 years!!!

[doc03]

3. I assume they don't eat the stuff in China

that they feed us here. If they did the Chinese would be dying from heart disese and diabetes.

[electric_blue68]

4. In China they probably...

eat a lot less meat, way more vegitables, more tofu, less fried foods.

[meadowlander]

5. More fried food, a lot less sugar.

[electric_blue68]

9. more fried food? ...

I wasn't thinking of sugar (vs average American diet); bc there's not much in Chinese cooking except for desserts, maybe a few dishes as far as I know. 👍

I need to get me some dim sum, and sticky rice w lotus leaf (from Chinatown)! Yums all around! ❤️

[Mosby]

11. A list I found

https://www.chinaeducationaltours.com/guide/culture-chinese-food-top-dishes.htm

[electric_blue68]

24. TY 👍 ...

I've avoided Ma Po tofu bc of the heat - but I started cooking with tofu about 40 yrs ago.

I looove shredded pork w garlic sauce. Haven't had it years, bc none in any of my nabes.

But there was a NYC Chinese chain called Empire Shezhuan that I got (?seaseme) noodles with pickled cabbage. Yum.

As far as top cuisines go I'd put Indian in as well!
My goodness one of the most varied cuisines in the world - Meat, Meat w Vegetables, Vegetarian, and Vegan!
I've had a lot from all these catagories! 😀💖

[Retrograde]

25. Try making your own

then you can adjust the heat to your taste. Ma Po tofu is actually quite easy to make (aside from finding the Chinese black beans and Sichuan pepper - but Amazon carries them). I make a credible version if I do say so myself, comparable to some of the better Chinese restaurants around here.

[electric_blue68]

26. 👍 Cool for you making it...

Haven't cooked Chinese in decades. Maybe in the Spring I can go buy a wok.

I'd probably go for shredded pork with garlic sauce first!😁
But if I do get a wok, I'll give it a try, too. 👍

[Retrograde]

29. Woks have their advantages, but

I use my trusty old cast iron skillet. Works almost as well, and I don't have a special pan taking up space.

[electric_blue68]

30. Got it👍 Don't have one of those.

[meadowlander]

13. Yes. It's very unusual to find ovens in Chinese homes or restaurants.

Almost everything is either fried in a wok or steamed. They use a lot of oil in stir-fries and a lot of dishes are deep fried and then stir-fried.

Like I said before portion sizes are a lot smaller and what we would think of as the "food" is really considered flavoring for the rice there. There's a famous Chinese compliment for someone's cooking: "It helps the rice go down".

So it matters less that you're eating fried chicken if it's surrounded by fried vegetables, you're only eating less than a cup of it and you get like 15,000 steps a day in from just going to work, going shopping and coming home.

[electric_blue68]

14. Ha, I forgot about stir fry ...

how could I?
I actually cooked with a wok 40 yes ago. Steamer, too.
It's I tend to think of fry as deep fry.

Yes, that too, about the ratio of rice to the other ingredients. And going about one's day.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

6. Restaurant food tends to be a richer, less healthy, version of home food.

Also, I think the Chinese tend to eat a higher ratio of rice to the "actual" dishes than we typically do here, so they don't eat as much of the less healthy stuff.

[meadowlander]

8. It depends on what type of Chinese restaurant you're talking about here

e.g. the only "Asian food" restaurant in Topeka vs a Sichuan restaurant in San Francisco.

But generally the difference is portion size, not what's on your plate. If you eat four times as much of anything, you're going to be heavier.

Also most people in China still don't have cars so if you're getting a lot more exercise in your day to day life you can get away with eating more calories and more fat.

[liberal_mama]

10. I only like the American Chinese Food. My husband wanted to go to an authentic Chinese place in

the Chinatown area of Manhattan that he saw on Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. The restaurant must have had good food because it was very busy, but I couldn't eat it. It was actually gross tasting to me. I don't think my husband cared for it too much, although he made an attempt to eat it because he's cheap and hates to waste food. I do love our local Chinese restaurants that serve egg rolls, lo mein and fried rice.

It's the same thing with Mexican for me. I love Taco Bell, Mighty Taco, and the tacos I make at home using Ortega seasoning/shells. When we tried authentic Mexican tacos, I took one bite and gave the rest to my husband. My husband thought they were delicious!

I guess I just don't have sophisticated taste buds.

[meadowlander]

15. "Chinese food" is really an amalgamation of 8 very different culinary styles.

You can't really have one dish in one restaurant and decide you don't like "real" Chinese food.

I'm not a huge fan of Shanghainese/Jiangsu food which to me is bland and sweet and has a lot of fish.

I like Sichuan food, hot pots, Guangdong dumplings, Chinese-style duck from anywhere.

One of my favorite restaurants was Xinjiangese which is on the westernmost side of China bordering Kazakhstan. They have a lot of charcoal-grilled meats and spicy noodle soups. Another place I loved had curry hot pots - out of this world.

You should read up a bit on which styles you actually like and give it another go.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. I Spent A Week Around Shanghai

I don't remember eating a single thing that lived on land, except for rice & vegetables.
Fish, shellfish, seaweed.
I had a wonderful cold soup that had abalone in it. I'm not sure that the abalone wasn't raw. Pretty chewy but the dish was great!
I didn't find the food too sweet, though. I found it very nicely, and assertively spiced. Sure some stuff was sweeter, but that felt like a change of pace.
Now, I was eating mostly in upscale restaurants, so little local establishments might be different, though.

[electric_blue68]

17. What did you actually have at that restaurant?

[liberal_mama]

19. It was some sort of soupy dish, with cow tails with big bones and thick noodles in it

I scanned the menu for familiar things like lo mein or fried rice, but they didn't have anything like that on the menu. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it had a pretty small dining room and didn't look too clean either. My husband said he found it by watching Anthony Bourdain's show, but I tried to find out the name of it by looking up episodes and couldn't. I remember it was in the Chinatown area of Manhattan, which was a real cool area to walk around in.

[electric_blue68]

22. Ah, I just looked up ...

having not realized (😂 laughs at self) Cattle - cows are the females, and ox are the males but trained to do farm work. Duuuh! 😄

I may be a city gal, but I do know something about farm animals! Apparently not quite as much as I thought! 😄

Too bad that you had an unpleasant experience! I've had Carribian ox tail stew which I liked, but had to be careful about the bones. 👍

[48656c6c6f20]

12. First Chinese restaurant I went to

Was in DC. The menu was not translated, the daughter spoke a little English and answered questions about what the menu said. The food was delicious. Best I have had in the States. When we went to pay the older man added it up on, I swear to God an abacus, and wrote on a little chalk board he had. I was all of 16 and that event opened a desire in me to travel every country in the world. I haven't been to everyone but I am over 100 and still exploring.

[doc03]

16. The first Chinese food I ate they had like

broiled chicken and actual cuts of pork. Today everything is breaded and deep fried very unhealthy. I am talking about carry out, never ate in a upscale Chinese restaraunt.

[electric_blue68]

18. Different experiences (all positive) w Chinese food.

In the mid-late '60's the Chinese takeout places near me used to slather their fried rice in soy sauce.

Much to my surprise when I ate at a Chinese friends house a simple pork and white rice but with a very light hand in the soy sauce. Oh, so it's not just always slathered on.

Her mom also made sticky rice in banana (not lotus) leaves for her which I tried, and mostly liked! It'd be almost 15+ yrs before I actually had sticky rice in lotus leaves. Love it, and try to get it as often as I can.

Sechzuen was coming into NYC when I was in collage early '70's. A mixed group of us white, and Chinese American friends went one. About 10 of us. A big pot of soup with all kinds of stuff, including ?glass noodles. Then a whole lazy Susan filled with dishes. I loved just about everything although could only eat s tiny bit if the spiciest items.

I was the only left hander using chop sticks which I'd already gotten good at.

I absolutely love going for dim sum!!! Love the translucent shrimp, shrimp & pork stuffed rolls, pork bao, shui mei, pork with fermented black bean, and more! My favorite vegitable one is turnip cakes!
Also going to their stores for roasted pork to take home.

My tradition has been when ever I visit a city for the first time I try to go to their Chinatown for dim sum: Philadelphia, DC, and SF so far.