Cheap Chinese.

In Australia, Chinese food has a notorious reputation for being dirt-cheap and a perfect choice for nights out on a tight budget.

I'm not entirely convinced that's a very good reputation to have, but because the steady stream of middle class people keep Chinese restaurants full to the brim with good business, the Chinese don't complain.

The thing is, to a Chinese person, Chinese food is not cheap. Chinese food is fairly priced, and Western food is just damn expensive. Besides, the Chinese restaurants that Western people go to are far from cheap or good anyway, for our standards.

The thing is, you don't pick out a Chinese restaurant the way you pick out a Western restaurant. When you pick out a Western restaurant, you look at the decor. It should have nice lighting, stylish interiors and sexy furnishing. All of this stuff in a Chinese restaurant gives the impression that they're trying to make up for the less-than-sexy food.

Then you look at the menu. The menu should be clean, professionally-printed, and typo-free, and should have the fancy, haven't-got-a-clue-what-the-hell-that-is names of the dishes listed, and underneath a detailed description which, behind all the fancy names and enticing adjectives, really doesn't tell you much. In a Chinese restaurant, this standard of English and professionalism is just creepy. All this stuff is appealing to Westerners, not Chinese people. The lack of typos and the flamboyant language shows the lack of authenticity - after all, a good customer shouldn't really understand the English part of the menu anyway.

The authenticity, or the distinct lack of it, can be most easily discovered by looking at the customers. A big family or group, especially one that doesn't speak English and has lots of old people in it, is a good sign of Asian authenticity. Asians who don't speak English generally don't settle for substandard food from their motherland, and all old folks are picky, and picky people don't go to crap restaurants. Authentic restaurants have authentic (i.e crazily cheap) prices, which means Westerners stay away from these kind of places. Authentic restaurants are generally small, generally shabby, generally have waiters who speak fluent garbage and broken English, and generally have a menu which is in Chinese and pin-yin, and therefore incomprehensible to the non-Chinese speaking person.

In Singapore, to get the best food from a hawker place there is one simple, basic rule: Join the biggest queue. The same holds true for Chinese restaurants here. Don't go for the big, grand one with the big, grand furnishings and the big, grand name - because, it will most likely be a big, grand fail. Join the smallest, noisiest, loudest, most boisterous place you can find.

What can you say? I'm proud of being a small, noisy, loud, boisterous Chinese.