"I don't think that being a strong person is about ignoring your emotions and fighting your feelings. Putting on a brave face doesn't mean you're a brave person. That's why everybody in my life knows everything that I'm going through. I can't hide anything from them. People need to realise that being open isn't the same as being weak."

- Taylor Swift

Saturday, November 14, 2009

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.

3 comments:

Adelaide Dupont said...

Thanks for your words about especially Singapore food.

I do eat Chinese, sometimes, but mostly take-away, and it is not necessarily my favourite.

I prefer Thai food, and the restaurant Papa and I currently go to seems to have struck a balance between Thai and Western aesthetic ideals.

And the lunch specials aren't bad.

Does your place have a Chinatown? What do you think of the restaurants there?

What good Chinese recipes have you tried at home?

Adelaide Dupont said...

Quick postscript:

The other Asian food I'm really enjoying is Korean. Especially the barbecue form. Kimchi is great, and so is the seaweed.

(Just thinking that hangul and hanga is easier - for me - than pinyin, but not as easy as kanji/hiragana - because I did actually study Japanese in 1994).

Anonymous said...

Adelaide,

I love Thai food too, and I'm notoriously known for making myself sick on phad thai every time i get my hands on the stuff. My friend runs a Chinese takeaway shop and it's pretty good.

Perth does have a Chinatown in a place called Northbridge and most of the restaurants in and near Chinatown are the best. There is also an area in Northbridge that is chockers full of Vietnamese shops - and nothing beats a Vietnamese noodle shop...

There are other Asian restaurants in and around the city and the suburbs, but some of them are a bit dodgy.

My mother is Singaporean and she learned some Korean recipes from her Korean friend and my dad's Korean family, so we have a kind of strange blend of cultures at home. I think it's yummy, though. Nothing beats my mum's stir fry. If I were on death row I would want nothing else but my mum's stir fries.

I'm half Korean and I heart Korean food, but the Korean food here seriously sucks. The Korean food in Sydney, especially the barbeque, is a hell of a lot better.

The Korean language is a hell of a lot easier than Chinese (I haven't even tried Japanese, I'm pretty much limited to konichiwa teriyaki and sushi and miso soup) but I'm hopeless at languages (except for English. I am spaztart and English) so my Korean is pretty much limited to basic greetings and some crude curses and swearwords. Lovely.