260 replies to this topic

[Fat Guy]

A typical meal for me would be more like:

- 8 fried pork dumplings
- 2 wedges scallion pancake
- 4 pork spare ribs
- All the bits of appetizers everybody else at the table doesn't eat
- 2 cups beef lo mein
- Deep fried shrimp with honey-glazed walnuts
- A small taste of steamed mixed vegetables, just to confirm I still don't like it
- Enough ten ingredient fried rice to taste each of the ten ingredients several times
- A cup of white rice
- A cup of brown rice
- Another order of fried pork dumplings
- Half a Peking duck
- A pint of Starbuck's Java Chip ice cream at home for dessert

[slkinsey]

Heh. No kidding. Me too.

A recent "light" dinner at New Green Bo:
- 1 cup of chicken broth with vegetables
- 6 fried pork dumplings
- 4 boiled pork and leek dumplings
- 1.5 wedges of scallion pancake
- 1.5 cups rice cakes with chicken
- 1 piece fish fillet in wine sauce (hold the fungus)

I feel like I must be forgetting something.

The ironic thing is that this dinner was actually fairly light compared to other forays to NGB.

[Holly Moore]

A research assignment for you. Who is the Chinese restaurant owner or chef who created the universal Chinese restaurant menu found in 93% of all U.S. Chinese restaurants?

Edited by Holly Moore, 06 June 2007 - 09:07 AM.

[Peter Green]

A research assignment for you.  Who is the Chinese restaurant owner or chef who created the universal Chinese restaurant menu found in 93% of all U.S. Chinese restaurants?

I believe it was David Lo Pan from Big Trouble In Little China

[Pan]

Still, Chinese food dinners are usually full of oil.  I think it would be hard to think of a typical Chinese restaurant dinner that could be considered "light on the fat."  Yea, you can have the steamed broccoli and scallops, but most people are ordering moo shu pork and General Tso's chicken.  And clearly many of them do so thinking it's "healthy because it's Chinese food."  Someting like the (delicious) "stir-fried watercress with crispy pork" I had at Sripraphai the other day sounds superficialy "light and healthy" -- but the reality is that it was full of fat.

I take your point, Sam.

I'd just point out that Cantonese steamed whole fish dishes are not very fatty and are a standard and delicious dish in good Cantonese restaurants. But I doubt that most people who go for Sweet and Sour Pork for takeout are ordering steamed whole fish much.

[slkinsey]

Oh, there's no doubt that in a properly "authentic" regional Chinese restaurant there are healthy things to order. But, to follow up on your example, I think it very likely that the vast majority of Chinese restaurants across America are not offering any Cantonese steamed whole fish dishes (or certainly none you'd want to have) and, for those that do, in most of them the majority of customers aren't ordering it.

[Fat Guy]

One of the big stories in Chinese food, and Asian food in general, and indeed restaurants in general, is that the rate of improvement in small-town America has been incredibly rapid over the past decade or two. My first wake-up call on this was in about 1998, when I was visiting Cave Junction, Oregon. We were going there to visit a winery, and the guy at the winery was giving us directions by phone. "When you drive through the town heading in from the highway, you'll pass the diner and then two Chinese restaurants, one on each side of the road. You want to go to the one on the right, not the one on the left. It has a much better menu."

The stereotype, especially held by large-city dwellers, is that the Chinese food everywhere else in America is inedible and generic. I hear it all the time, even from plenty of people in the food press. But it's just not the case anymore. The supply lines have been laid in at the level of medium-size cities like Cleveland and Charlotte, and in all those surrounding suburbs restaurants can get good ingredients -- including fish -- from large Asian markets and suppliers that deal with Asian-operated farms in the US, Asian seafood distributors, etc. Most people who have been talking about these restaurants but not eating at them in the past decade would be surprised at what's out there.

Now two things are still true. First, it's still true that the average run-of-the-mill Chinese restaurant in a strip mall somewhere in Middle America isn't likely to have whole steamed fish or any ambitious dishes of that nature. Second, it's true that there's a generic menu that most every Chinese restaurant serves an approximation of.

However, the restaurant that has no steamed whole fish will almost definitely have a significant number of shrimp dishes, and also a selection of steamed dishes that include shrimp, tofu and vegetable selections. The slightly better restaurant in the strip mall across the road, where the average dish costs a dollar or two more, is likely to have fish fillets in various configurations -- usually basics like salmon and bass fillets that can be had frozen from commercial suppliers, and also scallops and, if it's an upscale area, possibly a live lobster tank. Of course, somebody has to be ordering this stuff, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to keep it on the menu.

In addition, that generic menu is more and more often becoming only part of the overall menu at any given restaurant. So yes, most Chinese restaurants feel obligated by the laws of supply and demand to offer the standard Chinese-American dishes from the generic menu. But a lot of those restaurants then go on to offer an array of other stuff.

Needless to say, there are many Chinese restaurants serving undifferentiated crap -- that's the case with all kinds of restaurants, and it's as true in Manhattan as it is in Mobile. But once you cut that bottom layer away -- once you cut away the Chinese-restaurant equivalents of Denny's, Applebee's and the local all-you-can-eat buffet -- you get to another level. And that level exists most everywhere in America now. At that level, you're usually dealing with family-run restaurants with chefs who have decent culinary skills, and there are likely to be at least a few Asian clients as well as American clients who have traveled in Asia. This is true even in some pretty small towns now, and it's certainly true in most actual cities even in the whitest states.

So when you're dining at that level, which isn't a very high level and isn't exactly difficult to plug into, you're all of a sudden in familiar territory (familiar, at least, if you're the type of person who's a regular reader of the eG Forums). You're in the universe where, as usual, the restaurant you're in is two restaurants: the one where the tourists eat, and the one where the in-the-know people dine. You just have to be willing to engage a manager and, of course, pay a little extra, and you can get good stuff. Maybe not on the level of the best places in Chinatown in New York, San Francisco or Vancouver, but far, far better than the stereotype would have it.

I spent about a week in the Cleveland area last year and collected a lot of information. Many of the restaurants there even have websites with menus, so we can click through to them from here. The generic stuff is well represented, but most of the menus go way beyond that, and in all different directions. For example, Garden Cafe (clearly there's some Taiwanese influence here), has dishes like "Squid with Sliced Pork," "Intestine Pig Blood with Sour Mustard," "Garden Steam Chicken with Scallion," "Garlic Grill Pomfret," and "Seafood Steamed Egg." That's in Cleveland, people.

Some more Cleveland examples: Hunan by the Falls has "Salt-Baked Fish," "Sliced Lotus Root Salad," "Ginger-Scallion China Sole (Filet of China sole with fresh tofu, steamed or sauteed in chef Chau's ginger scallion sauce)," "Seafood Fire Pot (shrimp, scallops, tsurumi, tofu, Chinese mushrooms, Napa cabbage)," and a Thai-style satay made with New Zealand green mussels. Pearl of the Orient has "Steamed Salmon (fresh fillet of salmon with asparagus, broccoli, carrots and shiitake mushrooms in a native bamboo steamer)," "Seafood Tofu Vermicelli Hot Pot," and even "Salmon with Peach and Cucumber Salsa." You get the idea. I've been finding menus like these from all over.

My most in-depth first-hand experience in Cleveland was at Sun Luck Garden, where Annie Chiu is the chef. This place looks like nothing from the outside. Like so many suburban Chinese restaurants, it's off at the end of some strip mall and the nearest landmark is a Kentucky Fried Chicken. The menu (sorry, it's not online, at least I don't think it is) looks relatively unremarkable. But if you sit with (well, run like hell chasing after) Annie Chiu for a day, you'll hear her making phone calls to all her regulars, "I'm getting mussels for tomorrow dinner, you want in?" Plenty of these regulars aren't Asian. And every night there are specials that reflect a high level of Chinese cooking, yet you'd never know it if you just coasted through a meal, didn't engage the staff, and ordered the generic standards.

You can track most of this with other types of Asian restaurants, though a lot of them haven't penetrated as deeply into the country. But in most cities, the Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Indian options are much improved of late.

[Fat Guy]

I'm going to be interviewing Betty Xie, the editor of Chinese Restaurant News, in the near future. I've already got so many questions that I may not even get to all of them, but if you all have anything you'd like me to ask her I'll see if I can squeeze it in.

[SheenaGreena]

fascinating thread. I'm almost half way done reading it, but I'd figured I would post anyway.

I think its wonderful that in Korea they have restaurants specializing in only one or two dishes. This means that if I want korean bbq, bibimbap, or something else I have to go to separate restaurants. Since these restaurants specialize in only one dish it means that the quality is very high, food comes out quickly, and is always very very good. However here in the US, korean restaurants specialize in pretty much everything and it really affects the quality of the food. I have yet to find a korean restaurant in boston or maryland that does one dish really well, unless you count the chinese-korean place in college park, md. Also these korean places that specialize in one dish here in the us (very very rarely will you find one) are only frequented by korean people. If americans had the opportunity to try this type of eating, I think they would quickly move past bibimbop and korean bbq

[SheenaGreena]

On the side: I remember driving down to Fort Lewis from Vancouver back in the '70s because the Korean restaurants and stores clustered around the base were the only ones serving kop chang to be found (it was a long drive, but I was young, and Yoonhi was with me).

what a good tip, military bases always seem to have good ethnic restaurants located nearby. I grew up as an army brat (my father is retired now) and we always found really really good korean food near the military bases- yes even in korea. These restaurants were always frequented by the military men and women mostly during lunch. I think they liked these places, because they reminded them of their posts and stays overseas.

mmmmm kopchang - I throw in extra intestines and stomach

[seisei]

Fat Guy,

I love the book idea, and those Asian stats are fascinating. Somehow I always assumed that there were more Koreans in L.A. than in New York, considering the quality of the food out there vs. NY; it's interesting to learn that they simply make up more of the population.

I agree with Sheena that too many people get hung up on bibimbap and bbq and fail to look beyond to the rest of Korean cuisine. I think this may partly have to do with the encyclopedic nature of most Korean restaurants (at least in NY) with menus that go on for nearly a hundred items for pages and pages. I've watched many a friend's eyes glaze over perusing them only to land upon bibimbap.

On the flip side, restaurants specializing in just one or two dishes seem to be a risk as well, for the uninitiated, for fear of a lack of variety or alternatives should the eater not enjoy the house dish or have some sort of "safety" (i.e. bibimbap) to fall back on.

(I think the popularity of bibimbap also is related to the ease with which it can be made vegetarian by excluding beef--not too many other Korean dishes, kimchee included, can be considered safely veggie.)

As a Korean-American, I always think of what I want to eat, and tailor my choice of restaurant to my appetite for a particular dish. In NYC's Koreatown, while the Korean "encyclopedic" menu type restaurants predominate, there is a healthy percentage of "specialized" restaurants focusing on one or two dishes--Chinese style noodles, fried chicken, tofu stew, oxtail soup, etc. If I want bbq (which is rare) or something that one of these specialized places does not provide, I go to the more generalist places. I would say that the percentage of specialized restaurants goes up in Korean neighborhoods in Queens and New Jersey.

Edited by seisei, 07 June 2007 - 09:08 PM.

[Peter Green]

I've seen the specialty restaurants have a hard time of it. You really need a lot of people who know your product in order to support a particular niche (like the beef blood soup place up on Kingsway in Vancouver......I wonder if they survived?).

Is the problem that we, after several generations of dining, are now too comfortable with Asian food as we've been taught to enjoy it? Breaking the old dining-out prejudice of "This is my plate! Mine! Don't come near it!" and having moved to the family style approach to a meal, where a wide variety of dishes are on offer to all.

We've apostized, we've embraced this new sensibility, and we've made it part of our culture.

Now it just seems....well....sinful not to have a lot of different plates of stuff out there on the table, a panoply of flavours to snipe from.

Luckily, I can work with sin.

[Pan]

I'm going to be interviewing Betty Xie, the editor of Chinese Restaurant News, in the near future. I've already got so many questions that I may not even get to all of them, but if you all have anything you'd like me to ask her I'll see if I can squeeze it in.

Ask her which regional Chinese cuisine(s) will be the next to take off in North America.

Ask her about the future of high-end Chinese cuisine in North America.

[Peter Green]

I'm going to be interviewing Betty Xie, the editor of Chinese Restaurant News, in the near future. I've already got so many questions that I may not even get to all of them, but if you all have anything you'd like me to ask her I'll see if I can squeeze it in.

Ask her about the future of high-end Chinese cuisine in North America.

As an interesting twist, could you take her from that question, to how she compares this with the future of high-end Chinese cuisine in China?

Cheers,

Peter

[ojisan]

Steven -

I would be interested to know how many Japanese restaurants are actually owned/operated by people of Japanese descent. On the west coast, most are Korean owned.

You might consider a chapter devoted to proper etiquette at high-end sushi bars - the hows and whys one should know in order to get the best meal/service possible.

Phil

[Fat Guy]

It would be interesting to know the ethnicity of Japanese-restaurant owners, however I've found data of that level of granularity to be extremely difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to come by. If you have a source, I'd love to hear about it.

There's a section of the book called "Guerilla Sushi Tactics," which is a rough guide to how to get the most out of a sushi bar (rule number one: sit at the sushi bar). It doesn't concern itself specifically with the high-end -- that sector is so small as to be not all that central to a book with nationwide, mainstream scope. But I think the basic strategies work at most any level of sushi bar. Actually, I know they do, since I developed them over the course of several meals at Sushi Yasuda, Kuruma Zushi, Hatsuhana, et al. in New York City a few years back. One of my central theses is that strict adherence to Japanese etiquette is not necessary in American sushi restaurants. No sushi chef who has spent more than a week working in America insists on that. The important thing is to make a connection with your sushi chef and communicate that you're an interested, enthusiastic, discriminating customer.

[JanMcBaker]

I'm going to be interviewing Betty Xie, the editor of Chinese Restaurant News, in the near future. I've already got so many questions that I may not even get to all of them, but if you all have anything you'd like me to ask her I'll see if I can squeeze it in.

Ask her how in the heck do you get a restaurant to live up to their heat designation for a given dish? I don't know how many times I've ordered a 'hot' dish but ended up with something bland enough for a newborn! Or if someone else has a suggestion, please let me know.

[Fat Guy]

I don't know how many times I've ordered a 'hot' dish but ended up with something bland enough for a newborn!  Or if someone else has a suggestion, please let me know.

I thought I had cracked the code. "Thai spicy!" I declared to the waitress at Sripraphai, which is not only the best Thai restaurant in New York City, but also one of the very few acceptable ones (for this reason, I suggest you avoid Sripraphai unless you're willing to become jaded about all the Thai places you currently enjoy). She nodded -- clearly, this clever turn of phrase (simply saying "very spicy" won't even get you to square one) indicated an in-the-know Caucasian customer who could tolerate spicy food the way Thai people eat it.

It was spicy enough to cause perspiration and some discomfort, but as with all the best spicy Southeast Asian cuisine, the heat was not simply for its own sake but was balanced by the other flavors in the dish. Most great Southeast Asian cuisine -- to paint with a very broad brush -- is characterized by a balance of tastes, particularly between sweetness and spiciness. It also tends toward the extremely aromatic. In its Americanized incarnations, however, this cuisine can be either sickly sweet or one-dimensionally spicy -- the kind of food you eat only on a dare.

Sripraphai is one of the few restaurants in New York that strikes the right balance, and where the dishes give off the aromas of the genuine article. I ordered this same dish, "jungle curry" with one or another meat (most of the dishes on the menu are protein-interchangeable: chicken, beef, pork, tofu), on my next four visits, each time feeling exceptionally proud of myself for having reached across the great cultural divide that so often makes it impossible for non-Asians to get the best food in Asian restaurants.

And then, on visit number six, I started in on my jungle curry (with chicken this time) and, as I was blithely approaching the second bite, I realized that a dull pain was beginning to radiate outwards from the roof of my mouth, up my sinuses and all over my head, which was beginning to throb. I dropped my fork on or near the plate, instinctively drank a glass of water -- which only made it worse -- then ate my rice and my wife's rice and attempted to recover.

Eventually, the waitress noticed my distress. She apologized, "Oh, sorry, this time I forget to tell chef you're not a Thai person. That one, it's real Thai medium-spicy."

A humbling experience, to be sure, but it enabled me to ascertain the only effective way for a non-Asian to get full-strength versions of the dishes at Sripraphai: lean in conspiratorially and say to the waitress: "Don't tell the chef I'm not Thai." A Pyrrhic victory, perhaps, since my subsequent Sripraphai meals have been a blur of pain and suffering -- but a victory nonetheless.

[Toliver]

My attempt to get spicier food in a Chinese restaurant was to follow up my order with "Lao", which I was told means "spicy hot" in Chinese. It hasn't always worked. I could be saying "purple" for all I know.

[Human Bean]

Major exception to the idea that a restaurant can't specialize in a particular dish: pho.

There are several restaurants around here where pho is 75% or more of the business. Maybe this is only possible where there's a sufficient population to support them; the customers seem to be 75+% Asian, but the Caucasian customer base seems to be growing, though slowly perhaps.

The surprising thing is that most of the pho isn't even very good (the same can be said about most Chinese restaurant food too), but it seems to be Vietnamese comfort food and is somewhat time-consuming to prepare at home, so a mediocre restaurant version can suffice.


(Reminder to self: make a batch this weekend, before summer kicks in and it gets too hot to let soup simmer all day.)

[gwilson]

First, I'm really glad that you're writing this. It sounds like something I'd love to read (as I did your first book).

I do have one idea, but I'm not sure if it's exactly compatible to your book. My problem has always been an issue of authenticity. (Not to start a debate about the merits of 'authentic'.) If someone goes to the typical American Chinese restaurant, they may love it (which is fine). But then they go somewhere else and get an 'authentic' dish, and hate it. Even though it may be prepared exactly the way it should be and tastes appropriately. Without actually travelling to Asia, how do you go about recognizing what is good and what isn't (regardless if you personally like it)?

Okay, reading over that, it probably doesn't have anything to do with your book. I had it worded much better in my head, but it's not coming out that way now. I'll still post it in case someone can interpret what I really mean. (And maybe after this headache goes away, I can reword what I was trying to say.)


-Greg

[Fat Guy]

(Not to start a debate about the merits of 'authentic'.)

Sorry. Too late. You now get to hear my lecture about the tyranny of authenticity.

Though I’ve eaten enough Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian and Southeast Asian food in my life that my Caucasian DNA could at any moment spontaneously resequence itself into Asian DNA, I’ve never spent much time in Asia. I’ve enjoyed the limited time I’ve spent there tremendously, though I haven’t enjoyed the flight (my voluminous eating is evident in my bulk, which doesn’t take well to 20 hours in an economy-class seat).

Nonetheless, it only takes about one minute in Asia to notice that the food there is quite different from its representation in restaurants in North America. Many of the dishes I enjoyed at Empire Szechuan growing up, for example, were Chinese-American adaptations: egg rolls, General Tso’s chicken, egg foo yung. Thus, many people, and especially food writers, have called these dishes “inauthentic.”

Reading the glossy food magazines, the newsletters, and the Internet, and even when talking to educated gourmets, I get the sense that the authenticity police are everywhere these days. Have you ever dined in a Japanese restaurant with friends who have just returned from Japan? "Oh, in Japan a restaurant only serves one thing," they'll inevitably say. “You never see tempura, noodles and sushi on the same menu.”

Authenticity as commonly understood by today’s reigning culinary authorities refers to the preservation of "original" recipes, presented with some historical and cultural context. In the language of Merriam-Webster, authentic means “conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.”

But what if evolution itself lies at the core of authenticity?

After all, there were no hot chilies in China’s Sichuan province, or anywhere else in Asia, until long after the discovery of the New World. When that beloved red pepper first appeared in China, did the local food cognoscenti protest, "We don't use these things in authentic Sichuan cuisine"? No cuisine springs into existence as a fully formed entity, and all living cuisines evolve.

There was no tomato sauce – and there were certainly no sun-dried tomatoes – until centuries after the tomato first reached Europe from the New World. We could just as easily imagine knee-jerk authenticity-based complaints about chocolate in France, and wine in Australia. If you dug really deep, you'd probably find that at some point in prehistory the very notion of cooking beasts over a fire instead of eating their bloody haunches raw was scorned for its inauthenticity, too.

“Fusion” is not some trend that started in the 1980s. It’s the history of cuisine. And since everything in the world of food likely had some precursory experience, wouldn't it be smarter for us to make allowances for what "authentic" really means? If you ask me, such tolerance is necessary when you dine out in a place like America, where just about everybody came from somewhere else. Chinese chefs, on arriving in America, found different ingredients, faced different challenges, and adapted. They created new dishes and extended their native cuisines.

I believe these cooks demonstrate that authenticity isn't a repetition of history. Real authenticity, to me, is grounded in being faithful to oneself. This is the last definition given by Merriam-Webster, but to me it is the most appropriate for cuisine: “true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.” That's why, despite their breaks with tradition, there's nothing inauthentic about those big, fat, American egg rolls, or Japanese restaurants with far-ranging menus. Sometimes these concepts even get exported back to their parent cultures, for example with the opening of Nobu (a New York restaurant, based on a Los Angeles restaurant, serving Peruvian-influenced Japanese fusion cuisine) in Tokyo. Change for its own sake is phony, but true originality is authentic.

To me, what makes America a supremely dynamic eating destination is exactly its unabashed dedication to what the old school writers would call inauthenticity: America doesn't attempt to hide the actuality that human history is built on immigration, assimilation, and invention. My memories of dining at Empire Szechuan would be utterly foreign to a resident of Sichaun province, but they’re the authentic experiences of my life, an American life.

Rather than obsessing about historical notions of authenticity, I propose finding culinary validation within ourselves and accepting that tomorrow's authenticity is always the child of today's inauthenticity. Those who forget this lesson will, I think, be relegated to quibbling about trivialities, like faux quartermasters debating the historical accuracy of their Civil War reenactment uniforms.

Without actually travelling to Asia, how do you go about recognizing what is good and what isn't (regardless if you personally like it)?

By using what the information science people call "secondary epistemic criteria." How do you ever decide whom to trust when you don't personally possess all the information you'd need to make the decision yourself? You look for various indicia of credibility. Think about reading just about any eG Forums topic. In most cases it doesn't take very long to identify the most credible posts -- your brain automatically weighs several factors (your familiarity with and opinions about the member who's posting, the level of detail and apparent familiarity with the subject matter, a tone that resonates with you) and comes up with a ranking.

In the restaurant context, this sort of analysis can occur at various levels. You might dine with someone who has more information (you can be sure that any good restaurant reviewer, when reviewing a restaurant that serves an unfamiliar cuisine, will take an expert along to dinner). You might be able to derive some information from the way the restaurant is set up, who's eating there, what kind of comments you get from the staff, what you've read in books, magazines, newspapers and online, etc. Which is not to say that a restaurant full of people with Oriental faces is always going to be serving food just like you'd see in Asia -- that's a common misconception that leads to a lot of false positives.

[Peter Green]

Ah, to take arms against the forces of "correctness" and "authenticity".

I've had several "lively" arguements with people about the use of tomatoes in Thai cuisine. They fight and argue, and rail against how it doesn't belong in the cuisine.

But when it comes down to it, many of my Thai friends are going to have to have their bottles of ketsup pried out of their cold, dead fingers.

People eat what they like. Thai food evolved from contact with the West, China, and the Subcontinent. They found what they liked, and used it. You can wander about and see the different levels of penetration. Cambodia, despite its coast, was cut off from the Euros, and so is weaker on chilis (which is kinda nice, as the herbs come out). The Lao are more prestine in some ways, not using as much coconut milk in their curries (a Sri Lankan thing), but you'll find all sorts of French influences in Luang Prabang and Vientiane.

Countering this, there've been a very good set of articles in the Bangkok Post over the last couple of years detailing how the demand for "fast foods" has led to the cutting of corners on some dishes. It is now very, very hard to find a good mee krob, as the particular lime used in finishing the dish just isn't worth the bother of many of the vendors. Do the majority of the office workers care? probably not. They've got an hour (or three...this is Thailand) to do lunch.

Okay, I have to go to the kitchen now.

But I feel better for that rant.

Fight the good fight, Steven.

[Fat Guy]

So maybe you all could help me with some idea generation here. One of the things I want to include in the book is a set of cross-cultural cuisine comparisons. These would be little sidebars (or shaded boxes, or whatever the book designer chooses) sprinkled throughout the book, discussing similarities among Asian cuisines (and beyond).

So, for example, dumplings. Pretty much every Asian cuisine has a version of these, so I'd do a little guide to dumpling types, with brief descriptions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc., dumplings, and also some examples of dumplings from non-Asian cuisines. This I think, in addition to perhaps being interesting, could help demystify a new cuisine for someone who has never, for example, had Korean food.

So these are the ones I've thought of so far:

- Dumplings
- Curries
- Wraps (Chinese moo-shu, Korean ssam, various Southeast Asian wraps,
Indian frankie)
- Noodles (this might be a longer piece; also interesting that India seems not to have a significant noodle culture)

Any other thoughts? And does this sort of comparison chart/sidebar seem like something that might be a good addition to the book?

[David Ross]

So maybe you all could help me with some idea generation here. One of the things I want to include in the book is a set of cross-cultural cuisine comparisons. These would be little sidebars (or shaded boxes, or whatever the book designer chooses) sprinkled throughout the book, discussing similarities among Asian cuisines (and beyond).

So, for example, dumplings. Pretty much every Asian cuisine has a version of these, so I'd do a little guide to dumpling types, with brief descriptions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc., dumplings, and also some examples of dumplings from non-Asian cuisines. This I think, in addition to perhaps being interesting, could help demystify a new cuisine for someone who has never, for example, had Korean food.

So these are the ones I've thought of so far:

- Dumplings
- Curries
- Wraps (Chinese moo-shu, Korean ssam, various Southeast Asian wraps,
Indian frankie)
- Noodles (this might be a longer piece; also interesting that India seems not to have a significant noodle culture)

Any other thoughts? And does this sort of comparison chart/sidebar seem like something that might be a good addition to the book?

I think it is a great idea. I think a lot of people don't understand there are very subtle differences between various Asian cuisines. If they gain a greater appreciation of the differences between noodles from Shanghai vs. noodles from Vietnam, they gain a greater appreciation for the flavors in the different styles of noodles. The end result is learning more about the world's food and cooking styles, and hopefully an urge to try that cooking at home.

I suppose today's publishing world is quite competitive when it comes to books about food and cooking and of course, you want to set yourself apart, not only to be profitable but for people to like your book. I think adding the comparisons will help you be unique.

You may want to also consider soups since they are such an integral part of Asian cuisines. I haven't done much research on the differences in soups throughout Asia, but I cook lots of different types of Asian soups. I know that curry style soups with coconut milk are popular in Thailand, while the Chinese tend to use lots of odd things like dried fungus in their soups. Just another idea for you and good luck.

[Fat Guy]

Soups! Excellent idea. It's such a good idea I have no idea how I'm going to keep it to a manageable size! (I guess by just isolating the most central examples from each cuisine.)

[David Ross]

Soups! Excellent idea. It's such a good idea I have no idea how I'm going to keep it to a manageable size! (I guess by just isolating the most central examples from each cuisine.)

I hear you. I thought of how large the subject of Asian soups would be-a subject unto itself that could probably fill page after page. It sounded so big to me I almost didn't want to suggest it to you.

Without any research of my own, off the top of my head I would agree with you-start with a central premise and then just highlight some differences from that point.

Maybe start with the base for the soups-like chicken stock or seafood stock, then speak to the differences in how the soups are garnished. For example in Pho Soups in Vietnam the broth may start as standard chicken broth, and then a plate of garnishes is served with the soup like thin strips of beef, cilantro, lime and noodles. In China the basic chicken broth may be flavored with shark's fin or dried fungus and chrysanthemum bulbs. Something like that-start with the concept of basic chicken broth and then how the different cultures add different ingredients to make their soups unique.

[Fat Guy]

I think what I'll probably do with all of these is consult my collection of restaurant menus in order to determine the dishes customers are most likely to encounter. That will narrow the field a little bit.

[Peter Green]

More topics for comparison.......

Pickles (which would include kim chi, of course)

Drinking culture, and the foods that go with it

Tea (and its culture)

[gwilson]

So, for example, dumplings. Pretty much every Asian cuisine has a version of these, so I'd do a little guide to dumpling types, with brief descriptions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc., dumplings, and also some examples of dumplings from non-Asian cuisines. This I think, in addition to perhaps being interesting, could help demystify a new cuisine for someone who has never, for example, had Korean food.

This is actually what I was trying to say (mostly). Something of a guide for people completely new to a specific cuisine to let them know what the main flavors/dishes/ingredients are to that cuisine. Thank you for saying it so much better than me.

And just for the record - in my earlier post, I should have used the word traditional instead of authentic. That day-glo sweet and sour sauce is authentic to Chinese-American cuisine, but it's not traditional Chinese. (Or something like that.) And there's nothing wrong with that. I was just wondering how you can go to a restaurant and distinguish the 'traditional' from the 'authentic'. And the cuisine comparison chart things would be very useful in that. Thanks again.


-Greg