Chinese food in Italy

[fido dido]

I just came back from Italy and had some really delicious Wenzhou cuisine while in Florence and Rome. Has anyone had similar experiences? Has anyone eaten a meal in a Chinese home in Italy, too? Have you noticed any interesting combinations of cuisines?

[yimay]

i took my mom to italy once and she is the type of chinese mom that can only eat non-chinese food for 1 day. so we ate at a lot of chinese restaurants in rome, florence, venice. i also ate at one in a small town once when i was studying abroad. they were all terrible. then again, we didn't know where to go.

[bethpageblack]

i took my mom to italy once and she is the type of chinese mom that can only eat non-chinese food for 1 day. so we ate at a lot of chinese restaurants in rome, florence, venice. i also ate at one in a small town once when i was studying abroad. they were all terrible. then again, we didn't know where to go.

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lol, my mom and grandma are exactly the same way -- when I was a kid, we'd pack rice, some lap cheoung and pickled veggies and a rice cooker for vacation. I thought we were just short of money back then but it was more that the older people in my family couldn't eat non chinese for more than a day, and they can't stand Americanized Chinese food. Nowadays it's a lot easier to find real Chinese so there's no need to pack a suitcase of food.

[I_call_the_duck]

I actually don't remember seeing that many Chinese restaurants the last time I was in Rome and Florence. Then again, I wasn't really looking. But when I was there, I was leafing through a Chinese cookbook, which had a recipe for pork fried rice. Instead of roast pork, the recipe called for pancetta.

[PCL]

As a Chinese who frequents Italy, I can say quite definitively that I've never ever eaten Chinese food, or what some people claim passes for the stuff, in Italy.

Fido dido... like the name by the way, reminds me of 7up... Maybe you could elaborate on the types of dishes/meals/experiences you actually had. I am in no great hurry to eat Chinese food when I'm in Italy (pretty much feel the same way when I'm in say, Shanghai)... but m curiosity has been piqued.

[Eden]

I've seen a couple chinese restaurants in every large italian city I visited, but I confess that I was always afraid to try them.

I remember on a visit to London many years ago trying a supposedly good chinese restaurant & it was terrible!!!! not even like bad chinese-american which I'm at least used to and certainly not like any authentic chinese I've come across. That scared me off eating chinese food outside the US (where I know what to expect, plus or minus) ever again...

Of course I'm in italy for the Italian food anyway, so I'm not usually looking for Chinese food while I'm there, but I do think it would be a public service if you would post the names of the good places you tried

[Gastro888]

I had the unforunate pleasure of eating Chinese cuisine in Rome not once but twice during my last trip 4 years ago. And I wasn't traveling with Chinese people! My friends wanted to have Chinese food in Rome b/c they wanted to taste what Chinese food tastes like in Rome ( ) WHY? It was Italianified-Americanified-what the hell am I eating-ified Chinese food. Really. Unless there's a large ex-pat population there, don't bother eating Chinese food in Italy.

Now, I had some GREAT Chinese food in London in their Chinatown. It was as good as the stuff I had in HK. I guess I was incredibly lucky with that random restaurant. No, I don't remember the names of any of the places I went to, I'm sorry...lo yen fah know...

[Pontormo]

Unless there's a large ex-pat population there, don't bother eating Chinese food in Italy. 

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See Post #3 in thread devoted to the same topic in the Italian forum.

[hzrt8w]

[...] That scared me off eating chinese food outside the US (where I know what to expect, plus or minus) ever again... 

[...]

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I think the best Chinese food can be had in Canada (Vancouver, Toronto), outside of China. Even better than what you can find in China because of the availability of best ingredients and the labor pool.

If you are in London, Sydney, you probably can find very good restaurants too.

My father who had been to some Asian countries (Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, The Phillipines, etc.) said Chinese food (the only thing he would eat) in those countries are okay. Not great but not too bad generally. I personally had some excellent Chinese meals in Singapore.

But not sure about elsewhere in the European countries, South Americas or African countries.

Edited July 20, 2006 by hzrt8w (log)

[Hector]

The best chinese restaurants in Rome are around the Santa Maria Maggiore-church.. There's a bunch of these places. But I can't see why anyone in their right mind want to eat Chinese food on their visit to Rome. Not to be disrespectful to the wonderful Chinese culinary art and it's delicious dishes.. But when you can sample some of the most wonderful Italian cooking on the planet compared to in comparison mediocre Chinese food you got to make the best chose.

[Andrew Fenton]

True that there are a lot of Chinese restaurants around SM Maggiore, on and around the Via Merulana and in the area towards Termini. There are a couple right behind San Vito, though I never tried them. (That area is pretty good for non-Italian restaurants generally; I ate at a pretty good Egyptian place over there a few times.)

As to why you'd eat mediocre Chinese in Italy: well, if you're a tourist, I wouldn't. But if you live in Italy, especially if you're not Italian, you start missing Chinese food after a while...

[origamicrane]

Basically if there is a large chinese community then the chinese food will be good

like in London but if there isn't, then it won't.

I am generalising here but chinese food in mainland europe is pretty bad.

Tried chinese food in France and it wa pretty poor but Vietnamese on the other hand was very good.

In Italy I was taken by a chinese family friend to a "good" chinese restaurant

I wasn't impressed at all.

My parent went to barcelona and the majority of the dishes they tried were average.

[fido dido]

As a Chinese who frequents Italy, I can say quite definitively that I've never ever eaten Chinese food, or what some people claim passes for the stuff, in Italy.

Fido dido... like the name by the way, reminds me of 7up... Maybe you could elaborate on the types of dishes/meals/experiences you actually had. I am in no great hurry to eat Chinese food when I'm in Italy (pretty much feel the same way when I'm in say, Shanghai)... but m curiosity has been piqued.

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Pein,

I actually had fantastic Wenzhou food in both Rome and Florence. In Rome I wandered into a restaurant off the main drag in "Chinatown," off the Piazza Vittorio. Unfortunately, they were closed for the afternoon. The waiter was nice enough to take me around the corner to another place - much less fancy - that was still open. I ordered a plate of noodles, thinking they would be soup noodles, but to my surprise, they were vermicelli with vegetables. I've never seen that served in a restaurant, but we make it at home all the time. After a week of eating pasta and pork products non-stop, I savored every slurp.

In Florence some family friends who've lived in Italy for 20 years took me out to Prato, where the Chinese are centered and where all the garment and leather factories are. There, we went to what they told me was the best Wenzhou restaurant in town. It was memorable. I'm not a big fan of chicken feet, but I cleaned off the plate there. We had a pork-based noodle soup that was as delicious as anything I've ever had in Hong Kong, and crunchy cucumber pickles. It was impressive! I asked about Cantonese food there and they said it was pretty poor. There was one restaurant where you could get dim sum, but it wasn't really worth going to.

In short, I found to my surprise that there are some fantastic Chinese restaurants in Italy, you just have to go. As for those who are wondering why anyone in their right mind would want to eat Chinese food in Italy, the Chinese population there is quite substantial, but it's Zhejiangnese and Fujianese-based, not Cantonese-based like the population in North America. (Zhejiang cuisine, by the way, is one of the great regional cuisines of China.) That's translated into a very different Chinese restaurant experience in Europe than in America. Don't get me wrong - I've had bad Chinese food in France and England as well...the worst experience was in Switzerland...but I think that's changing. Especially in Italy, which had a couple of immigration amnesties that allowed the Chinese to settle, that's meant the birth of an overseas Chinese community. The way the restaurants, groceries and the communities that support them are evolving have a lot of parallels to how they developed in North America. So the next time you guys go to Italy, you might want to make time to try out some of the Chinese food.

The place I went to in Rome near the Piazza Vittorio was called New Beatiful Ristorante Cinese, on Via Cairoli 123. Another place that's been written up in papers and magazines around the world is called Ristorante Cinese Hang Zhou da Sonia, on via S. Martino ai Monti. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the place I went to in Prato, but you can't really go wrong in most places there.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and inputs...I'd love to hear more if anyone has a story or opinion.

Edited August 6, 2006 by fido dido (log)