[drewprops]

My go-to food is Chinese (American style is all I know). I've recently discovered the joy of Mongolian chicken, but usually go with Kung Pao or something similar. These days I resist General Tso's as much as possible since I know it's bad for me.

What's your favorite Chinese dish?

What makes it so great?


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[psmith2.0]

I'm a shrimp fried rice kinda guy. Once in a blue moon I'll get shrimp with lobster sauce. Notice a pattern here?

Shrimp makes everything great! Rice at Chinese places, pasta at Italian joints, fajitas at Mexican restaurants, etc.

[AWR]

I love Chinese food too. One of my favorite dishes is Mapo Tofu. I like Szechuan-style and the combo of tofu and ground beef/pork with fermented black beans and chili really hits the sport for me. The final touch, a few grinds of black pepper. From Wikipedia:

True Mapo doufu is powerfully spicy [NB. I've never had anything my palate considered 'powerful' but I've never been to China. ] with both conventional "heat" spiciness and the characteristic "mala" (numbing spiciness) flavor of Sichuan cuisine. The feel of the particular dish is often described by cooks using seven specific Chinese adjectives: 麻 (numbing), 辣 (spicy hot), 烫 (hot temperature), 鲜 (fresh), 嫩 (tender and soft), 香 (aromatic), and 酥 (flaky). These seven characteristics are considered to be the most defining of authentic Mapo doufu. The authentic form of the dish is increasingly easy to find outside China today, but usually only in Sichuanese restaurants that do not adapt the dish for non-Sichuanese tastes. The most important and necessary ingredients in the dish that give it the distinctive flavour are chili broad bean paste (salty bean paste) from Sichuan's Pixian county (郫县豆瓣酱), fermented black beans, chili oil, chili flakes of the heaven-facing pepper (朝天辣椒), Sichuan peppercorns, garlic, green onions, and rice wine. Supplementary ingredients include water or stock, sugar (depending on the saltiness of the bean paste brand used), and starch (if it is desired to thicken the sauce).

I also love dim sum for Sunday brunch. I bet they have a place(s) that serves good dim sum in a city the size of Atlanta. Hunt it down. My favs include rice steamed in lotus leaf, little ribs steamed with black beans, steamed shrimp dumplings, pork buns (cha siu bao), sauteed bok choy with garlic (not dim sum, but keeps the whole process honest). With a diet coke, great cure for late Saturday nights.

[Mac+]

Was meaning to post on this when I saw it.

Mapo doofu is fantastic.

My favourite is this one though...

Fish in chilli oil... don't let the looks deceive you, this is fantastic. The fish is so tender and you're not meant to eat the chillis. Watch out for the Szechuan peppers though.

My other go-to is:

Xiaolong bao (small dragon eyes) - aka Shanghai Dumplings. Be sure to suck the soup out and don't be afraid to slurp.

The technique:
Take a spoon and place some of your favourite table condiments on it - I usually opt for vinegar/ginger. Gently pick the dumpling up with your chopsticks and place on the spoon. Take a nibble from the side, suck out the soup and then, down the dumpling with the condiments! Here's a variation on my style, but it's all good - watch this.

I also like:
jiaozi - all styles of dumplings, steamed or fried
baozi - steamed buns (usually with pork filling, sometimes custard)
gongbao jiding - chicken and nuts
xihongshi chaodan - egg and tomato (comfort food)
suanni xilan hua - broccoli and garlic

Of course, if you've ever had proper Peking Duck you know how good that can be too!

Good luck Drew - enjoy.

[Moogs]

What drives me nuts about Chinese places, is after a while, they always start skimping on quality. My wife and I will find a new place... it will be really good the first couple times we go... then... downhill and usually closed within a couple years.

More people get sick / food poisoning from Chinese restaurants than probably all the other types put together. The sickest I've ever been, was because some asshole at a Chinese restaurant served me spoiled chicken with MSG. Lost 9 lbs in one night (won't gore you with the details). I suspect in many Chinese joints, they don't handle the food properly / refrigerate it properly between orders, etc. Sort of cut corners on the health code stuff when they get busy. I don't know if it's a cultural thing or what (in the sense that Chinese places usually have BETTER service and more professional people than American joints -- so maybe it's that they cook like they do at home but their systems are used to ingesting food that's a little sketchy?) No idea, but whenever I hear of someone getting sick from restaurant food around here, it's almost always a Chinese place.

Sucks too because I love good Chinese food. Recently we found a good Thai place that makes stuff from scratch (takes a long time). Hoping they might be my respite as they have a few Chinese dishes. Kind of far away from my home unfortunately.

[tomoe]

When it comes to Chinese food, Shanghai dumpling are one of my favorite things in the entire world. I also quite like the BBQ pork buns you find at Chinese bakeries, although you have to watch out for the pork to bun ratio (some places get a little dough heavy). My favorite quick & tasty Chinese restaurant is probably Xi'an's Famous Foods. They serve mostly hand-pulled noodle, soups, and 'burgers'. The menu is fairly limited, but everything on it is absolutely awesome—tons of spices and flavor. I also like that when they say something is spicy, it really is spicy. My favorite thing from their menu is probably the Mt. Qi Pork Noodles. It's a dish with these great chewy noodles, bits of pork, cabbage, and an excellent array of spices/aromatics. Unfortunately, I've never found another restaurant serving similar dishes.

[Mac+]

Oh yeah, there's also one called "ants on the vine" which are little pieces of pork mince on glass noodles with coriander and other spices. Delicious.

[drewprops]

Okay, I'm beginning to wonder if we even HAVE real Chinese places in Atlantarrrr


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[addabox]

It's a mysterious fact that there's a certain type of shitty Chinese restaurant that is more ubiquitous, and possibly more uniform, than McDonald's. I'm pretty sure there are huge factories that dwarf Foxconn charged with cranking out endless pallettes of "Stir Fried Rice", "General Tsao's Chicken" and "Sweet and Sour Pork" which are shipped directly to the millions of horrible Chinese places the world over so they can be slapped onto a plate with an "egg roll" and a "fortune cookie."

[Moogs]

I've seen a few places like that around here. Although they never last long, as noted.

Probably come from the same conglomerate that makes all the dry cleaners.

[addabox]

My hometown in Huntsville, AL is rife with them, although I think when you get a little more diversity (as is happening there) the better takes on "ethnic" food start to eclipse the old reliably bad standards.

Particularly horrifying, to me (since I live in the Bay Area and have access to endless options for, not just good Chinese food, but good Chinese food particularized by region or adventurousness) is the "China Buffet", wherein you get to serve yourself from orderly ranks of tubs containing, variously, glutinous sweet red syrup, thickly breaded chunks of chicken, stale, off tasting fried rice, leathery pork and bell peppers and canned pineapple in aforementioned glutinous sauce, vegetables consisting of canned mini-corn, canned bamboo, big fibrous wads of bok choy, and drowned cabbage, all in an overly salty soy broth liberally larded with MSG, "chow mien", and thin, gristly strips of beef with bell pepper and onion in the same stuff as the vegetables, except cooked down so it's the consistency of pine tar.

And then I have to pretend not to be grossed out, so I won't be judged a pompous urbanite.

[Mac+]

I love authentic Chinese food, but I think I love the dissing of commoditised Chinese food in the 2nd paragraph from addabox above more.

Poetry.

Will assign +rep when at the desktop.

[AWR]

Food Court Chi-knee.

Not all food courts are created equal of course, and gems exist in dodgy strip malls across the land. Not perfect but: http://publicmarketemeryville.com/stores/

On the other hand, I went to a large food court in San Antonio a month ago, thought I might get some fresh Tex Mex, only to find out that there were no Tex Mex places. Three Chinese, three Italian, a few chicken/cheesesteak/burgers, cookies and ice cream.

Maybe it's regional too. Rhode Island for example is chockablock with such gems. I would say 90% of hole-in-wall (hole-in-lot) eateries serve very good to unbelievable food, with ethnic examples you wouldn't think of.

Time for a road trip, Drew.

[drewprops]

I've been to Emeryville!! Saw a movie at a little mall there! Bought a great web design book there!! Got lost, drove down an alley and accidentally discovered PIXAR there!!! (had NO idea it was there, my level of astonishment was PROFOUND)

[hflomberg]

Call me a peasant but a number 1 - Chicken Chow Mein, Fried Rice and Egg Roll - Wanton Soup and pineapple for desert - eaten with toothpicks, the pineapple that is.

On a Jewish Holiday

[drewprops]

Hey now, listen.

I tried to order some Sichuan/Szechuan chicken from a place down the road and they just doubled my other order of chicken & vegetables. They have let me down twice now. No strike three.


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[turtle]

We found a pretty good place not far from my house here. It isn't as good as the place we used in Va Beach, but it is also WAY more expensive here for some reason.

[drewprops]

I finally found a place called Tasty China that serves what seems to be more authentic, and I've finally had Szechuan style complete with the numbing peppers. They're so WEIRD. It's like flavors get warped around them. My tongue feels numb, especially if I drink some water while I'm eating. So far this has all been to-go. Maybe one day I'll be able to dine in.


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[Anonymous Coward]

Originally Posted by drewprops I've finally had Szechuan style complete with the numbing peppers. ...

The numbing effect is actually due to peppercorns from a tree related to the prickly ash and the Japanese Sansho. The full Szechuan effect is partly due to the numbing ("ma") and partly due to hot peppers (Tien Tsin peppers) which give the spiciness ("la").

[psmith2.0]

Drew likes his chicken spicy.

I had shrimp fried rice last week. It was perfect. This little place up the road from my house is so good.

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by psmith2.0 Drew likes his chicken spicy.

The ghost of Drew's gallbladder on the other hand...

I can't do that often and probably should not do it at all.

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[Matsu]

My littlest loves a veg fried rice with bean sprouts in it, so I’ve had to learn to make it. It’s not authentic I don’t think, but a little soy and sesame oil goes a long way. If I dice it up into little bits I can sneak scrambled egg in there too.

[psmith2.0]

I make that sort of thing for myself...a quick-and-dirty chicken-and-rice bowl. I'll grill some chicken on my Foreman grill (or air-fry some Tyson nuggets or whatever) and then chop and drop that into a big pot of rice I made, where I've added soy sauce and a chopped scrambled egg. Makes a huge batch that I can munch on for a day or two, several meals. And, if I have one around, I'll squeeze/chop an orange into it as well. I don't know if it's "right"/authentic, but, like garlic, I enjoy orange (or pineapple) in a lot of things...just adds a nice flavor. I try to always keep some around. I feel better any time I eat an orange.

Actually, that sounds pretty good today.

[drewprops]

Originally Posted by Anonymous Coward The numbing effect is actually due to peppercorns from a tree related to the prickly ash and the Japanese Sansho. The full Szechuan effect is partly due to the numbing ("ma") and partly due to hot peppers (Tien Tsin peppers) which give the spiciness ("la").

The numbing effect is crazy weird.

Here's the menu from the place.

MENU: Tasty China

Anything on here a "must try"?



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