It's one thing for someone who's not Chinese to open a Chinese restaurant, and whether that's okay is not the question here. They did 2 other things:
1. They didn't just offer Chinese food. They used a name — Lucky Lee's — that seemed to assert that the owner was Chinese, and they had some stereotypical Chinese design elements — bamboo. This isn't such a big deal. It's the other part:
2. They presented their food as an improvement on the Chinese food available in Chinese-owned Chinese restaurants:
Arielle Haspel, a Manhattan nutritionist with a sleek social media presence, wanted to open the kind of Chinese restaurant, she said, where she and her food-sensitive clients could eat. One where the lo mein wouldn’t make people feel “bloated and icky” the next day, or one where the food wasn’t “too oily” or salty, as she wrote in an Instagram post a few weeks ago....It seems they were trying to capture the market that is people who kind of want Chinese food and like the general idea but feel that actual Chinese Chinese food is suspect — unhealthy and dirty.
“Ohhhh I CANNOT with Lucky Lee’s, this new ‘clean Chinese restaurant’ that some white wellness blogger just opened in New York,” MacKenzie Fegan, a food writer, said on Twitter. “Her blog talks about how ‘Chinese food is usually doused in brown sauces’ and makes your eyes puffy. Lady, what? #luckylees”...
Ms. Haspel’s blog, and her food videos, promote something she calls “clean eating,” which to her, means things like: eating organic, avoiding additives and using olive oil instead of canola.... “I love health-ifying bad food so you can treat yourself, guilt-free,” she said in another cooking video....
“Where she is coming from is a very dark place, and it’s a very sensitive place in the hearts of Chinese people,” said Chris Cheung, the owner of East Wind Snack Shop, an acclaimed dumpling restaurant in Brooklyn....
You can see how that overlaps with racism, but the NYT article never uses the r-word.
ADDED: From the third-highest-rated comment at the NYT:
As a Chinese who grew up in China and have been living in NY for 8 years, I still cannot adapt myself to the oily, salty, similar-flavor, heavily-sauced American Chinese food here (the situation is definitely getting better now and I have seen so many more varieties!). Therefore, I totally understand Ms. Haspel's intention to open a restaurant for people who love American-Chinese food particularly, as well as catering to the rising demands of millennials for clean and healthy food and instagrammable decor. I mean every restaurant has the right to make their food by their own standard.There's a lot going on there. First, an assertion that the Chinese-owned Chinese restaurants in New York are themselves inauthentic. A more authentic Chinese — someone who "grew up in China" — informs us that the people who claim to own what's being appropriated have already gone wrong. Second, there's the respect for New Yorkers who want the reinterpretation of Chinese food that Lucky Lee's offers. There are people who don't want authenticity. They prioritize "clean and healthy food and instagrammable decor." These people matter too. They get to spend their money on whatever it is they like.
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157 comments:
Radio Taiwan in a cooking series long ago began by saying that Chinese and Western ideas of what's edible differ a lot.
Don't the foodies call this "fusion cuisine"?
The perpetual perturbed have found their newest shiny object
"Did you ever try to clean an Arab?" punchline of old joke.
This looks like an article that the NYT new editor Sarah Jeong would want to be written and published.
I love Chinese buffets, but healthy is not a word I would use to describe them. I thought everyone knew that. The Simpsons does a joke about adding MSG by the bagful to Chinese food.
Calvin Trillin speculated why the NYT food critic didn't like the Kansas City ribs at some famous place, and came up with that distinguished NYT personage so impressed the counterman that he used the tongs to serve the ribs instead of his hand, and all the taste is in the counterman's hand.
Its time to scrub "Arnold's" out of every episode of "Happy Days".
Only then can we rest easier.
I don't see any reason some white broad can't open a "Chinese" restaurant if she wants to, and if she wants to make a version of "Chinese" food that no longer tastes good, that's up to her, sure.
Some of the best Mexican restaurants in Chicago are run by Rick Bayless, a white guy who advertises his cuisine as "authentic" Mexican, which I always find funny. Feels like you'd have to be in Mexico for actually authentic Mexican food. Your imitation of it may be the best (it kind of is), but that doesn't make it "authentic." It makes it "a lot like authentic."
Americanized Chinese food really is garbage. She might have done better looking for a Chinese chef who would promote her ideas as a return to simple, authentic Chinese peasant food, in which the vegetables predominate and meat is more of a condiment than a main course.
What do you want to bet this Manhattan organic food advocate with a “sleek social media presence” is a pious liberal who just yesterday was patting herself on the back for her “wokeness”, and today is the most hated racist in New York (while Trump is out of town.)
The article might inspire a lot of people to go try the restaurant's food.
New York City must have a lot of people who want to eat Chinese food that is clean and that does not make them feel bloated and icky.
As far as I know there's no anti-Chinese racism around. Not a thing, as the saying goes. No need to tiptoe around the r-word.
Safe (2012) the stereotype is insanely smart at math.
It's the word "clean". She's using it as "clean eating" to refer to "healthy". Its being taken as "the opposite of dirty". Ig she would have called it "healthy Chinese food" the uproar would be way less.
It's one thing to copy the other restaurants' food. It's another thing to compete by saying the other restaurants' food is dirty, especially if there's a stereotype about the racial group that you're using to leverage your argument.
I used to love Chinese food. But a number of years ago I just went cold turkey on it. It just seemed to me that, no matter what city, or what restaurant, it all looked and tasted the same, with some unaccountable brown sauce covering or mixed into it. Yes, occasionally you'd find a place that used fresher vegetables than others. Some used chicken instead of cat. But I always just felt like this was some mix of shit sitting in holding pans for hours or days. The kitchen staff might add things to it every few hours, but honestly, it got to be so generic, I lost my taste for it.
It was not a plan. It just happened. And, also suddenly there were reams of Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean restaurants available, giving a new, better twist to Asian flavors and seemed fresher, tastier, without the ubiquitous brown sauce.
I get the goal of these people in Manhattan, but they certainly could have marketed it using adjectives other than 'clean'. For instance they could have said 'cat-free'.
I eat frequently at a couple of restaurants in Chinatown.
God forbid that somebody would say these restaurants might cut some corners.
The businesses of Chinatown are controlled by the Tongs. Human smuggling to supply the restaurants with workers is the norm. The area is famous for brothels, selling pirated goods of all sorts, money laundering, etc.
But, the kitchens are spotless, you racists!
Slow news days at the NYT?
Maybe, Gail Collins will flood the zone on this emerging Kung Pao Chicken scandal.
I'll bet that the article originally included the word racist, but then someone decided that the word should be removed.
"The article might inspire a lot of people to go try the restaurant's food."
Yes, some of the commenters at the NYT are saying that.
The NYT is spreading the concern that "real" Chinese food is dirty and unhealthy. And here's this place that will give you what's good about Chinese food without the bad.
Plus the article conveys that the place looks fresh and stylish, and that may be what some young people around there want. It's near NYU. Other people might want to go there on the theory that it will be full of fresh, good-looking, happy people.
Anyone who's a stickler for tradition and not concerned about health and cleanliness will go elsewhere. There are people in the NYU area who will think: Good! Stay out, old people.
Calling a place "Lucky Lee" is no less false advertising than "Crazy Ray" or even "Uncle Ben". It's a persona designed to sell a feeling.
Also, Lucky Lee's is a stupid name, but I don't see a racist problem with it. Should they be required to call the place Whitey McPallid's?
I make meatballs, the recipe for which includes beef, lamb, and pork, in equal portions. Spices, egg, some bread crumbs, and parmesan cheese complete the list. One of my sisters loved them and asked for the recipe. A few weeks later I asked if she'd made them and how they turned out. Oh, she said excitedly, they did make them and they were delicious. However, she explained, they substituted ground chicken and turkey because she and her partner do not eat red meat and pork. They also removed the cheese - her partner does not eat cheese - the red pepper flakes (too spicy), and the bread crumbs (CARBS!).
Told her I was glad they turned out well and were enjoyed but explained that what they made wasn't "my" recipe. She didn't really understand my point.
It's a stereotype to say clean is better than dirty.
Don't people have more important things to worry about these days?
Should have named the joint Rucky Ree’s
rhardin's avatar appears in the commenting view, but does not appear in the reading view. Why does that happen?
Yeah true authentic Chinese food would have friend chicken heads, right?
Of course the "Chinese Food" served in most Chinese restaurants isn't authentic. Hell, the Chinese people who run the things don't eat the crap they're serving. They serve what they're customers are expecting. When the Chinese came to America a lot of the ingredients they used back in China were not available here, so they improvised substituting what was available.
I remember a study was published a couple of years ago asserting that Chinese food was not healthy. Too much salt, sauces, breading, etc. Ethnic Chinese pointed out that that was Chinese Restaurant food, the authentic stuff was much lighter and used much less meat.
Does this restaurant employ only illegal aliens in the kitchen -- like all the other Chinese restaurants?
If so, then how are these particular illegal aliens taught better how to clean the food?
Who owns Panda Express? I don't know if it is national but there are a lot of them in CA and AZ.
The advertising may be problematic.
I'd bet that with dogs as food critics there would be support for the dirty food restaurant's claim to superiority.
Chinese food gives me wind. Even Chinese snack food.
- Krumhorn
People who eat prawn-flavored Cheetos shouldn’t talk. Yuck.
I think light or healthy would have been a better term than dirty. Also, if you are going to open a Chinese restaurant in NYC you should probably bring in a ethnic Chinese chef. I'm sure they could find one who shares their concerns and they could have sold it as authentic.
Panera had a "clean food" ad campaign, (coincidentally?) right about the time Chipotle was having their cleanliness issues.
Most of the Panera TV ads didn't explain what they meant by "good clean food".
There are some more detailed web video ads that explained Panera Bread is committed to providing clean food with no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives..
I tend to think Lucky Lee's believe they could ride the "clean food" trend popularized by Panera et al.
Japanese restaurant: the raw vs the cooked. Lévi-Strauss
Good clean fun doesn't have an opposite that's dirty. Bad dirty fun might be more fun, though.
"Who owns Panda Express? I don't know if it is national but there are a lot of them in CA and AZ.
The advertising may be problematic."
Love the Panda. It was started by a Chinese born American. And there are a lot of them a lot of places. We have them in the Milwaukee area.
I'd bet that with dogs as food critics there would be support for the dirty food restaurant's claim to superiority.
True, but if they were reviewing Vietnamese restaurants, any 3-legged dogs would have to recuse themselves as having an irreconcilable conflict.
- Krumhorn
I'd bet that with dogs as food critics there would be support for the dirty food restaurant's claim to superiority.
I'd bet that with dogs as food, critics there would be support for the dirty food restaurant's claim to superiority.
I get the goal of these people in Manhattan, but they certainly could have marketed it using adjectives other than 'clean'. For instance they could have said 'cat-free'.
Heh, yes, now that would keep the Junior Anti-Racist League away!
Reminds me of the time my son got scolded by his former girlfriend for racism. She was a very pretty and generally sweet girl, but sadly, one of the ultra liberal types that is always looking for a chance to be indignant on behalf of someone else. Here in Phoenix there is a large chain of skeevy Mexican fast food restaurants called Filiberto’s, but my son and his friends always call it “Full-of-Gatos”. When he used this nickname to propose they go out to eat there, she took great offense. They are no longer together.
Ann's cultural marxism is showing bigtime. " TRADITION", "OLD PEOPLE",&"STAY OUT" VS "YOUNG'"FRESH","HAPPY" AND "GOOD LOOKING". Most of you are too young but this was standard 60's boomer pap.
Recently, Andrew Zimmern lost his primetime spot on the Food Network because he dissed midwestern Chinese restaurants if I recall correctly.
He was right.
Confucius say Althouse argument go from frying pan into deep fryer
"Did you ever try to clean an Arab?" punchline of old joke.
No, that's the setup. The punchline is "When you're done there's no Arab left."
(BTW, fill in whatever ethnicity you want.)
He who fling mud lose ground.
My sister took me to the best TexMex place in Manhattan. They didn’t serve fajitas.
Somehow this seemed like an appropriate thing to bring up.
These people matter too. They get to spend their money on whatever it is they like.
And free trade, rather than socialist virtue signaling, allows people to spend their money on things they want and others to refuse to spend money on things they disagree. Meanwhile, cities are kicking Chick-Fil-A out, because that chain values a religion not agreed to by the municipalities, 1st amendment be damned.
There's a lot going on there.
It’s called choice, opportunity, freedom.
It’s what the do gooders are always trying to eliminate.
I bet those objecting to the use of the word "clean" know exactly what she meant. They're just jumping at an opportunity for moral preening on social media and to feed their self-righteousness addiction.
And here's this place that will give you what's good about Chinese food without the bad.
It’s been over thirty years ago, but back in the day the wife and I tried a new Chinese restaurant. My weight went up by almost 5 pounds, overnight, almost all water retention judging from how many trips to the company rest room I had to make the next day and how quickly I lost the weight. Back in those pre-Internet, pre-Google days it was relatively difficult to discover that they must have overdone it with the MSG.
I don't care how bad you think American Chinese food is, we don't eat this shit!
I suppose if you want clean Chinese food, you’d better show up with the right documents. No tickee, no washee.
- Krumhorn
Don't people have more important things to worry about these days?
All the big nits have already been picked.
This is how you do the "clean" Chinese takeout thing right: you call it modern, and you talk up the quality ingredients. My local Chinese takeout: https://www.michaelandpings.com/
You cannot get Chinese food in China. They eat other stuff.
It's the word "clean".
No, the word is fine. Swap the races and people will have no issue. It will just revert to healthy.
The problem is that people want to use the word to peer into the minds of others and assume how they think.
And then peer into the minds of another group to determine how they might feel.
The poor word is innocent. It’s just being hijacked by people looking to commit crimes of opportunity.
The opposite of clean when talking about food isn't dirty, it's fattening.
Even the food in China is inauthentic.
It’s hardly what their ancestors ate.
They get pretty close to the stuff you say might be bad in the post above, but they skirt the line. Not Lucky Lee's, but one Anglo and one Chinese name. And they don't talk about what's wrong with other Chinese except that it might make you feel guilty...
We planted our flag in Gowanus, Brooklyn in 2010. Michael & Ping's is a 40-seat, casual, counter-service restaurant. Our goal has always been and continues to be, to serve up some tasty Chinese food for the neighborhood that doesn't leave you feeling guilty.
There is no flavor-steroid MSG used EVER,
Fresh ingredients are prepped DAILY,
We focus on great customer service ALWAYS.
Come in for a bite and a drink, pick up your order, or relax at home and have us deliver.
Handcrafting dumplings in Gowanus, Brooklyn
It's labor intensive, but worth it. Everything is prepped and hand-rolled every day, using the freshest ingredients.
All things you're unlikely to find at a greasy-spoon style American Chinese, but really, you don't need to say that...
Japan has had trouble with Chinese dumplings causing kidney failure and stuff, owing to the odd chemicals illegally added by Chinese manufacturers. Not to mention bad dog food in the US.
actual Chinese Chinese food is suspect — unhealthy and dirty. You can see how that overlaps with racism,
If it's not "racist" for "a Chinese who grew up in China" to criticize "actual Chinese Chinese food" then it's also not racist for white people to do so. Duh.
They presented their food as an improvement on the Chinese food available in Chinese-owned Chinese restaurants
Oh the horror. White people should advertise their stuff, whatever it is, as being slightly inferior to whatever non-white people can provide. That's right out of Marketing 101!
Even worse! "McDonald's marks 20 years in China"
Racist Chinese people think those McDonald's "white" hamburgers are better than Chinese hamburgers!
When I buy garlic powder I always check for made in China and avoid it. There's a California version you can buy.
I once had a really bad reaction to pine nuts grown in China: most things I ate tasted bitter for a few weeks afterwards. Still, love Chinese Chinese food. But these days that's easier to find in Sunset Park, Brooklyn or Flushing than Manhattan's Chinatown.
John McWhorter observed just recently that America has less racism today than ever and that, today, the "anti-racism" movement, which he calls a religion, is more harmful then racism is.
I think he's probably right but I don't think "race talk" on the internet - twitter, social media - is a good measure of how far we've gone.
McWhorter: McWhorter on race
Skookum: Filibertos is an Arizona treasure. I don't care if there's cat in the carne asada. It's completely worth it.
Al Swearengen turned to Mr Woo as a cleaner. He would send the dead bodies down to the Celestials where the dirty pigs feasted. It was an odd turn on moo shu guy pen.
- Krumhorn
It's another thing to compete by saying the other restaurants' food is dirty,
As near as I can tell, you (AA) introduced the word "dirty". It's not in the article.
especially if there's a stereotype about the racial group that you're using to leverage your argument.
SO you think Chinese people are dirty, and that's why you started using the word?
"As a Chinese who grew up in China..."
White crab in bucket pulled down by yellow crabs, in turn pulled down by yellower crabs.
It's not the "actual Chinese" or Chinese Chinese restaurant that Lucky Lee's is putting down. It's the American Chinese/aka Chinese Takeout places, which indeed most Chinese people either look down upon (and when they eat there eat off menu). There are lots of these places: the only mistake Lucky Lee's made, if they made one, was to use the charged but very modern word "clean" to talk about their food. Clean food is a real thing, but it left an opening to the easily offended. Should have called in modern.
It's another thing to compete by saying the other restaurants' food is dirty
That's certainly another thing, if by "another thing" you mean "a thing other than what this restaurant is doing".
especially if there's a stereotype about the racial group
lol what?
"...you think Chinese people are dirty..."
Good point. What other prejudices do you have against the Chinese, Althouse?
. Amazing how many working women, especially, think those little frozen food, preserved vegetable/rice dishes are healthy, because the box tells them so... Our work freezer was always full with big girls dieting.)
My wife bought a trashcan a couple of weeks ago. Made out of plastic and aluminum. Motion sensor to open it which means electronics and batteries. On the box it came in there was a phrase about "eco living." I asked my wife how the thing was even remotely ecologically friendly. Its most likely going to end up in a landfill some day and the electronics and batteries it uses will end up poising the ground water. Not to mention the mining and petroleum that went into making it. "Its Marketing," she said.
Every time Ann shows her overt cultural marxism( she does it covertly more than you think by in her own words being "cagy") she gets pancaked!. Strange why she keeps it up when most of her commentators have opposite cultural views and pancake her most of the time. Must be bored with life.
I guess if you advertise that your restaurant provides delicious Chinese food then it might support a racist stereotype that Chinese food is not tasty. That's simply deplorable.
You can't say your food is healthy, fresh, or inexpensive either you racist bastards.
How about: "Chinese-free Chinese food"?
"cultural appropriation" just like "toxic masculinity, racism, sexism, etc." is a way the looney, braindead left, attempts to stifle debate because they know they can't win the argument. They are intellectually soft, uber emotional, and unhinged from reality.
Clean here is more about "clean eating" not contrasting with dirty, although Chinese, while known for dry cleaning shops, have a very different standard of cleanliness in their urban neighborhoods: spitting on the sidewalks and dumped food containers abound. But I don't think that's Lucky Lee's was going for. More this: clean eating as in avoiding refined foods and eating them as close as possible to their natural state. They probably default to brown rice with your order. Blech.
How about: "Lucky Lee's - Our Chinese food doesn't suck."
Some of the best food I ate in Shanghai when I traveled there for work was Uyghur. The Uyghurs are a "Turkic" minority group. That's good food.
A clean-burning stove is a stove which Chinese people don't use. The term commonly refers to wood-burning stoves for domestic heating by white people, although it is also applied to cooking stoves used by white people. It is distinct from a dirty-burning stove, which burns dirty Chinese food.
Blogger Michael said...
You cannot get Chinese food in China. They eat other stuff.
My daughter was staying with friends in Shanghai and they went out for breakfast, Her Chinese friends told her not to buy the fluffy looking muffins,. They put detergent in the batter to make them fluffy,
My cousin used to be a host at a Chinese restaurant with contemporary decor and a piano bar.
They left the pans of fried rice out all night, pork and all. It congealed otherwise.
A Billion Chinese are crying themselves to sleep over this great insult.
It's a known-known that Chinese food in the U.S. is not real Chinese food. Some restaurants do have a second menu that you can request that does have authentic Chinese food. I oversee a summer Mandarin learning program and, in the past, we've taken the kids to a restaurant like that so they could practice ordering in Mandarin.
I prefer the inauthentic stuff.
Some of the best food I ate in Shanghai when I traveled there for work was Uyghur. The Uyghurs are a "Turkic" minority group. That's good food.
Hear hear. My favorite thing in NYC Chinese food last decade is Xi'an Famous: a micro-chain of noodle shops featuring "western China cuisine," which includes a lot of lamb, cumin and chili--ancient silk road fusion cuisine, although a modern, one might say clean take on it.
"McDonald's marks 20 years in China"
They used a name — McDonald's — that seemed to assert that the owner was white and Scottish, and they had some stereotypical white design elements — English words.
I had two related experiences in Key West a few weeks ago. First we went to a Chinese restaurant and the food was great. Not those heavy salty brown sauces poured over thickly breaded food fried in vegetable oil, with a little bright green broccoli thrown in for variety, but rather everything tasted like they had a chef who really cared about food. It can be well done, but most of it is shit people wouldn’t eat if they knew any better.
Then we went to a landmark American style restaurant there, where there used to be long lines, for breakfast. Well, we got a table right away, and obviously they place had been bought by ethnic Chinese. The hostess was Chinese, the waitresses, everybody we saw working there was Chinese. The menu was the same, so I ordered an omelet. The person who prepared it had no feel for what an omelet is supposed to by like. The vegetables were diced extremely finely, for one thing, like they were intended for a sauce. The cheese wasn’t right, like they didn’t want to use too much, like you know, enough to make the omelet gooey and delicious. Maybe the should have hired an ethnic American chef? The decor was still the same though, so they had that going for them.
And MSG is not unhealthy. It just has a funny name so therefore it must cause cancer, right? Fine French cooking is often about naturally creating MSG in sauces by the way they are cooked, though they didn’t know that is what they were doing at first. So the people who are afraid of MSG now advise their marks, err, I mean their followers to not use certain cooking techniques because they naturally produce MSG. MSG was isolated from seaweed because they wanted to understand why it tasted so good. If they had given it a name like “salt” and then renamed salt “sodium chloride,” MSG would be fine and people would be saying that “sodium chloride” causes cancer. Don’t get me started on di-hydrogen oxide (DHO)! MSG can be overused of course, but it’s a matter of taste, not health.
Oh shit, RedFarm--food critics favorite Chinese restaurant in NYC--is in trouble. From the "Our Story" section of their website:
New York, NY РRedFarm is open at 529 Hudson Street in the West Village. This new destination from dim sum master chef Joe Ng and Chinese food expert Ed Schoenfeld aims to be one of the most exciting and influential restaurants in the country. RedFarm brings a greenmarket sensibility to modern and inventive Chinese food and super-charged dim sum complemented by modern, rustic d̩cor.
Joe Ng’s menu takes a clean, fresh approach to Chinese food.
Clean, and with a Jewish Chinese food expert no less.
How dare they appropriate Joe Biden's use of the term "clean" in reference to the right kind of minority?
Nobody, a very small minority of people are allergic to MSG and feel like crap after eating it. I remember the big Chinese food MSG scare of the 80s, and then it's debunking in the 90s and the 2000s. Apparently it still makes good marketing copy. It just doesn't feel clean.
The "clean" is what is confusing. They mean "healthy/organic".
Do what everyone else does and call is "fusion"
Chinese-Organic fusion or something.
"Lucky Lee" should change their slogan to "We don't serve dog meat" to switch the uproar from their use of "clean"
As a Chinese who grew up in China
Americans are the most racially sensitive people in the world. We're insane on the subject. We're idiotic on the subject. The entire rest of the world is better about race than we are.
Immigrants to our country are almost always better about race than the people who grew up here. African immigrants are better about race, to give one obvious example. It doesn't surprise me at all that a person who grew up in China is reasonable and not as judgmental about other people and other cultures. In general, people who immigrate are, by definition, more open-minded people anyway, I would wager. You have to soak in the American insanity for years--you have to be indoctrinated by schools and by media--to get so offended by innocent people.
One of my (white) professors just called Candace Owens a "defender of white nationalism." He's a nice man and a smart man. But it's such a stupid comment. You have to be educated to be that stupid.
I'm sick of race. I'm sick of our society's obsession with it. Republicans should insist that our government stop dividing people into races on the census. That would make the left insane. Let them defend racial division. They seem to love it.
OK, I finally broke down and read the article, even though I usually take Althouse's advice when it comes to NYT and let her do it for me. Conspiracy theory: Arielle Haspel and writer Sharon Otterman are friends, and this is all about ginning up publicity for the restaurant. Or Ms. Haspel knowingly baited the cultural appropriate opprobrium. There are at least a dozen of these types of places in NYC, and she wanted to stand out. Clever lady.
a very small minority of people are allergic to MSG
Kramer always ordered extra MSG.
Seinfeld cracks me up.
Most of the Chinese restaurants around here taste like they get all the same meats vegetables and sauces from the same place. Pre-made and bagged in some big Chinese restaurant warehouse.
I don’t know the situation now, but until recently the best Chinese food possible was found in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and especially Singapore.
Singapore was also it’s own thing, a SE Asian fusion that’s unique.
There wasn’t much scope for traditional Chinese feasting food in mainland China. They had gotten out of practice.
If they have native English speakers on staff, they could market themselves as "articulate" too.
A fairytale, man.
For Madisonites,
I spent a couple college years sharing a small 1 bedroom apartment at 612 University avenue, second floor. We inherited it from the Chinese family of 5 who ran a restaurant (not the current one) in the building next door. They apparently cooked a fair amount of the food in the apartment, scorching the porcelain sink. The place came with a desk, which we had to remove all sorts of used food wrapping that was oddly crammed into it. It was the only place I lived that had a problem with cockroaches. The little kitchen area had a window that opened toward the top of the one story building that housed the restaurant. cool! Oh wait..upon opening it, we realize the restaurant's fryer vent is curved to point directly at us.
"Americans are the most racially sensitive people in the world. We're insane on the subject. We're idiotic on the subject.
Yet somehow, because there are 200 white nationalists among the 400+ million of us, we are all racist.
BleachBit-and-Hammers...Ditto, that's why we eat Thai, scratch cooked in these parts. Elegant and not "sticky".
Only 9 pictures and 6 reviews of Lucky Lee’s on Yelp before the NYT story.
Mainland, eastern Chinese cut down all their trees and had to reinvent a cuisine comprised of dishes that cooked really quickly for the lack of wood.
Light Horse Harry Lee was known for his egg rolls.
Someone who claimed to be a Chinese food expert told me that once, and it's too good to check.
All food is fusion. I'm all for taking food and cooking into new and creative directions. Good luck to Lucky Lee's!
It would have been more Chinese if they spelled Lee "Li". Without the bamboo decor, it could easily be southern-style American food at first glance, right?
Althouse often alludes to the OED. Let me quote it for “clean”:
1.5 Relating to a diet consisting of unprocessed, unrefined, and nutrient-rich food, typically eaten as small meals throughout the day.
‘I'm amazed at how much energy clean eating gives me’
‘you have to eat clean foods to change your physique’
We are talking about food, right?
Kevin has it right.
I work with many Chinese folks and China is a cuisine behemoth. Every region has its own specialties and ingredients.
Some of it is strange texturally and exotic to me, but the little I’ve had of the real stuff has been very good.
Check out my new Uncle Jethro’s vegan BBQ chicken truck coming up your block. $18.99 for an authentic Southern Sandwich, dawg.
They already have "clean" Chinese food made by real Asians, it's branded either Vietnamese or Thai
My favorite Chinese Restaurant is off Kearney St in SF Chinatown: Won Hung Lo.
There's this restaurant in Sunset Park that serves authentic Yun Nan Chinese food. They bring you steaming bowls of noodles and then raw thinly sliced pork or chicken for you to cook in the soup. They have this one dish that I dared my adventurous daughter to eat: they're chicken wings, and taste like normal chicken wings, but they're marinated in something that dyes them a completely sinister looking deep black color. Most unappetizing looking thing I've ever eaten.
Just jumping in here late, so others may have made this point: it's a common truism to those who pay any attention at all that the Chinese food served in many--most?--Chinese restaurants in America is directed at American tastes, and much of it is prepared unlike the food prepared and served in China. There are restaurants here and there in NYC, in Chinatown, for example, but also elsewhere, that serve what appear to be dishes directed at their Chinese customers.
The first cold sesame noodles I ever had--a staple appetizer in nearly every Chinese restaurant one might visit, or, at least, the Szechuan restaurants--were flat noodles in a sesame broth, like an au jus. This is drastically unlike the same dish I have had countless times over the years in other restaurants. The dish is typically served with round noodles covered with a thick sesame sauce with a thick creamy consistency. The dish typically has a distinct peanut butter flavor. This familiar preparation can range in quality from mediocre to excellent, but the version I first had--at long-defunct Ting Fu Garden on Pell Street--was sublime, superior by far to any version of the dish I've ever had since. For one, it lacked the predominant peanut butter flavor so common to the dish as commonly prepared. Don't get me wrong, I like peanut butter and I like the version of cold sesame noodles that play up this flavor, but this version at Ting Fu was simply miraculous! My friends and I always had separate orders of the dish when we went to Ting Fu Garden.
Here's a blogger talking about Ting Fu Garden (and other Chinese restaurants) from over a decade ago, decades after Ting Fu closed in the early/mid-80s).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean,_Well-Lighted_Place
"They already have "clean" Chinese food made by real Asians, it's branded either Vietnamese or Thai."
No. Vietnamese and Thai food are akin to Chinese food to greater or lesser degree, but they are also different from Chinese food and from each other.
"Hear hear. My favorite thing in NYC Chinese food last decade is Xi'an Famous: a micro-chain of noodle shops featuring "western China cuisine," which includes a lot of lamb, cumin and chili--ancient silk road fusion cuisine, although a modern, one might say clean take on it."
Yes, Xi'an Famous are wonderful. However, as all or nearly all of their dishes are heavily flavored with cumin, there's a sameness to everything on the menu, and I don't find I want to go there too often within a short period of time. Even eating different menu items, I feel like I'm just eating variations of the same dish. It's great when you're in the mood for what they serve!
Indeed, Cook, early immigrants were mostly Cantonese, and the familiar Chinese menu in the US contains some bastardizations of that cuisine along with entirely American Chinese inventions. The predominant Chinese flavor in more authentic restaurants in NYC is Cantonese, although there are a lot of other regional cuisines represented. One of the fastest growing storefront authentic Chinese places in NYC--from Manhattan's Chinatown to Flushing to Brooklyn--is Fujianise, representing where the plurality of Chinese immigrants have come from in last few decades. The good ones feature very fresh seafood in tanks throughout the restaurant, but the preparations and dishes are pretty exotic.
Yeah, it's lamb, cumin and chilis with rice noodles. Or lamb, cumin and chili on a rice bun, pretty much. But it's damned good lamb, cumin and chili.
Some of the best Mexican restaurants in Chicago are run by Rick Bayless, a white guy who advertises his cuisine as "authentic" Mexican, which I always find funny. Feels like you'd have to be in Mexico for actually authentic Mexican food.
Rick spends a lot of time in Mexico learning authentic Mexican recipes. He pays tribute to Mexican chefs by adapting their recipes to the American palate.
The same goes for Chinese food which is rarely authentic in the US. It was adapted to the American palate decades ago. The authentic stuff can be found in Chicago's Chinatown. Some of it is terrific. Some of it is not for the Western palate. If you order "Chicken feet" that is exactly what you get.
Obama ate a dog.
Just sayin'
I was a victim of menu translation misalignment in Vietnam years ago, and I ate a sausage made of dog meat as a result. Spongy and unpleasant texture.
Food bigots believe that MSG is some kind of evil chemical and that garlic makes you a better person. There's no evidence that garlic is good for you or that MSG is bad for you, but they'll keep researching until they find something.......In Manhattan,Mexican food is served with fries, as God intended. In Queens, the Mexican food comes with rice and beans, sometimes even refried beans. Is it any wonder these poor people flee their homelands.
. Amazing how many working women, especially, think those little frozen food, preserved vegetable/rice dishes are healthy, because the box tells them so... Our work freezer was always full with big girls dieting.)
My wife bought a trashcan a couple of weeks ago. Made out of plastic and aluminum. Motion sensor to open it which means electronics and batteries. On the box it came in there was a phrase about "eco living." I asked my wife how the thing was even remotely ecologically friendly. Its most likely going to end up in a landfill some day and the electronics and batteries it uses will end up poising the ground water. Not to mention the mining and petroleum that went into making it. "Its Marketing," she said.
When I was in Mexico, I asked in Spanish where the locals went to eat authentic Mexican food.
The two word answer?
"Burger King."
Candace Owens was sliced and diced and tricked and manipulated - she never once defended white nationalism.
A total fabrication made by chopping all of the context.
The lairs on the left did that to her because she's a black democrat calling out the lies and hypocrisy of her own party.
Which to them is a crime. That's why loser basement dwelling leftwing antfia racists attack her.
Tell me again which side is racist?
I think Vietnamese and Malaysian restaurants (in NYC, anyway) are just Cantonese versions of French and Indian food, but that's not an informed opinion. Vietnamese food looks healthy with lots of vegetables, but that's probably an optical illusion.......I like chicken egg foo yong, but one serving contains enough calories to feed a family of four for a year. I don't understand why Chinese people aren't morbidly obese.
She meant "clean" in the hip-hop sense: very good or nice. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clean
My problem with regular Chinese restaurant food is that if you try to reheat it as leftovers, it's horrible.
menu translation
They got some good stuff!
"Some inner orgasm like a tube below stomach"?
Shaanxi Smell of Urine Surface
Stew of trash
Jane bacteria Beef tablets
Do not eat infants under 1 year old, there is a risk of infant botulism.
Refreshing taste of mammary gland origin
Blogger Robert Cook said...
"They already have "clean" Chinese food made by real Asians, it's branded either Vietnamese or Thai."
No. Vietnamese and Thai food are akin to Chinese food to greater or lesser degree, but they are also different from Chinese food and from each other.
Thanks for woking me up. I did not realize that. #sarctagsareformorons
MSG on popcorn is the bomb
The cultural appropriation angle regarding Chinese nationals is risible. Every Chinese national I ever met in China appropriated a Western first name whenever interacting with non Chinese. They do that because a lot of non-Mandarin speakers have trouble pronouncing or remembering traditional Chinese names. Nor do Chinese nationals have an issue appropriating much of anything, especially patented technology and pirated trade marked goods. Moreover, as one who has struggled to finish a healthy portion of duck's feet or other such Chinese delicacy at business dinners in China, I can attest that there are one hell of a lot of "authentic Chinese" that no Westerner would ever voluntarily eat.
What's served in the US is adapted to Western tastes just like KFC, McDonald's and other American chains always serve local variations of their American menus. The rest of the world would not consider it cultural appropriation, they would consider it good business. Speaking appropriation of food, I find it particularly ironic that the "Japanese" steakhouses like Benihana in the US actually serve what is known as Korean barbecue in Japan, i.e., Americans appropriated what they thought was Japanese food from Japan without realizing the Japanese appropriated from Korea first. Food is food and everyone should just get over themselves.
Clean food has a new meaning to me after I read the local paper’s current list of food safety violations at local restauants. Enough to induce vomiting.
There is a real premium apparently on sanitary, clean food.
Perhaps the restaurant audience in NYC must be well aware of the local food sanitation landscape and understands the need for truely clean food. Resturant sanitation records are well publicized, even in New York.
There's a nice Korean restaurant outside Boston called Ruh Roe's.
Honest.
"Clean" is a word that's been around for decades (at least) in the exercise and diet communities. You eat clean: less fat, less salt, more veggies, fewer preservatives. I suppose these days it probably means non-GMO.
Foodies would know what "clean" meant, even though it's a term that drives me personally crazy. I think it's eating-disorder adjacent. It has nothing to do with dirt or dirty.
The truth is, though, nobody really cares. Someone was bored and decided to amuse themselves by getting a mob going against someone else's restaurant. Nobody would care if a Chinese guy decided to open a clean Italian restaurant with whole wheat pasta and named it Lucky Luca's.
My favorite chink food
Chop Suey
General Joes Chicken
Ginger Broccoli
Low Mein
Moo Goo Gai
Orange Chicken
Egg Foo Young
and a Fortune Cookie
Is my authentic Chinese clean?
https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/03/illustrated-history-of-americanized-chinese-food
Clean like Obama was clean and articulate?
I am asking for my favorite unannounced Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden?
My culture invented fire, the wheel and mathematics. Stop appropriating bro.
Diversity (e.g. racism) bullshit progresses one step forward, two steps backward. Over one billion Chinese with diverse (i.e. colorful) diets.
Ann Althouse said...
It's one thing to copy the other restaurants' food. It's another thing to compete by saying the other restaurants' food is dirty
Is saying that one's restaurant is clean the sam as saying others are not? I don't think so.
"clean" in this case seems to mean more "stripped down" or simplified, anyway.
And why does "Lucky Lee" sound Chinn ese to you? Sounds pure American to me. Lucky Li sounds Chinese.
A Chinese calling himself lucky Lee would be culturally appropriating.
John Henry
Xi'an is great, or would be except that (almost) everything is hot as fire. Tongue says Yea, ulcer says Nay. I wouldn't want them to compromise their cuisine so God bless 'em, they don't need me.
If you people in flyover, my friends, understood how superior the authentic Chinese (regional) cuisines are to what one gets in an American Chinese joint-it's Elves and Orcs. American Chinese is Chinese food, tortured and mutilated by the Dark Powers.
daskol said...
There's this restaurant in Sunset Park that serves authentic Yun Nan Chinese food.
Don't be jerk, name and address?
Have you ever been to Ba Xuyen on 7th Av in Sunset Park? Their banh mi is beyomd belief. Best bread I have ever eaten. Apparently the secret is using half rice flour.
Moreover, as one who has struggled to finish a healthy portion of duck's feet or other such Chinese delicacy at business dinners in China,
You know, I love the chicken feet at dim sum, but one is enough for me. Dish best for sharing.
You know things are going pretty good - in general - when this is the kind of crap people bitch about.
Most of the Chinese restaurants around here taste like they get all the same meats vegetables and sauces from the same place. Pre-made and bagged in some big Chinese restaurant warehouse.
That’s correct. It’s called a “commissary kitchen”. Big sit-down restaurant chains like Olive Garden and Red Lobster do the same thing. Anything that they think they can pre-cook instead of making on-site from scratch gets bagged, frozen, trucked, and heated up in boiling water when needed.
Some of the best Asian food I've eaten was as a college student in Greenville, SC. The Aloha restaurant there had Easter Island themed table decor, a magnolia tree trunk decorated with plastic leaves and Christmas lights, and an owner who appreciated us kids biking 10 miles from college to eat at her place late at night. Her mushu pork remains a fond memory, and her lowest cost entree, a family sized serving of spicy cabbage, could be taken away in an old fashioned food box to mix with rice for a week of flavorful dinners. If you tried to eat it at one sitting, your gut rumbles would remove you from polite society for a week, anyway.
There is room for restaurants catering to every desire and the wildest of appetites in this world. Celebrate those that you enjoy.
On the name "Lucky Lee's", if you poke around a bit you'll discover that the owner's husband is named Lee.
John Sun's (Johnson's?) HOUSE OF CHINA in McAllen, TX. "We onry use corestoror free oyer."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnU3O6Kjwt8
And again...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr7DKXXfCWI
“The "clean" is what is confusing. They mean "healthy/organic".”
Or maybe just clean. Difficult to describe but, like pornography and Leftist hypocrisy, I know it when I see it. I’ve had clean and dirty Chinese, clean and dirty Tex-Mex, clean and dirty burgers’ n’ fries. What I’ve never done is check out the race of the people in the kitchen. My favorite Chinese restaurant is run by Koreans, my favorite burger/fish’n’chips joint by Chinese.
I always keep MSG in the spice rack and use it when only nobody is looking if I want to get compliments on piece of meat I am cooking.
Our Taiwanese friend said very well-known Chinese restaurant served "Chinese food for honkies."
"We are honkies," I said.
John Pinette would have crushed their buffet.
the Filipino chain Jolibee just opened a restaurant in Manhattan. Here in the Philippines, their menu includes hamburgers (with a side of either French Fries or rice), Pinoy style spaghetti (sweet tomato sauce with hot dogs instead of sausage), and deep fried chicken a la KFC.
So if Asia "steals" the ideas of the USA, is that taboo also?
And, by the way, Chop Suey is an American dish...
oh, by the way: A lot of the "Chinese waitresses" at "authentic Chinese restaurants" are actually Filipinos. My daughter in law used to work at one.
I don't know; does anyone actually enjoy going down these rabbit holes? It is often presented as a notorious fact that in order to make money, Chinese restaurants run by people of Chinese ancestry in North America had to serve up some sweet and wrongly flavoured goop that non-Chinese people would like. Good bye dim sum, hello egg foo yong, chicken chow mein, and sweet and sour pork. Boomers and now younger people have "discovered" a greater variety of Asian food, and often have a strong interest in something more "authentic" than their parents and grandparents would have enjoyed. Something similar with Italian food, according to the movie "Big Night," and my son has reminded me that when the Soprano boys went to Italy, it turned out they didn't know anything about Italian food. Now the upscale fashionable Manhattan person wants to promote "clean" food of various "nationalities," not really making invidious comments on any "authentic" food, or making comments on all of them. Does anyone know what authentic Mexican food, as opposed to "Tex-Mex," would actually be like?
Honorable Hostess: Much ado about nothing.
When I started out cooking in the 70s, my sister was dating a Chinese fellow and I had the chance to go through the local Chinese restaurant kitchen. Filthy with cooks smoking over their woks. Having said that, many regular restaurants were the same way. Some weren't.
Today, as a retired chef that trains food service staffs on the prevention of foodborne illnesses (we've got an outbreak of Hep A going on in south Florida at the moment), I had the occasion to read a lot of restaurant health inspection reports. Bottom line: mom and pop restaurants are usually the worst, with Chinese and Mexican leading the pack with Indian running third.
THEOLDMAN
The Aloha restaurant there had Easter Island themed table decor, a magnolia tree trunk decorated with plastic leaves and Christmas lights
I love the Trader Vic style Polynesian style restaurants and am just old enough that there used to be a bunch of them around when I was a kid. Always got the pupu platter.
Nichevo, Yun Nan Flavor Garden: no points for decor, but the restaurant is very clean, and they have interesting noodle dishes. Dare you to get the "black death" chicken wings or whatever they call them.
wow, googling that chicken, it's called "silkie chicken," and the NYT has an article and photos: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/dining/17blac.html?module=inline
apparently, they're not marinated at all. it's a special breed of chicken with black bones, skin and flesh. huh.
Thanks, I'll look for it. Yeah, the black chicken comes that way. It's popular for medicinal purposes.
Ah, too muchee so solly!
Anyone can prepare Chinese food. Does a French chef have to be French, or just adept at French cooking?
Lee is a perfectly good English and Irish surname. Anyway, I really don't give a shit whether food is "authentic" or not, only that it's clean, healthful, and delicious.
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