site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3996 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why do East Asian restaurants have such massive menus?

Restaurants in East Asia, or restaurants of East Asian cuisine abroad?

Here in the west if a restaurant has a giant menu it's usually a bad sign because it means nothing's really good. But I think for East Asian cuisine restaurants abroad, they feel kind of forced to serve a few (often westernized to hell) "staples" of asian food else people complain. Like I see a lot of korean or vietnamese restaurants serving sushi because people just don't know or don't care. Thaï restaurants will be forced to serve general tso's chicken, all noodle restaurants will be forced to serve pad thai, etc...

I asked the owner of the local Chinese place here in the US about this and she said the following, condensed for brevity. All the food they make is composed of a limited number of ingredients. 3-4 types of meat, 2-3 types of rice, 4-6 different sauces, 2-3 types of noodles, 7-10 types of veggies. You ignore the menu entirely if you are aware of what is on offer and just state what you want: pork in white rice with broccoli, cabbage, and carrots in ginger sauce for example. The menu is huge b/c they often try to explicitly list every possible iteration of these ingredients with a name and price. If you look closely most of the dishes are extremely similar but with a different starch (rice or noodle) and different meat. They list theirs by the base starch: white rice, fried rice, lo mein, chow mein, etc. Underneath these subheadings is a list of basically they same meat/veg/sauce combos reiterated under every starch type. The stuff they consider the good combinations are usually under "House Specials".

Specifically, Chinese restaurants in Canada.

Some fraction of it is formatting.

The last time I had Chinese food, there were >100 items on the menu. Six of them were fried rice (vegetarian, with pork, with chicken, with shrimp, with beef, or "deluxe"), and that wasn't the only duplicated dish. If you pared it down to distinct dishes, then it's much closer to Canadian restaurants serving other cuisines.

Chinese restaurants in China also have very large menus.

I couldn't say why Chinese cuisine developed in such a way that led to this, but if you're wondering how they manage: Chinese food has very little mise en place. 95% of dishes in the average restaurant will require little more than chopping up your ingredients and frying rapidly. Take a look at someone like Wang Gang, a professional Chinese chef. The majority of recipes he shoots are <5 minutes, even accounting for editing tricks.

Well, that's specifically what I was talking about too!

If you're in a large city with a big East Asian population with some effort you can usually find the small places that exist to cater to that community instead of "the locals" and they will usually have smaller menus and much better food. But serving Chinese in particular is a tough one because China is big and its cuisine hasn't homogenized the way Japan's did for instance, and Canadians have no idea what Chinese people eat. It's probably simpler for the restaurants to just go with what their customers expect to see on the menu: every single variation of noodles/rice/dumpling/soup with chicken/pork/beef/shrimp, overly sweet sauces that is general tso's flavored, lemon flavored, peanut flavored, fish sauce flavored... rather than have to explain to confused Canadian who felt adventurous enough to go a chinese restaurant, but not THAT adventurous, that she might actually enjoy the braised tendon or the chicken feet.

One thing I've found is that if you can find a restaurant that specializes in food from a particular region within a country, the food will probably be better. E.g. food from a restaurant specializing in "sichuan food" will generally be better than one specializing in "chinese food", which will in turn be better than one specializing in "asian food".

Why do they use such extremely sweet sauces? North American food outside of desserts isn't nearly as sweet.

chicken feet

I had these earlier this year at a Korean place. Mine had a kind of spicy barbecue sauce. They're not bad, just a lot of work. Something to share as an appetizer maybe. They're uncannily like miniature human hands.

Honestly I've never seen the hype on them. Meat's not great, they're annoyingly fiddly to eat and there's no real taste advantage.

Do recommend Chicken Hearts, though.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats