Best Chinese take-out is from the small hole-in-the-wall mom and pop joints. Ideally when you walk in you should see their children sitting at one of the tables doing their homework.
>be a 2x/wk or more regular at a place like that for years >get to know the parents fairly well >help their 8yo daughter with homework sometimes while waiting on my order >give her a beginner's fountain pen around that Christmas, as she said she wanted to practice calligraphy >her parents thought it was a very kind gift, and comped my order that evening which honestly was way more than the pen. >ffwd 10yrs >Marry her, with her parents blessing, after she graduates HS >When we go to put in the paperwork for marriage license, she pulls out that same pen from her purse to sign her name on the form >sort of torn between thinking it’s sweet, and thinking it makes me look like a creep that I’m 38 and an 18yo is signing a marriage form with a pen I gave her when she was 8
The point is, the Chinese joints this anon described are absolutely the best. Amazing food; and you might find a wife.
Similar story >Father is a regular at a Chinese place, whole family starts going there >Owner is complaining that his landlord is making him pay for a water main replacement >Dad points out the law that says it's >>not his problem, saving him thousands of dollars >Gives my dad a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label (my dad doesn't drink whisky but a nice gesture) and now gives him a quart of Happy Family every time he comes in
No pedophilia in my story tho
I loved the mongolian chicken they used to have, it's not on the menu anymore though.
The Orange Chicken is great, even if it's overrated. I enjoy it. and their chow mein.
This is American Chinese food, like how Taco Bell is American Mexican food. yes a small hole in the wall mom and pop joint will have better Mexican food than Taco Bell, it had a different appeal. It's the same way with Panda Express and Chinese food.
got bad news for you fren
All, and I mean ALL, even Panda express and the fancy places and the mom and pop and even the gas station chinese food bars >GET THEIR SAUCES AND FOOD FROM SYSCO AND LABATT AND ROMA
I dunno, I would have thought panda express would be big enough to have it's own distributors and stuff to get that "identical in every location" taste
Every little chinese place though, yeah. Most of their shit is from a big distributor, but they'll also go to local (chinese) markets for deals. Like if there's 20kg of chicken that goes out of date tomorrow down there the mom and pop place will snap that shit up, brine it and velvet it and thus save probably less money in time than they would if they'd just bought it ready done
Chinese people always do that shit, I go hiking and I always see them foraging for shit, like wild apple trees, wild garlic, and even shit like oysters on the beach that really shouldn't be eaten because we live near the second biggest shipping port in the country.
Source: Dad remarried a woman from hong kong and they have a takeaway and do this shit. I'd go round and there'd be a huge basket of really sour bizarre fruit on the table that no-one knows the name of from some woodland area, that could well be poisonous. Good thing it doesn't matter because no-one eats it anyway and it gets thrown away
Hell I even walked in once and my "stepmother"'s mother was threshing a bunch of wheat she'd stolen from some farm with a knife, and b***hing that the farmer told her to leave. Like of course he fricking did you dumb b***h, why the frick are you wasting hours of your life and time, and risking arrest to make a handful of fricking flour, the cheapest food product in existence, which you won't use anyway?
Most Chinese people are hicks who still live like they're in danger of starvation if the weather turns bad. It's like my grandmother and her sister who both still spent like their family did during the Great Depression despite having hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank and mutual funds.
What I remember about Chinese food as a young kid growing up in Hong Kong was not really that it was “bad” (which it often was, of course) but that the stuff my parents ordered for us was almost all frozen, and that I would generally throw out whatever that they brought home. This was in the days before a proper kitchen, and there was a tiny freezer unit that could only hold what was on the top shelf, and often that was some random combination of Chinese or Indian takeout. A couple of times a week we’d have what seemed like the best of everything, but the rest of the time it was pretty terrible: a frozen piece of some meat and whatever was frozen with it, a tub of rice, and maybe a can of green peas, and maybe a can of baby corn. There was a few times in my childhood when we were treated to something really good, like fresh fish that one of the waiters brought home in a plastic bag. So for my first couple of decades, I never actually ate a lot
They had this at my college campus and I’d go there for lunch nearly once a week. It actually tasted amazing to me. Loved the beijing beef, the honey walnut shrimp, the sweetfire chicken breast. I’m never eating from here again though.
I ate a shit ton of it when I was depressed and it was filling
Doesn't taste so great nowadays
Guess the depression made shit taste better for me or something
But yeah find you a good mom & pop Chinese food joint and pig out there
Can usually get like... 2.5x the amount of food panda will give you for the same price
They're the fastest thing Uber Eats delivers to my work so I usually end up getting them because I'm in a hurry. First order came with a chunk of safety glass. I keep ordering from them though.
Every time I would go in to order I'd ask for a sample of it and get a free shrimp on a tooth pick, but I am too cheap to pay the extra dollar for it. But it sure is tasty.
Most of the menu is crazy sweet for some reason. Nothing breaded is made fresh, it all comes frozen in bags. That being said, the string bean chicken is made fresh, isn't overly sweet, actually tastes like chinese food and is addictive as crack.
>small town finally getting a chinese restaurant
opening soon, has Panda in the name so I imagine it'll be americanized chinese food like Panda Express, what's the best things to try? I'll probably get a big order to try a bunch of things the first time I go.
There are 2 types of Chinese food places in US.
American-Chinese and Real Chinese.
Real Chinese tend to have a larger menu and most of it is in Chinese and is numbered. All of these places tend to have the same 80 or so dishes. They're great and authentic.
American-Chinese food are also great but in a different way, most entrees are fried with a sweet sauce. It's less authentic but still delicious, a previous anon compared them to the Taco Bell of Mexican Food.
Can anyone explain to me why chinese food is always sweet? I always thought it was gross. Not just take-out, because that's obviously just garbage, but most of the "good" traditional chinese food I've eaten at (according to chinks), I would say 2/3rds of the food has a lingering sweetness to it, the Chinese sausage for example. My grandpa is a chink and occasionally will hand out some lap cheong and I try to cook with it but it's as sweet as it is salty.
I am legitimately curious about this, as someone of minimal asian descent I find it strange that I find their food to be pretty intolerable. I just want to discover the motivations of my bugman ancestors
You're probably tasting the strong 'sweetness' from MSG. I am also a chink and have been cooking chinese food since I could stand at the stove, and never ever directly used sugar in cooking until I was introduced to Western cooking. Like you say, some ingredients are sweet (oyster, dark soy sauce and XO sauce are other common 'sweet' cooking ingredients) but their purpose is to add savoriness rather than sweetness.
MSG is not sweet, MSG is flavorless and brings out the flavor of other things. If you eat a lot of pure MSG it'll have a slight metallic taste.
American Chinese food uses a lot of sugar sauces.
Can anyone explain to me why chinese food is always sweet? I always thought it was gross. Not just take-out, because that's obviously just garbage, but most of the "good" traditional chinese food I've eaten at (according to chinks), I would say 2/3rds of the food has a lingering sweetness to it, the Chinese sausage for example. My grandpa is a chink and occasionally will hand out some lap cheong and I try to cook with it but it's as sweet as it is salty.
I am legitimately curious about this, as someone of minimal asian descent I find it strange that I find their food to be pretty intolerable. I just want to discover the motivations of my bugman ancestors
Most chinese food isn't sweet. like Kung Pao chicken, or Happy Family, etc. it's a soy sauce based sauce normally that is salty instead of sweet.
That Chinese sausage is insanely sweet. I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to be an additive that you mince up and cook with vegetables like Americans use bacon bits.
It's not really, and it depends on what dishes you're talking about. I will assume Cantonese cuisine since that is the default with most Chinese cuisine nowadays but that does probably have the most "sweetness" in any Chinese regional cuisine which you describe. Lou mei/offal meats, fermented foods, seafood, stews and soups that aren't dessert tong sui won't be sweet. In addition, certain seasonings used won't have sweetness added in the dish like anything with fermented black beans/douchi, fish sauce/shrimp paste, or any salted eggs or century eggs. Siu mei/BBQ meats, stir fry and dim sum will have a good portion of the "sweetness" you describe to them as part of the ingredients.
You'll get more variety and non-sweet as you move out of Cantonese cuisine and see stuff from Sichuan with Mapo tofu and liberal use of chilli peppercorns and peppers which is spicy. In addition, you see a lot more dishes based on fermentation and vinegar soaking and wheat and outside of certain sweet breads, a lot of them are savory in nature.
Very simple
If they have Black Pepper Chicken you order that with some rice underneath and that's easily one of the best fast food products you can get
If they don't you go to literally any mom and pop chinese restaurant and you'll find better or cheaper
Reminder that you need to use some sort of orange concentrate to get the flavor of orange chicken, regular orange juice is not enough
I made orange chicken at home just like Panda Expresses and I just use Orange Juice, no zest, no concentrate.
my sauce is mainly orange juice with soy sauce, ginger and honey and it turns out great.
For all your le traditionalist larpers >Have chinese exchange student stay with our family >we take him to panda express >he loves it, says its similar to food he eats at home >asks us to take him there like 3 more times
It's okay. I live in a major city nowadays so I can get actual Chinese food instead. In my opinion Panda is extremely dependent on the workers behind the counter. With most fast food places it doesn't really matter if the staff is a bunch of slacking blacks. But with Panda it really does. Best Panda location I have ever eaten at was a franchise location run by this Filipino family in Florida.
>no panda on the menu
lame
Never eaten there probably never will
Best Chinese take-out is from the small hole-in-the-wall mom and pop joints. Ideally when you walk in you should see their children sitting at one of the tables doing their homework.
I too enjoy getting the shits
>be a 2x/wk or more regular at a place like that for years
>get to know the parents fairly well
>help their 8yo daughter with homework sometimes while waiting on my order
>give her a beginner's fountain pen around that Christmas, as she said she wanted to practice calligraphy
>her parents thought it was a very kind gift, and comped my order that evening which honestly was way more than the pen.
>ffwd 10yrs
>Marry her, with her parents blessing, after she graduates HS
>When we go to put in the paperwork for marriage license, she pulls out that same pen from her purse to sign her name on the form
>sort of torn between thinking it’s sweet, and thinking it makes me look like a creep that I’m 38 and an 18yo is signing a marriage form with a pen I gave her when she was 8
The point is, the Chinese joints this anon described are absolutely the best. Amazing food; and you might find a wife.
living the life
wish you all the happiness in the world
Similar story
>Father is a regular at a Chinese place, whole family starts going there
>Owner is complaining that his landlord is making him pay for a water main replacement
>Dad points out the law that says it's >>not his problem, saving him thousands of dollars
>Gives my dad a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label (my dad doesn't drink whisky but a nice gesture) and now gives him a quart of Happy Family every time he comes in
No pedophilia in my story tho
>No pedophilia in my story tho
None in mine either. We didn’t do anything until she was 16, which is legal in my state.
what's your nationality?
its sweet. mad jelly of you rn
I loved the mongolian chicken they used to have, it's not on the menu anymore though.
The Orange Chicken is great, even if it's overrated. I enjoy it. and their chow mein.
This is American Chinese food, like how Taco Bell is American Mexican food. yes a small hole in the wall mom and pop joint will have better Mexican food than Taco Bell, it had a different appeal. It's the same way with Panda Express and Chinese food.
got bad news for you fren
All, and I mean ALL, even Panda express and the fancy places and the mom and pop and even the gas station chinese food bars
>GET THEIR SAUCES AND FOOD FROM SYSCO AND LABATT AND ROMA
I dunno, I would have thought panda express would be big enough to have it's own distributors and stuff to get that "identical in every location" taste
Every little chinese place though, yeah. Most of their shit is from a big distributor, but they'll also go to local (chinese) markets for deals. Like if there's 20kg of chicken that goes out of date tomorrow down there the mom and pop place will snap that shit up, brine it and velvet it and thus save probably less money in time than they would if they'd just bought it ready done
Chinese people always do that shit, I go hiking and I always see them foraging for shit, like wild apple trees, wild garlic, and even shit like oysters on the beach that really shouldn't be eaten because we live near the second biggest shipping port in the country.
Source: Dad remarried a woman from hong kong and they have a takeaway and do this shit. I'd go round and there'd be a huge basket of really sour bizarre fruit on the table that no-one knows the name of from some woodland area, that could well be poisonous. Good thing it doesn't matter because no-one eats it anyway and it gets thrown away
Hell I even walked in once and my "stepmother"'s mother was threshing a bunch of wheat she'd stolen from some farm with a knife, and b***hing that the farmer told her to leave. Like of course he fricking did you dumb b***h, why the frick are you wasting hours of your life and time, and risking arrest to make a handful of fricking flour, the cheapest food product in existence, which you won't use anyway?
Most Chinese people are hicks who still live like they're in danger of starvation if the weather turns bad. It's like my grandmother and her sister who both still spent like their family did during the Great Depression despite having hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank and mutual funds.
What I remember about Chinese food as a young kid growing up in Hong Kong was not really that it was “bad” (which it often was, of course) but that the stuff my parents ordered for us was almost all frozen, and that I would generally throw out whatever that they brought home. This was in the days before a proper kitchen, and there was a tiny freezer unit that could only hold what was on the top shelf, and often that was some random combination of Chinese or Indian takeout. A couple of times a week we’d have what seemed like the best of everything, but the rest of the time it was pretty terrible: a frozen piece of some meat and whatever was frozen with it, a tub of rice, and maybe a can of green peas, and maybe a can of baby corn. There was a few times in my childhood when we were treated to something really good, like fresh fish that one of the waiters brought home in a plastic bag. So for my first couple of decades, I never actually ate a lot
They had this at my college campus and I’d go there for lunch nearly once a week. It actually tasted amazing to me. Loved the beijing beef, the honey walnut shrimp, the sweetfire chicken breast. I’m never eating from here again though.
UofA?
>Thoughts on this fine dining establishment?
stop asking me to donate to the cripple children.
i've got enough problems in my life.
yeah lemme get uhhhhh plate fried rice double beijing beef thanks
Lemme get uh eggroll with it
For me its power greens™
its aight, kung pao chicken and steamed rice is my go to plate. your better off with legit chinese restaurants though
I ate a shit ton of it when I was depressed and it was filling
Doesn't taste so great nowadays
Guess the depression made shit taste better for me or something
But yeah find you a good mom & pop Chinese food joint and pig out there
Can usually get like... 2.5x the amount of food panda will give you for the same price
why is there no doritos locos cream cheese wonton option? gay
I am so fricking ashamed that I would devour the shit out of this,
I looked at a menu once and there were only like 5 entree choices
They're the fastest thing Uber Eats delivers to my work so I usually end up getting them because I'm in a hurry. First order came with a chunk of safety glass. I keep ordering from them though.
Should've sent a picture to corporate with a mouthful of blood, you never would've paid for another meal again
Honey walnut shrimp is delicious You guys gotta get it worth the extra price
Every time I would go in to order I'd ask for a sample of it and get a free shrimp on a tooth pick, but I am too cheap to pay the extra dollar for it. But it sure is tasty.
Most of the menu is crazy sweet for some reason. Nothing breaded is made fresh, it all comes frozen in bags. That being said, the string bean chicken is made fresh, isn't overly sweet, actually tastes like chinese food and is addictive as crack.
>small town finally getting a chinese restaurant
opening soon, has Panda in the name so I imagine it'll be americanized chinese food like Panda Express, what's the best things to try? I'll probably get a big order to try a bunch of things the first time I go.
There are 2 types of Chinese food places in US.
American-Chinese and Real Chinese.
Real Chinese tend to have a larger menu and most of it is in Chinese and is numbered. All of these places tend to have the same 80 or so dishes. They're great and authentic.
American-Chinese food are also great but in a different way, most entrees are fried with a sweet sauce. It's less authentic but still delicious, a previous anon compared them to the Taco Bell of Mexican Food.
Can anyone explain to me why chinese food is always sweet? I always thought it was gross. Not just take-out, because that's obviously just garbage, but most of the "good" traditional chinese food I've eaten at (according to chinks), I would say 2/3rds of the food has a lingering sweetness to it, the Chinese sausage for example. My grandpa is a chink and occasionally will hand out some lap cheong and I try to cook with it but it's as sweet as it is salty.
I am legitimately curious about this, as someone of minimal asian descent I find it strange that I find their food to be pretty intolerable. I just want to discover the motivations of my bugman ancestors
You're probably tasting the strong 'sweetness' from MSG. I am also a chink and have been cooking chinese food since I could stand at the stove, and never ever directly used sugar in cooking until I was introduced to Western cooking. Like you say, some ingredients are sweet (oyster, dark soy sauce and XO sauce are other common 'sweet' cooking ingredients) but their purpose is to add savoriness rather than sweetness.
MSG is not sweet, MSG is flavorless and brings out the flavor of other things. If you eat a lot of pure MSG it'll have a slight metallic taste.
American Chinese food uses a lot of sugar sauces.
Most chinese food isn't sweet. like Kung Pao chicken, or Happy Family, etc. it's a soy sauce based sauce normally that is salty instead of sweet.
That Chinese sausage is insanely sweet. I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to be an additive that you mince up and cook with vegetables like Americans use bacon bits.
It's not really, and it depends on what dishes you're talking about. I will assume Cantonese cuisine since that is the default with most Chinese cuisine nowadays but that does probably have the most "sweetness" in any Chinese regional cuisine which you describe. Lou mei/offal meats, fermented foods, seafood, stews and soups that aren't dessert tong sui won't be sweet. In addition, certain seasonings used won't have sweetness added in the dish like anything with fermented black beans/douchi, fish sauce/shrimp paste, or any salted eggs or century eggs. Siu mei/BBQ meats, stir fry and dim sum will have a good portion of the "sweetness" you describe to them as part of the ingredients.
You'll get more variety and non-sweet as you move out of Cantonese cuisine and see stuff from Sichuan with Mapo tofu and liberal use of chilli peppercorns and peppers which is spicy. In addition, you see a lot more dishes based on fermentation and vinegar soaking and wheat and outside of certain sweet breads, a lot of them are savory in nature.
so fricking good
>2 order plate
>half white rice half chow mein
>kung pao chicken
>orange chicken
Some of the worst food i've eaten was at panda express, its garbage food. Don't expect minimum wagies to cook a 3 course dinner for you're family.
I have had really bad Panda Express before, I'm not sure how they managed to frick it up but they do sometime. Normally the one by me is great though.
Very simple
If they have Black Pepper Chicken you order that with some rice underneath and that's easily one of the best fast food products you can get
If they don't you go to literally any mom and pop chinese restaurant and you'll find better or cheaper
Reminder that you need to use some sort of orange concentrate to get the flavor of orange chicken, regular orange juice is not enough
I normally use orange zest and it works great.
I made orange chicken at home just like Panda Expresses and I just use Orange Juice, no zest, no concentrate.
my sauce is mainly orange juice with soy sauce, ginger and honey and it turns out great.
I've never had panda express, but "real" Chinese food uses dried mandarin peels, could be related
For all your le traditionalist larpers
>Have chinese exchange student stay with our family
>we take him to panda express
>he loves it, says its similar to food he eats at home
>asks us to take him there like 3 more times
Every Chinese person I've ever met loves Panda Express.
True stuff. Required viewing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4&ab_channel=BuzzFeedVideo
This makes me very happy.
It's okay. I live in a major city nowadays so I can get actual Chinese food instead. In my opinion Panda is extremely dependent on the workers behind the counter. With most fast food places it doesn't really matter if the staff is a bunch of slacking blacks. But with Panda it really does. Best Panda location I have ever eaten at was a franchise location run by this Filipino family in Florida.
my farts smell like their food. even if i don't eat their food.
I throw up every time I eat Beijing beef.
Orange chicken and greens are pretty decent.
Mustard sauce there is awesome.
Good but expensive and corporate.