Daily Dose of English 88
(American) Chinese Food
Daily Dose of English 88
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about American Chinese food. And this is another episode in the mini series, the small series that I have on this podcast where I talk about different cuisines from around the world, different types of food from countries, specifically from a country that we have in the U.S. and our version of it. Because what usually happens is that whoever makes the food in the U.S. has a slight difference. Maybe there is a family recipe that they end up using or there's a really common dish that is really popular in the US but not as popular in that country. There's a bunch of different reasons why things might be different and so I think it's interesting to talk about especially because I like food so much. And another type of food that we're gonna talk about today is Chinese food, which is a very well-known kind of food. I'm pretty sure that everybody in the US has had Chinese food at some point. It's just so common in every city. It's probably about, it's probably not as common as Mexican food. And I think it's still more common than Thai food, but it's just so, so common. in the U.S. And most of the Chinese food is sort of a typical style where it's all basically the same, sort of like I mentioned with Thai restaurants and Indian restaurants, where there's really not a ton of difference depending on wherever you go in the country, they're pretty similar. But, so a lot of the Chinese food that you'll find is the same, despite China being a humongous country with tons and tons of different foods, there are certain dishes that have gotten quite popular in the US. There are some different kinds of Chinese restaurants, especially ones that cater to locals, because there are obviously people from all over China who live in the US and that sort of thing. The first, I guess, sort of funny story that I want to talk about is of an old student of mine who is from China. He's Chinese. And he told me about the best beef noodle soup that he's ever had, which is a Taiwanese dish. It's not from mainland China, but he's gone to Taiwan a lot, and so he knows it quite well. And he said that the best Taiwanese beef noodle soup that he's ever had was in Los Angeles, California. And so there's definitely some good Chinese food in the U.S. for sure. Um, my favorite Chinese restaurant is actually in New York. I didn't eat or I don't eat very much Chinese food in general, but when I moved to New York, it's a lot more popular there and I started to really enjoy it. And one restaurant specifically I found, uh, to be just really delicious or it is delicious. I don't know. I said that weird. It's called Xi'an Famous Foods and it's in a bunch of parts of New York and it's a noodle shop that's been around for a little while so a lot of people know it and it's quite popular. And one of the reasons it's well known is because of how often spicy the food is and their stance on spiciness. When you walk into the restaurant, there's a big menu on the wall that you can order from, but it says somewhere in the middle, like wherever you can see it, it says something like, in our opinion, less spice is less flavor. We recommend that you do at least this spicy or else the dish will not be as good. Or something like that, where they kind of warn you and say, if you get the food not spicy, you are missing part of the food. It is supposed to be spicy. Um, and it is pretty spicy. It's not to the point where it's inedible, right? There's some places that will put so much spice in their food. It's more just to be spicy, but this place does a really, really good job of using spice in a, in a very delicious way where you just want more and more and it feels very good when you're eating the food or the soup. And the couple of things that I always get are the noodles and they're these hand-pulled noodles, which are absolutely delicious. I believe they're called Byung Byung noodles, and they are sort of hit against the table, the workspace, and they tear them into big pieces, so you get kind of humongous long noodles. And then they're put in some chili oil and some spices, and you can put usually some meat on top, some like stewed lamb is my favorite. And then they also have some soups and that kind of food. It's very, very good. But like something that's interesting is I've actually read the person's book because I really liked this food and so he opened, he made a cookbook and I bought it and I read some of the story. And the owner of the restaurant is American Chinese. He grew up in the US. He was born in China, but he grew up in the US. His whole life, that's where his parents are from China. And his dad, for a long time, owned a noodle restaurant. And it was sort of developing these dishes, these recipes. But it was very small. It was like a local place. It was a tiny little shop. And he grew up sort of learning that style of cooking. But since they lived their entire life in the US, or he did at least, and his dad and parents lived the rest of their life, right? They didn't go back to China. They ended up adapting a lot of dishes. And so they say that technically the food that they make isn't traditional to Xi'an, which is the city that they're from in China. So they're not traditional to that place, but they are traditional to the recipe, to the, sorry, to the food that they make, the other, like the, not the, that's the wrong word. The dishes and like they use the same things basically, but they've recombined it in different ways. Um, that's what I wanted to say. That was difficult for some reason. Um, and so, and I find that really interesting because it's somebody that is saying, yes, we're not the most authentic food, but we invented it. We changed it. We decided to do this and we like the way that it tastes. And so to us, it's authentic. However, I'm kind of running out of time on this episode, so I want to get to other kinds of Chinese food that are a little more mainstream, more popular. Definitely fried rice is the most well-known dish, Chinese dish in the U.S., like chicken fried rice is just everywhere you can find it, or shrimp fried rice I think is also really common. um and they're pretty good usually they're not amazing it's not the most amazing dish it's a lot better when you make it at home in my opinion um and then a couple of other ones there's one called general so's chicken i believe is what it's called um it's tsao and it is uh i don't know why it got popular i don't even think it's from china i think it is an american dish that uses like chicken and kind of like Chinese-esque techniques to make it. And then you serve it on rice and with like sauce and stuff. And it's pretty good, especially if you make it at home, right? In restaurants, it's usually not great. Orange chicken is also a very common one. What else? Just general like rice is a big thing. A lot of Chinese restaurants that you find, now that I'm thinking about it, actually are kind of buffet style. So you can either do all you can eat, where you can just pick whatever you want, and it's a bunch of noodle dishes, rice dishes, chicken dishes, beef dishes, and you can just kind of put things onto a plate and eat that. Or they just put it onto a plate and that's your meal. Um, especially actually here in Mexico, that's what I often see. Chinese restaurants are typically in malls and they have a bunch of different dishes out under like lamps. And then you say, I'll have some of this and some of this and some of this, and they put it into a plate and that's your food. And a lot of the food is very similar, right? It uses the same kind of spices and sauces and rice and noodles and that sort of thing. I don't really have anything else to report about that. I don't love that kind of Chinese food. It's, I don't know, it tastes very samey. It's all super similar. It's fine, it's not like it's bad or anything like that. But I definitely prefer, I guess, more authentic, interesting experiences of hand-pulled noodles or soups and that kind of thing. I also want to mention dumplings. Dumplings are very, very good and are a fantastic like quick food. I always have some dumplings in my freezer if I need to like make some food quickly. I can throw dumplings together with something else and I like to buy them from a sort of a local Chinese supermarket and like they have all Chinese characters on them so I'm pretty sure they just import them and that sort of thing. So actually to wrap up this episode, I want to realize that the most common way that I eat Chinese food is when I make it because there's not really a lot of really good Chinese restaurants and the food is actually quite easy and quick to make at home and still tastes really, really good. I'm sure it's not the most authentic thing in the world. I've never been to China. That would be fun though. I should go. But I do really like especially the chili oil dumplings and that sort of thing. And making quick fried rice is very delicious. But yeah. I do want to add one more quick thing. I'm keeping remembering more things here. Um, because I had this experience a couple of months ago and I'm wondering if maybe anybody out there from China knows what I'm talking about. I got this, um, it's like a sort of an instant noodles at a local Chinese supermarket or market. And it was really, really, really good. It was delicious. However, I cannot find that brand again. I can't find the soup that I had. I've looked online, I've looked in stores, I've tried, I've done so many different things, but I don't know what I got and it was just so good. The things that I do know, it had a lot of Szechuan peppercorn, so it had that numbing effect on your tongue. It was a beef base, so it was like beef broth, and I'm nearly positive it was Chinese. I don't think it was anything else. I'm almost sure it was a Chinese brand, because the package was all in Chinese characters, and I couldn't read it. So if you have any ideas on what soup I might be talking about, let me know, because it was so good, and I've never been able to have it again. Anyways, that's all that I have for this episode. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen. I hope that you've enjoyed this little series and we'll keep it going, but I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye-bye.
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