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> Chinese don't eat raw foods at all, and especially not vegetables, which they correctly (by the standards of Chinatown produce) view as being unsanitary until thoroughly cooked. That's not strictly true. There are plenty of classical Chinese dishes - many of them family type dishes - that are composed of raw vegetables. Also pickling is pretty big in Chinese cuisine, but I guess that's not "raw" in the technical sense. Lastly, Chinese people love raw seafood - sushi, oysters, etc. |  | |
All this is true, but while we() used to shop regularly in Chinatown markets (back when we lived close to a Chinatown, anyway), we would not eat anything raw except for fruits. Any vegetables or meat to be eaten raw or undercooked, we would buy from an "American" market. () Chinese-American family. | | | |
> Lastly, Chinese people love raw seafood - sushi, oysters, etc. Which Chinese people? There are approximately zero sushi restaurants in Manhattan Chinatown. There are a whole bunch of sushi restaurants in adjacent SoHo, which is filled with non-Chinese yuppies. anecdotal: took my Chinese co-worker to The Pokespot takeout for lunch and he immediately turned around and went somewhere else when he saw that the menu contained only raw fish. | | | |
Fair question. Easiest answer is "China is a big country" but that isn't the best answer. Raw seafood is pretty popular in coastal areas of Shandong and Liaoning. Cold seas and pretty easy to identify as fresh or not. Raw veg in the Northeast in general is fine depending on what it is. Spinach should be cooked because of the way its grown (nightsoil not uncommon) but peppers/radishes OK raw (hanging fruit). Simply pragmatic food culture responses to how food is sourced, and habits of what's OK or not. A Guangzhou person is unlikely to be OK with raw crawling shrimp in a salad in Panjin, and a Panjin person complains about how seafood in Guangdong is tasteless as the sea is too hot so the seafood grows too fast (despite these conditions making it plentiful). | | | |
Did you mean to classify radishes as a hanging fruit? They are very clearly root vegetables, and you should literally wash the sh*t out of them before even thinking about eating one raw. | | | |
Some radishes are grown for their seedpods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radish#Seed_pod_varieties > The seeds of radishes grow in siliques (widely referred to as "pods"), following flowering that happens when left to grow past their normal harvesting period. The seeds are edible, and are sometimes used as a crunchy, sharp addition to salads.[13] Some varieties are grown specifically for their seeds or seed pods, rather than their roots. The rat-tailed radish, an old European variety thought to have come from East Asia centuries ago, has long, thin, curly pods which can exceed 20 cm (8 in) in length. In the 17th century, the pods were often pickled and served with meat.[13] The 'München Bier' variety supplies seed pods that are sometimes served raw as an accompaniment to beer in Germany.[22] (I hadn't heard of this until I looked. I firmly think of radishes as root vegetables.) | | | | |
To clarify, sushi is a recent development in mainland China. The article linked to agrees with that. However, rewind to pre-2000 China, and it'd be rare to find a sushi joint outside of a high-end hotel. | | | |
Rewind to Tang Dynasty China, and sushi would be very commonplace. | | | |
"Records exist about the consumption of long slices of raw fish as early as 500 BCE. Many others indicate that long before the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 CE), people with economic where-with-all ate many raw foods, not only raw fruits and vegetables, but also raw fish and raw meat." - http://www.flavorandfortune.com/dataaccess/article.php?ID=40... | | | |
interesting, and a very recent trend. the population of 1st generation Chinese immigrants in Chinatown have not developed a taste for sushi though. | | | |
My father was born in China in 1940 and he refuses to eat raw food like sushi. He isn't particularly hygenic when it comes to food preparation (defrosts meat in the sink, flies are not a huge concern) but cooks everything well done. | | | |
I'd say the comment should be tweaked to Westernized Chinese (for lack of a better term... maybe Cosmopolitan?). My parents refuse to try raw seafood/meat. But having grown up in North America exposed to raw salads, meat, and seafood, I'm comfortable with it. | | | |
Since sushi is Japanese, doesn't it make sense that it would be found in Little Tokyo instead of Chinatown? Maybe there are lots of Chinese people eating it outside of Chinatown? | | | |
there's a huge number of sushi restaurants all over New York and a lot of them are not authentically Japanese nor are they owned or operated by Japanese Americans. Sushi is very popular in New York, much more popular than the Japanese population alone would support. There are sushi restaurants in neighborhoods where the residents enjoy sushi. The absence of them in Chinatown is an indicator that the residents there (> 90% Chinese immigrants) don't like sushi. | | | | |
I offered an anecdote, which I did not claim was an argument. Please don't be deliberately uncharitable. Did you check the results of your yelp search? that's 2 restaurants that are actually in Chinatown and actually serve sushi. An unusually small number for a neighborhood with one of the highest density of restaurants in the city. Did you read the wiki article you linked? this sentence is in the summary: "While versions of it are thought to have existed in China, the contemporary version was created and popularised[citation needed] in the 1960s amongst the ethnic Chinese community and its consumption has been associated with Chinese New Year festivities in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore." It's modern, and is a holiday feast meal served primarily by the Cantonese diaspora population. This isn't popular everyday eating, and is basically unknown on the mainland. | | | | |
re: Yunsheng > Place of origin: Singapore Generally, when we say Chinese, we refer to mainland China and Taiwan, not the Chinese Diaspora. This would be like saying Indian people love chicken tikka masala. | | | | |
>there's a huge number of sushi restaurants all over New York and a lot of them are not authentically Japanese nor are they owned or operated by Japanese Americans That's true everywhere in the US. It's very hard to find an authentic Japanese restaurant, and even harder to find one run by actual Japanese people. Usually, "Japanese" restaurants are run by Koreans. | | | |
Well... that's one step closer to authentic than a "Japanese" restaurant run by Han Chinese, I guess. In my town, the authentic Japanese restaurant was next to the Subaru and Mitsubishi/Toyota car dealerships, and was pretty much there just so the auto executives had a reliably Japanese place to eat while visiting. It went out of business. Japanese people may be the best at making a restaurant authentically Japanese, but Han are (anecdotally) much better at making a Japanese-themed restaurant authentically profitable. | | | |
Sure, but the discussion here wasn't profitability, it was authenticity. You're not going to find many authentic Japanese restaurants in America, especially outside of major cities which have enough Japanese people to support them. I have a Japanese girlfriend, and for her it's a big deal to go to an authentic Japanese restaurant; some "Japanese-themed" restaurant run by Chinese people isn't of much interest to her, she'd probably rather go for a burger than that. (Luckily, she likes burgers too, as long as they're good.) | | | |
As I understand it the majority of Sushi restaurants in the US (dunno about China) are run by Koreans. There was a weird religious cult thing that did the legwork to set up sushi grade fish distribution on a large scale and flooded the market with restaurants. Sometimes the clues are really blatant that it's not an authentic Japanese restaurant. There used to be a Sushi place a few miles down the road where the hirigana on the sign spelled out Arikato. | | | |
China is not Chinatown, and I think your sample size is a bit small considering how many Chinese exist. | | | |
Indeed, Chinatown is often more like Americanized-Cantonese-Town. When it comes to cooking traditional Chinese foods from cuisines outside the Guangdong (Canton) area, you often have to source more widely for seasonings, ingredients, and sauces (the internet helps with that a lot). It's better in major cities where there's some degree of specialization among Chinese grocery stores, in which case you just need to be willing to search a bit for the more region-specific ingredients. | | | |
China is not Chinatown Said dozens of times by my Chinese-born girlfriend in SF Chinatown: "I have no idea what this is." "This is weird." | | | |
Born where? I believe west coast Chinatowns were built by Cantonese and separated by 100+ years. See the recent post about american chinese food. | | | |
That's correct. The first influx of Chinese immigrants were mostly from the south. After the CCP took over, immigration from the mainland basically ceased. During the 60s-80s most of the Chinese immigrants that were not from HK were from Taiwan. Immigration from the mainland started picking up after the Cultural Revolution in the late 70s / early 80s through now. "Chinese" food in the US is mostly Cantonese food. Only fairly recently have you seen an uptick of non-canton style food. The latest trend is Sichuan / Chongqing style of cuisine (spicy!). My favorite Chinese regional cuisine is Xinjiang cai (food of the uighurs, China's muslim minority group). Very tasty - lots of bbq meats, delicious noodles, and spicy. Also bonus that its halal/kosher. | | | |
Chinese food in the US is fairly diverse (and has been for a while). Hunan food is, IIRC, quite common in New York and accounts for most of what New Yorkers think of when they conjure up images of Chinese food. Even in SF, places like Henry's Hunan have been around for a while (early 70s). If you go to the LA area you'll find a large proliferation of Taiwanese restaurants (which are relatively scarce in SF). | | | |
american chinese food is still quite similar to cantonese food. at least, much more similar to cantonese food than it is to northern chinese food, which in my (cantonese heritage) opinion look more like korean, given its extreme use of sour preserved vegetables and grains. | | | 
