Thinking about food
Why Chinese Restaurateurs Get Stuck Selling Cheap
Egg drop soup, courtesy of Serious Eats’ Robyn Lee
I got an interesting comment on my post about why Chinese restaurants are so cheap about a month ago. (And my friend Sam sent in an excellent post about the culinary fundamentals that work against Chinese chefs.) The reader was Jack Neefus, a Baltimore resident who works in finance and dabbles in cooking and travel. He’s been to China few times, including my dad’s hometown of Heilong Jiang.
I asked if I could repost his comment, so he took an extra step beyond to rewrite it into a thoughtful essay. For space purposes, I’ll recap the beginning and excerpt my favorite parts. (I’m so high on my editorial power. You have no idea.)
Jack makes an economically-driven argument for Chinese restaurant owners’ motives. Chinese restaurants, he contends, are frequently owned by immigrants who view their businesses as a relatively stable form of income, compared to the restaurateur driven by love of cuisine and hospitality.
In his writeup, oversupply and price competition are major issues. One interesting point he raises is that American Chinese food tends to favor cheap, bulky vegetables that don’t require a lot of cleaning or cooking, and maintain volume. Ex. broccoli and onion. He also touches on the commodification of Chinese food, and how it’s now viewed as another fast food category with a factory-issued menu.
I found that his personal experiences (let’s call them abbreviated case studies) added the most value to his argument. He draws on his connections in China as well as Baltimore to make some pretty provocative statements.
Jack also breaks down the variety of niche, higher-priced Chinese foods, ranging from jacking up the decor to regional dish specialization.
If you’re nerdy about food (as I am), this is a fun read. I don’t necessarily agree with all of his logic or assertions, but that’s part of the fun.
Please chime in with your own experiences, thoughts, or rebuttals.
How to read a recipe
This afternoon, curled up on a chair at the Harvard COOP, I read through recipes calling for purple perilla and banana leaves. (Shaw’s would definitely not stock those.) I inhaled instructions on making chantilly cream and fig sauce, preparing risotto ahead of time, and the expensive, three-page-long process of replicating Barbara Lynch
No wonder it was a little strange to read Giada
Nonetheless, I ended up reading Giada’s recipe on pizza pot pie and wondering if my dining partner would enjoy that, served up in an elegant ramikin (yet to be acquired) with premade puff pastry topping spilling over the sides just so. In the midst of my fine dining cookbook binge, Giada, along with the author of “Easy Chinese Stir-Fries
Books mentioned in this post:
Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are
It was really cold when we took this photo. They also refused to let me airbrush it.
I was on a date at a Scandinavian-themed restaurant. I pored over every inch of the menu, thrilled that reindeer was an entrée. My dining partner, on the other hand, zeroed in immediately on his dinner.
“I’ll have the sirloin,” he told the waiter.
After the waiter took the order, he explained, “I always order the equivalent of steak and potatoes.”
I winced. The contrast between our attitudes couldn’t have been greater.
Though some might chalk it up to an isolated quirk, I’ve found that our dining choices and table manners are a little too revealing.
The unconscious seems to surface at the dinner table, somewhere between the bread basket and the main course. Sharing food with people has a way of exposing our desires, our insecurities, and our aspirations.
Food, for some, expresses a need for comfort. “I had one girlfriend who only ate at chain restaurants,” a friend of mine confided. “She liked how she always knew exactly what to expect.” Yet another girlfriend of his judged restaurants solely by how clean the bathrooms were, which pretty much ruled out cheap Asian eateries.
I remember one group vacation where one guy refused to eat anywhere except McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or IHOP. Even the most inoffensive of Chinese dim sum items—donuts dusted in sugar, egg tarts—were about as appetizing as baby seal blubber. He eventually had to excuse himself to order a burger.
For others, dining is an expression of who they’d like to be, rather than an assertion of who they are.
Simple pleasures
I’m actually very easy to please when it comes to food – I started making this Macbook sticky note list after I bought a small container of white chocolate dipped pretzels and realized that my palate tends to sweet, very sweet.
