I went to one Vietnamese restaurant all the time that was exactly like this. I ate there so often, one time when they were full they let me sit at the table with their son doing homework. I felt so honored.
Did you copy their work
Probably too high level to understand
If it has 3.5 stars on Google, and 90% of the bad reviews are from people with white sounding names complaining of poor service… You’re in for some fucking delicious food from a proper family owned Chinese restaurant!
I judge my Chinese food by the condition of the place, if it’s super fancy and well kept, not going to be that good. If the building looks like it’s ready to be condemned, you damn well know it’s gonna be the best Chinese food you have ever had
Also MSG is the best.
MSG is the king of flavour!
It needs to have those backlit pictures of the food above the counter where most of the color has faded away.
There is definitely an inverse relationship between health department score and how good the food is.
Oh yeah, I know that place.
- constant stream of Asian students from the nearby university
- enormous menu, but somehow everything is made quickly
- additional staff are either family from the old country, or Latinos
- flyers in Mandarin (?) for things like churches, lawyers, and real estate agents.
Also the menu is huge but it’s all composed from like 6 ingredients.
To your last point they have at least one Shen Yun poster.
Idk, every Chinese person I know hates Shen Yun
it depends on the chinese in question. its because the people in Shen Yun are from the Falun Gong, which was a notorious religious group im china that was exiled and migrated to the U.S. The are staunchly anti CCP
And staunchly religious. This is one case of enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
And also staunchly nut jobs
Ehhh, they’re really only anti-CCP in the fact that they’re mad THEIR boots aren’t the ones doing the stomping. They’re still authoritarians, just not of the communist stripe.
everything is made quickly
Like instantly
It’s because of the 4 jet engines they call wok burners they got back there. Brings chicken from frozen to perfectly cooked in thirty seconds, complete with that smokey wok hei flavor
TIL about wok burners. And about a upgrade for the gas range at home.
But high heath and vaporizing cooking oil, sounds really unhealthy to me.
But it’s so delicious
There’s a wing joint by my house run by a Korean married couple. Instead of fries with your wings, you get Korean fried rice.
The food is amazing.
What’s lacking is the yelling. These two act like every minute of every day is living out their dream and they’re openly happy and appreciative of their fortuitous lot in life.
I love giving them my money.
Close; it’s usually Cantonese and not Mandarin. But yes, otherwise true.
My understanding is Fuzhounese is also very common to be heard in Chinese restaurants. Fujian cuisine is one of the more commonly exported forms of Chinese cuisine.
But let’s face it a P.H.D. Quantum mechanics is probably easier than understanding the regional languages and dialects of spoken Chinese.
Can you order my food for me in quantum mechanics?
Sure quantum entanglement should allow for instantaneous ordering and instantaneous delivery.
But what if I can’t decide what I want instantaneously?
It is always the human factor screwing things up.
I can usually tell Cantonese apart but you really have to be exposed to the sounds as a kid. I don’t know any of it, though, I can only figure out the language being spoken and there’s no way I’d know every dialect, haha.
Yeah was gonna say the majority of Chinese immigrants who own restaurants in America speak Cantonese. Definitely true in SF an NYC.
Bro you know it’s good food when there is a 10 year old manning the register.
The variation I’ve seen at some of the places near me is that the husband and wife are both in the kitchen and the 10-year old is taking the orders.
Bob’s Chow Mein
I love that show.
went to a korean restaurant with 2 friends, one of them their grandma was the owner. and the grandma refused to let us pay for our delicious meal. absolutely refused. that was a great day
I miss the one near me that was like this. They were so cheap too. Their dumpling sauce was like crack. Wife screeching at her husband and then telling you to try the fish ball. They’d give you extra pancakes for your moo shu without asking. I didn’t realize how special it was at the time.
Ours closed down because health inspector 🙃 it’s coming back though thank the lord
I honestly don’t care if a rat had it’s brood on the food. That shit is delicious.
lemongrass beef with jalapeños extra spicy over fried rice can’t be beat.
I worked at one of these places for a while. My primary duties: Delivery, manning the phones, being a native English speaker. I gained a lot of insight about the Chinese takeout industry.
Also, you’ve never lived until you’ve seen the owner’s wife march out into the lobby and whack the shit out of some hood rat with a giant spoon.
I am guessing that the giant spoon was something like these
It was a massive stainless steel ladle used for the stock pot. Must be every bit of three feet long, including the hook on the end of the handle.
Ahh so that was the flavour I had a hard time identifying in my won ton soup
What the fuck, you just described the local Chinese food place to a T, what is this wizardry?
Chinese places are as ubiquitous and uniform as Irish pubs
I’m my city this is true, however, a new style has emerged: the two young people who opened a restaurant together serving a limited menu where every item is intensely good. I could post a pretty long list of these.
The best Chinese place I’ve ever eaten at is exactly this. My sister was on the son’s soccer team and my mom gave the kid a ride to practice a few times. The parents paid us in our usual orders for helping them out.
