Why do some Chinese restaurants not serve pork?

[disneychrista]

Wow, all the Panda Express hate! I don't eat anything there except orange chicken, fried rice and chow mein so I dunno. I think it's pretty tasty. All the Chinese restaurants I've been to pretty much taste the same to me anyway.

I like Panda Express. It was the first “Cinesse” food I ever had.

 

[tvguy]

There's a fast food restaurant called Wienerschnistzel? Never heard of it!

I always think of pork as the meat most likely to carry disease so avoid it when eating out.

Funny, I always think of chicken as the meat most likely to carry disease. My son went on a school trip to France and Spain was horrified to find out in Spain, unless you ask for your chicken well done, they serve it while it is still pink. Yuck.

Looks like Wienerschnitzel doesn't go any further east than Illinois. 358 locations, so certainly not anywhere near as big as McDonalds etc. Their Polish Sausage Sandwiches are very good.

https://www.wienerschnitzel.com/

 

[bcla]

Wow, all the Panda Express hate! I don't eat anything there except orange chicken, fried rice and chow mein so I dunno. I think it's pretty tasty. All the Chinese restaurants I've been to pretty much taste the same to me anyway.

"Ethnic" cuisine in the United States is a more complicated subject than simply if it's good or not. A lot of what we get here is massively altered to fit to local ingredients and tastes. Talk to anyone ethnic Chinese from China, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, etc and of course they'll say that the majority of what's called "Chinese" here bears a faint resemblance to what they would consider Chinese. It's been homogenized to the point where everything would be considered too sweet, too salty, and lacking in local heat and/or spices. That's basically what Panda Express is. It's more American than Chinese. I don't find it unusual that ethnic Chinese people eat there any more than they'd visit a McDonald's or Denny's. Heck - ask someone from India what their impression of "Indian" restaurants is, and they'll probably say mostly northern Indian style and nothing like the regional foods familiar to them. But they'll still eat there. And possibly the most bizarre mix I remember was Indian-Chinese. Somehow I found myself at some place called "Inchin's Bamboo Garden" brought there by Indian coworkers. One was commenting to a Chinese coworker that they probably wouldn't recognize anything.

Chinese cuisine is far more than just making stuff in a large wok and keeping it warn on a steam tray. It's literally over a dozen regional cuisines. What most people think of here is more from the southern region of China since most of the early Chinese immigrants to the US came from the small Taishan region of Guangdong. There are lots of regional differences such as spiciness and a numbing sensation (the Sichuan peppercorn) from Sichuan cuisine. There's even more heat in Hunan food. We may think of rice being the staple of Chinese cuisine, but traditionally rice was difficult to transport and didn't grow well in the northern region, where wheat, noodles, and various flour-based foods were the staples. And Chinese cuisine even adapted well to new world ingredients such as chili peppers, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, peanuts, etc.

I admit when I was younger I watched the Dukes of Hazzard. They had a bit character who was Chinese, and asked to borrow a torch to repair his wok. He was talking about using it to make "stir fried hog jowls". Strangely enough that's probably not that far off from the real history of Chinese immigrants to the US.

Sorry about the rant. It's not necessarily about anyone in particular posting to this topic. But I get a little passionate when talking about food I like.

 

[bcla]

Funny, I always think of chicken as the meat most likely to carry disease. My son went on a school trip to France and Spain was horrified to find out in Spain, unless you ask for your chicken well done, they serve it while it is still pink. Yuck.

Looks like Wienerschnitzel doesn't go any further east than Illinois. 358 locations, so certainly not anywhere near as big as McDonalds etc. Their Polish Sausage Sandwiches are very good.

https://www.wienerschnitzel.com/

I've hard rare pork before. Ate it, but kept on thinking that eventually I might have some 10 ft long tapeworm extracted from my gut. I guess the biggest problem with chicken is salmonella, which is more a worry with factory farms. Also - pink doesn't necessarily mean undercooked. Mostly it's oxidation, and the center of the meat might be hot enough to kill anything but may still be pink. Even fried chicken that's cooked in a pressure cooker where it's uniformly heated to 250ºF will be pink near the bone.

A Chinese friend of mine said her parents were kind of shocked at what she ate. Her dad refused to eat medium steak with a little bit of pink and requested it be heated again until it was thoroughly brown. I've dined with her parents before, and he looked at people eating sushi and raw oysters like they were crazy people. However, they have a massive distrust about food safety and cook everything until it's almost burnt.

 

[tvguy]

It's been homogenized to the point where everything would be considered too sweet, too salty, and lacking in local heat and/or spices.
.

See, to me Americanize versions of ethnic food are the ones with too much heat and spice. That seems to be our answer to everything. "Throw more heat and spice in it"
My son had a teacher at his High School on exchange for a year, and the teacher said after visiting "Authentic" Indian restaurants here that in India they do use curry in many dishes, just not THAT much curry.

 

[tvguy]

A Chinese friend of mine said her parents were kind of shocked at what she ate. Her dad refused to eat medium steak with a little bit of pink and requested it be heated again until it was thoroughly brown. I've dined with her parents before, and he looked at people eating sushi and raw oysters like they were crazy people. However, they have a massive distrust about food safety and cook everything until it's almost burnt.

LOL. Yet San Francisco under decades of pressure from the Chinese community had to change it's health codes because the traditional way of making Peking Duck is like a recipe for food borne illness.
https://www.sgvtribune.com/2015/08/...ure-it-got-a-health-code-exception-heres-why/

 

[bcla]

See, to me Americanize versions of ethnic food are the ones with too much heat and spice. That seems to be our answer to everything. "Throw more heat and spice in it"
My son had a teacher at his High School on exchange for a year, and the teacher said after visiting "Authentic" Indian restaurants here that in India they do use curry in many dishes, just not THAT much curry.

Depends. I guess Americanized versions can either overdo the spiciness as kind of a dare, or bland things to death in order to be relatively inoffensive. For example, I've been to PF Chang's occasionally and it is totally bland.

 

[disneychrista]

Depends. I guess Americanized versions can either overdo the spiciness as kind of a dare, or bland things to death in order to be relatively inoffensive. For example, I've been to PF Chang's occasionally and it is totally bland.

Really? I guess it depends on what you get. While they are non fire spicy/hot I always get a nice heat from the Chang's Spicy Chicken (my go to there).

 

[bcla]

LOL. Yet San Francisco under decades of pressure from the Chinese community had to change it's health codes because the traditional way of making Peking Duck is like a recipe for food borne illness.
https://www.sgvtribune.com/2015/08/...ure-it-got-a-health-code-exception-heres-why/

Not saying it's your description, but the article kind of gets it wrong about what the issue is. Peking duck is rarely stored hung on a hook after cooking. Most places I'll see that the order has to be called in because it has to be cooked to order and takes a while.

What that article is describing is more accurately BBQ roast duck. And pretty much every place I see it hanging it's under a heat lamp with a steam tray (usually with hot water beneath) to capture the drippings.

 

[RedAngie]

I have never tried it but just the look and smell of it is enough to stop me. No way would I eat that stuff before a flight.

Ordinarily I can tolerate Panda Express and other similar food court "Chinese" food. It's not great, but it's usually edible and somewhat tasty. But this time it was really, really bad. Then again it was about 8:30 in the evening and the stuff may have been sitting in the steam table for hours. Everything was very chewy and even the lo mein was less than al dente, almost hard.

 

[Kellykins1218]

We practically live at our local amusement park so I eat Panda Express 5 or 6 times a week from May to Oct. I love it. I think it's pretty good for fast food.

 

[soccerdad72]

We practically live at our local amusement park so I eat Panda Express 5 or 6 times a week from May to Oct. I love it. I think it's pretty good for fast food.

Funny, all the time we've smelled Panda Express (which is hard to miss while standing in line for Millennium Force ) and we've never eaten there for some reason?

I've eaten at a couple of the newer standalone Pandas and I will say the food has always been pretty consistently good. Nothing special, but decent, solid food.

 

[dish rag]

Ordinarily I can tolerate Panda Express and other similar food court "Chinese" food. It's not great, but it's usually edible and somewhat tasty. But this time it was really, really bad. Then again it was about 8:30 in the evening and the stuff may have been sitting in the steam table for hours. Everything was very chewy and even the lo mein was less than al dente, almost hard.

Probably was sitting all day. Places will do that. I'm always as cautious as I can be before a flight, I have a fear of having cramps on the plane. Thankfully that has never happen.