When reviewing Chinese restaurants, if you cite your experience with any of the following, you are wasting everyone's time:
General Tso's anything
Sesame anything
Walnut and Honey Shrimp
Kung Pao
These dishes are about as Chinese as Howdy Doody. What's more, they're dead giveaways that your palate is probably so mucked up with sugar, salt, and corn starch, that I wouldn't trust you to tell me if I was about to bite into a steaming dog turd. I'll take my chances, thanks.
Ask for the Szechuan dishes, the Mandarin, the Cantonese...the real ones. The ones they aren't giving you on the white-folks menu. Ask for extra spicy. Ask for Lion's Head, oyster hot pots, ma po tofu. Soup dumplings! Demand soup dumplings! If more Americans raved about soup dumplings the way they do about General Tso's Heinous Ass Buffet, we wouldn't have to go to effing New York City to find one.
Tripe. Sea cucumber intestine. Scallop poop - whatever sounds weird, get it.
Seriously, people. There's a reason whole nations eat these things.
If Weight Watchers makes a frozen dinner of it, don't ever ever ever waste the world's time reviewing it for a restaurant.
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HA. I order the Generals Chicken all the time. I know it's a poor nutritional choice. Comfort has food its place. That said, I take up your challenge of ordering "the real ones" next time I have a choice.
ReplyDeleteI am a terrible, terrible friend if I have been letting you order General Tso's all this time. Let's have Chinese on Saturday. I can show you the world/shining, shimmering, Szechuan....
ReplyDeleteI was with you until you glossed over why tripe is so popular. You seem to suggest 'whole nations eat' tripe because of its deliciousness. While it can be delicious, the reason whole nations eat tripe is because cows have 4 stomachs - which makes tripe cheap.
ReplyDeleteShucks, if you thought this was going to be an essay focusing on the origins of tripe's popularity, you got a raw deal!
ReplyDeleteI was suggesting that nervous eaters trust the habits of whole nations of other human beings and branch out. Nothing more, though, as Ed McMahon once said, "You are correct, sir!"