My Cousin, Part II

Brought to you by the Jean family tree.

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Chinese Food Buffet, a rant about that which really isn't.

FRIED CHICKEN, MEATBALLS, TERIYAKI CHICKEN, CORNED BEEF, FRENCH FRIES, PUDDING; since when did these become part of Chinese cuisine? I guess one could call them Chinese fries and 90-degree angle beef and Pu-Ding, yet we must realize that they are still truly NOT Chinese. How misleading and deceptive it is to call a buffet restaurant “Chinese” when it actually has few authentic dishes; even these few “genuine” Chinese dishes are not genuine. It is true that they serve General Tso’s Chicken, Orange Chicken, and Sesame Chicken found in China. Yet why give these three dishes the different names here when THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME??? Admit it “Chinese” buffet restaurants, you use the same sauce and you use the same chicken. The only difference is that difference in the name. No need to ask the waiter what's in each dish, it's all in the name. Orange flavor is added to Orange chicken and sesame is added to Sesame Chicken. However, General Tso presents some astounding change with the brilliant idea of adding peppers and pineapple to the mono-tasting “chicken sauce”, thus giving his name to the exhausted dish today. Thank you General Tso for some nominal diversity, otherwise we’d have Pepper and Pineapple Chicken, and can’t have that, for we are the nation of diversity. Oh wait, it’s supposed to be Chinese food, not American.

But it’s not. It’s what we Chinese call “Americanized-Chinese food”. It’s the Sweet and Sour Chicken. It’s the Sesame Beef. It’s the Broccoli and Beef. It’s everything that isn’t. It’s the great culinary paradox that is diluting the Chinese cultural cuisine in this country. I go to a Chinese buffet and expect to eat Chinese food, yet what I find is the same everywhere: dishes as repetitive and bland as a bad English essay. The blooming entrepreneur restaurant owner and chef of today can splash some “Chinese Sauce” over everything, give out fortune cookies (which I must say have not yet once been correct), and BAM you got yourself a 100%, true dat, authentic, bona fide, genuine Americanized Not-So-Much Chinese Buffet. Way to go, now all you have to do is compete with the twenty other identical buffet’s and you’re set.

The American customers love it, and even some Chinese have become accustomed to eating at these spurious buffets. I admit to having eating my share of General Tso’s Chicken and generic Lo Mien, but honestly, it’s not real. It's so superficial. It satisfies the stomach but not my soul, not my desire to absorb and eat the scrumptious dim sum of my true heritage. But what can I do, for it IS America, and everything here is American to some extent. Maybe I might be too cynical (nah), to critical (no), and to demanding (nope). Oh well, it’s hopeless. At least there are a few good actual Chinese (sit-down) Restaurants; our last resort. Perhaps the massive buffet’s will take a hint, and realize quality might be better than quantity, and authenticity better than conformity.

Or perhaps not. Either way, finish your Chinese Sauce smothered chicken, eat your fortune cookie, and leave with a full stomach, happy that there are no dishes to wash tonight.

Don’t forget to jack some Skittles on the way out.

-peta pong