Ghastly stuff.
Chinese Food
- Thread starter BlueOvalFitter
- Start date
Ghastly stuff.
I live near a university town with a large Chinese-American (and increasingly Chinese) student population and there's no shortage of regional or specialty Chinese food. When I was a student it was mostly grad students from China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but these days there are a lot of international undergraduate students. That being said, quite a few have closed shop or at least temporarily closed because the student population is for the most part not here. They even mandated that students in dorms stay there for a few weeks while food would be delivered. Quite a few restaurants are doing their best to exist on a takeout model, but in a town that's reliant on students for business it's interesting to see who survives and who doesn't.
AutoMechanic
Site Donor 2024
Absolutely I’m eating some now for dinner. So much better than American food.
GON
$100 Site Donor 2024
Everyone knows the grading order for food- if not here is a repost:
The wealthiest (top 1 percenters) get the very best
Next goes to top restaurants and grocers
Next goes to good restaurants and grocers
Next goes to marginal restaurants and grocers
Next goes to schools
Next goes to prisons
What the prisons won't take gets sold to Chinese Buffets
The wealthiest (top 1 percenters) get the very best
Next goes to top restaurants and grocers
Next goes to good restaurants and grocers
Next goes to marginal restaurants and grocers
Next goes to schools
Next goes to prisons
What the prisons won't take gets sold to Chinese Buffets
4WD
$50 site donor 2024
Chinese food for college students
Most Chinese (although often more pan-Asian) buffets around here are kind of sketchy. However, there were some that were really good with little worry about food safety or the quality of the ingredients. How long they would stay open is another matter. We had a couple here that were very good. I'd put them on par with the Asian section at a Las Vegas casino, or even better. However, they closed. One had this issue where they apparently didn't pay their employees. I'm not sure what was the issue with another place.
This one was quite good. They had to close down for some time because the mall had a rodent problem, but that also affected the mall's food court. I think the rodents we moving through the walls.
Tomi Sushi & Seafood Buffet - Concord, CA
866 reviews and 1161 photos of Tomi Sushi & Seafood Buffet - CLOSED "They just opened today so we had to give it a try. We arrived at 2:25 pm & lunch ends at 3 pm. Its a big restaurant. Its the same spot where the old Todai used to be. There were around 20 customers at the time we walked in. We...
www.yelp.com
There was another place south of San Francisco that I've been to a few times, but they were dealing with a lot of issues. None of the issues had anything to do with the quality of the food. The finally had to pay $2.6 million when they closed due to previous rulings of wage theft as well as a WARN Act violation for not giving notice before terminating that many employees.
Bay Area restaurant cited for wage theft shuts down
Kome Japanese Seafood Buffet in Daly City closed its doors this week and laid off between...
This one was the latest. Never been there but heard it was good.
Longstanding Daly City buffet closes, shifts to takeout only
Moonstar Buffet has operated since 1991.
My go-to picks are pork lo mein, General Tso’s chicken, pork egg rolls, crab rangoon, and Mongolian beef. I typically don’t stray off the ranch off that menu.
Two of those are of Taiwanese origin. Crab rangoons are this weird hybrid thing that has almost nothing to do with any actual Chinese cuisine other than the wonton wrapper.
I've heard of Chinese friends taking their parents from Asia to Americanized Chinese restaurants where they had no clue what it was. One friend said his parents asked if it was Thai food.
I remember that place at Sun Valley Mall when it was called Todai. I would go there on on special occasions for lunch during my DVC days. they had another one at Stoneridge.Most Chinese (although often more pan-Asian) buffets around here are kind of sketchy. However, there were some that were really good with little worry about food safety or the quality of the ingredients. How long they would stay open is another matter. We had a couple here that were very good. I'd put them on par with the Asian section at a Las Vegas casino, or even better. However, they closed. One had this issue where they apparently didn't pay their employees. I'm not sure what was the issue with another place.
This one was quite good. They had to close down for some time because the mall had a rodent problem, but that also affected the mall's food court. I think the rodents we moving through the walls.
Tomi Sushi & Seafood Buffet - Concord, CA
866 reviews and 1161 photos of Tomi Sushi & Seafood Buffet - CLOSED "They just opened today so we had to give it a try. We arrived at 2:25 pm & lunch ends at 3 pm. Its a big restaurant. Its the same spot where the old Todai used to be. There were around 20 customers at the time we walked in. We...
There was another place south of San Francisco that I've been to a few times, but they were dealing with a lot of issues. None of the issues had anything to do with the quality of the food. The finally had to pay $2.6 million when they closed due to previous rulings of wage theft as well as a WARN Act violation for not giving notice before terminating that many employees.
Bay Area restaurant cited for wage theft shuts down
Kome Japanese Seafood Buffet in Daly City closed its doors this week and laid off between...www.sfchronicle.com
This one was the latest. Never been there but heard it was good.
Longstanding Daly City buffet closes, shifts to takeout only
Moonstar Buffet has operated since 1991.www.sfgate.com
I’ve been to Moonstar a few times. Probably one of the better Chinese-ish buffets I’ve been too. There’s one really sketch one my parents enjoy in the East Bay, their justification for going there is all the cheap seafood they can eat. I get it, cheap Asian parents. In that place’s defense, their food is recognizable but the Latino crowd that goes there do make very good use of siratcha.
there’s a hole in the wall in Chinatown SF that makes a mean braised ox tail. But many Chinatowns are hanging by on a string these days.
Anyone here like American Chinese food?
My favorites are;
Moo Goo Gai Pan, General Tso Chicken, Beef Lo Mein, Sweet And Sour Chicken, Egg Rolls, and Pork Fried Rice.
When I lived in Tampa, FL. there was a big Chinese family owned restaurant near my house. They only had 3 tables to dine at. Their main sales were from take out. Every time I called in an order, be it 1 item, or 10 items, it was always, "10 MINUTE!"
Love Chinese food, but it varies in quality drastically.
It's very hard to get the really good stuff anymore, anywhere in the world.
Im forever connected to this food growing up taking any kind of job I could get and having been a cook, waiter, and busboy at different times.
High school job as a busboy at the high end Cantonese - Syn Kow in Glencoe Il.
Never had better to this day (especially egg rolls - they made them a day in advance to " ferment") and have been searching for its equal across the globe. (came close 3 times) Very few places are the goods. I remember Michael the gm telling me they were really a pain and expensive to make and no one does it like that any more, he said it was old fashioned chop suey house style cantonese.
All my friends worked there and still talk about it, there was a point where I was driving farther than this job paid coming into chicago from northern indiana on weekends.
One weekend my buddy that lived three block away showed up late for his shift and michael (gm) derided him hilariously - What your problem? You live 5 min away and you always late! You friend drive in from other STATE and he never late!
We have a few mid grade places where Im at and I like it all, but will search for that experience the rest of my life.
tertiary, I think every young man should do s stint in a food service position, it really makes you appreciate the work and help you learn to be a better man.
Todai was a fairly big chain. But one by one they started losing their locations. Might have been franchised. My wife wanted to go to an Asian buffet while in Portland, Oregon years (maybe 12-13) ago but we had no idea where. Looked on the internet and we got that there was a Todai, but it seemed kind of expensive. Then did a little digging around and found some place across the river in Vancouver called Taste of Asia. Small place in a tiny strip mall, but the owners were very accommodating and the price was less than $10 for dinner.
Tomi at its peak was three locations - Eastridge in San Jose, Union City, and Concord. The place in Union City is now called something else. Another weird one was California Buffet - I think in Sunnyvale. My group from work drove about 10 miles to get there. And one of my coworkers was a Japanese expat and I saw he just piled on sushi even if it wasn't that great.
Concord has (or had) several Asian buffets. There's one that's boarded up right now. Another one was less than $10 if you printed their coupon.
As for Chinatown in SF, absolutely it's hanging by a thread. The people who live there can't really afford the big restaurants. Parking is a pain (especially since there are tons of cars with disabled privileges parked on the street all day). The places to go are in the Richmond or Sunset - or perhaps Millbrae. One big dim sum place just closed, and I heard New Asia is going to close down for a while to build high-rise housing, although the restaurant is promised a new space in the development. The city bought the property before someone else picked it up and came up with another plan.
As for the discussion here, I guess sometimes authenticity is overrated. However, sometimes I've heard complaints that a place WASN'T authentic because it DIDN'T have Americanized Chinese food that the customer was expecting to find.
I see a "New York" style Chinese restaurant in nearly every strip mall in S. Florida. Is NY style any different from American style?
American style was typically derived from Cantonese cuisine. Specifically from the Taishan subregion. They had to adapt to many of the available ingredients. I'm not sure about NYC style. NYC has several Chinatowns now, although the oldest was in lower Manhattan that was settled by Cantonese immigrants. More recently they've received a lot of people originally from Fujian Province. The movie The Corruptor (with Chow Yun-Fat and Mark Wahlberg) was centered on the conflicts between the newer Fujianese gangs and the established Cantonese gangs.
But it would probably be some variation on Cantonese. In some ways I understand it's supposed to be more authentically Chinese than most Chinese-American cuisine.
The story was often about survival. There weren't enough Chinese customers, so they had to come up with something that would appeal to a wide variety of customers. That's how chop suey or egg foo yung came about. They're vaguely reminiscent of something that might be seen in China.
I could survive on American Chinse food but I'd be mostly eating egg rolls and fried rice with chicken. By the way, I know a place that has incredible egg rolls the size of human fists. Those are real jawbreakers.
Share the egg roll place- Ill do my best to hit it traveling.
Not anymore, NY old school chop suey houses were truly special.
Every strip mall has "New York" Style Pizza when in fact they do not.
I don't want to be responsible for personal injury. Should I go back there I will take a picture of their "egg rolls" and post it.
I like them. Actually most of the people I know who hate them came from Northern China and the further south in particular Hong Kong people I know have no problem with the American Chinese food at all.
Legend has it that this chow fun (stir fried rice noodle) is the hardest thing to make in HK and old time chefs judge you by how well you can make it.Not sure how this ended up here, but I'm sure it's going to be moved to a more appropriate forum.
That being said, I don't normally like Americanized Chinese food, although that doesn't necessarily stop me from eating it. Perhaps that comes from living in an areas where there's no shortage of regional Chinese cuisine available.
My favorite is dry-style beef chow fun from this restaurant in San Francisco Chinatown on the corner of Broadway and Powell.
