Aug 14th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Endgame
I don’t want the world, I just want your half:
— Why do Chinese restaurants keep their best dishes hidden from white people.
— More on the secret Chinese menu.
— A grownup discussion on end-of-life care.
— Somebody doesn’t like Max Baucus.
— Socialism through the ages.
— Might the Rockets achieve mediocrity without any big-time scorers?
For some reason Pittsburgh reminded me of “Ana Ng”.
36 Responses to “Endgame”
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August 14th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Max Baucus superhero? I only discovered Max Baucus’ blocking the ambulance run with his Montana sized SUV.
http://stateofthedivision.blogspot.com/2009/08/whos-driving-ambulance-blocking-suvs.html
August 14th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Asian restaurants (not just Chinese) have good reason to hide some of their menu items. Americans have a predetermined notion of what Asian food is, and it’s pretty different from what you actually get in Asia. Many chicken dishes in Thailand have chopped up bones in them. That wouldn’t just turn some people off, it would create a liability problem. And I don’t think Americans would be keen on the roasted cockroaches, steamed silkworms, or deep-fried grasshoppers, either. At a Vietnamese restaurant, how many Americans want steamed morning glory stems or expect a baguette with the meal? And how many Americans expect to get the whole chicken (head, feet, innards, etc) when they order chicken? How many Americans at a Cambodian restaurant want cobra soup or cobra venom in their whiskey? If you put these things on the menu, most Americans would be turned off. Those who aren’t turned off already know to ask.
August 14th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Chinese restaurant owners are nothing if not shrewd business people. They’re not gonna try to sell tripe, chicken feet and stinky tofu in suburbia if they can’t make any money from the handful of people adventurous enough to try the things.
Chinese people will start serving white people real Chinese food when white people stop being afraid of (1) meat on the bones, (2) eating “guts”, (3) “spicy” food, (4) eating family style and (5) asking nicely for a Chinese menu. It wasn’t so long ago that “Chow Mein” and “Pizza” were exotic foodstuffs in this country.
If you really want the “authentic” stuff, ask nicely, and the wait staff are more likely than not to give you the “real” menu. Don’t be afraid, they don’t bite and don’t usually have a “deep-seated hatred of white culture”.
August 14th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
I went to a TMBG concert last year and man, I was so disappointed that they didn’t play Ana Ng. I guess they’re sick of playing it? They still brought out Birdhouse in your Soul.
August 14th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Chinese restaurants do not hide items from white people. They hide them from people that cannot read Chinese menus. Some of my favorite Chinese restaurants do not even have English menus at all.
August 14th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
For some reason Pittsburgh reminded me of “Ana Ng”.
If you make a hole in a globe from Pittsburgh it will come out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
However, Pittsburgh’s most recent sister city is DaNang, Vietnam. So there’s your explanation.
August 14th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
“Pittsburgh’s most recent sister city is DaNang, Vietnam.”
You know, that actually seems pretty appropriate. They are both cities that tourists usually skip, but shouldn’t.
August 14th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
My only regret from my divorce is that I didn’t get my husband to write down the Chinese names of dishes he ordered in Chinese restaurants in Houston. They didn’t have insects or bones. I had a bowl of soup I’ll want in my next life. Authentic, top shelf Cantonese cuisine is absolutely superior to the stuff you get swimming in grease and gravy on the American menu.
August 14th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Kuznicki says of his Taiwanese friend: “Naturally, he ordered in Chinese…
I have no idea why, but it always rankles me when I hear someone say he/she speaks “Chinese”. Chinese is a language family, consisting of 13 different sub-languages, many incomprehensible to the others. It would be like saying someone speaks “European”. And that’s just silly.
I don’t know if Chinese people share my peeve, but on the face of it, it would seem to evince an ignorance of Chinese culture (again, imagine saying to an Italian that you have a friend who also speaks “European”).
If Kuznicki is saying things like this (and/or similar things), it’s no surprise he’s given the gaijin menu. To paraphrase fostert (#2.), if you know what you want & how to ask for it, you don’t need no estinkin’ menu.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Once I was at a Chinese restaurant with some Chinese co-workers. I ordered some twice-cooked pork, and the waiter asked me if I wanted it “Chinese style”. Foolishly I said yes… what arrived was some wide strips of undercooked bacon fat. So I don’t really want to know what is on the secret menu, I’ve had enough of that already (then there were the chicken feet, the not-cleaned prawns with head and legs attached, the plain roast chicken thigh hacked with a meat cleaver…)
August 14th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
In the Baucus link, what’s Wax-man holding in the last panel?
August 14th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I have him holding a ladle with a small chunk of meat in it for the Blue Dog, and a big bag presumably filled with goodies for various other people/animals/heroes.
August 14th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I have no idea why, but it always rankles me when I hear someone say he/she speaks “Chinese”…I don’t know if Chinese people share my peeve, but on the face of it, it would seem to evince an ignorance of Chinese culture.
Do you speak Chinese? I would think that, if so, you’d know the answer to this. Anyway, I think this pet peeve is particular to you; other Asians, who unlike Americans know a great deal about Chinese language and history, don’t care. Koreans and Japanese, whose languages partially derive from Chinese, talk about “speaking Chinese,” just as Americans do.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
“Why do Chinese restaurants keep their best dishes hidden from white people”?
Just white people? What, do black people get access to the secret menus?
August 14th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
It’s ridiculous to reduce Chinese cuisine to insects and raw meat. There is some very fine food—especially seafood—in Chinese cuisine. If you ask the dishwasher, you are likely to get peasant food.
August 15th, 2009 at 12:18 am
You’re asking us?
How the hell would we know?
August 15th, 2009 at 12:23 am
I believe the quote is
“I don’t want the world, I just want your house”
August 15th, 2009 at 12:25 am
“It’s ridiculous to reduce Chinese cuisine to insects and raw meat.”
I don’t think anyone was. I was just pointing out some dishes that would turn people off if they were on the menu. Which is why they aren’t. And some of the more exotic stuff is really good. I like fried grasshoppers and get them whenever I’m in Bangkok. Cobra soup is great when done right. Even chicken feet are surprisingly good. Natto, on the other hand, is pretty dreadful, and I doubt many waiters want to explain what it is.
August 15th, 2009 at 12:48 am
One of my favorite games in San Francisco was to look at Asian bakeries until I found one where they spoke no English and order something that looked unusual by pointing. Usually enjoyed myself, although once I ate a bit of egg that seemed to have come from some bird that became extinct in the sixteenth century.
For what it’s worth, most Americans I grew up around have pretty sophisticated ideas about Chinese food (yes, I’ve eaten chicken feet and sort of enjoyed them), so that there’s a bit of legitimate offense to be taken at some of the comments above.
August 15th, 2009 at 1:11 am
What #3, Ben said:
Chicken feet, guts, fertilized eggs — if the exotic stuff in Chinese restaurants were on the menu in English, any restaurant whose business depended on American clientele (and I’m including all Americans, black, white brwon) would some be out of business once the word got out about Duck bills. Americans are notoriously squeamish about their food and how it is prepared.
August 15th, 2009 at 3:05 am
I actually very rarely eat in Chinese restaurants, so have no opinion on the question, but I happen to have here a menu from a pretty popular place in San Gabriel called the Big Three Seafood restaurant, so here’s some data:
English: Boiled Beef Tripe
Chinese: Boiled Beef Cedar Leaves
English: Duck Feet with Spicy Sauce
Chinese: Spicy Immortal Palm (of hand)
English: Chicken Feet w/Thai Style
Chinese: Thai Style Phoenix Claws
English: Turnip & Pig Skin w/Fish Ball
Chinese: Turnip Pig Skin Fish Eggs
Anyways, I was at at OK Donuts this morning and a customer kept telling the Cambodian lady, with a seemingly friendly manner, that she was a “narizona,” which the Cambodian lady couldn’t make sense of, although her Spanish is generally much less crappy than mine. I was thinking of splaining to her, but it seemed sort of insulting to me. Just sort of wondering about it, and it seemed related sort of (I guess I could have made a slicker segue if I’d mentioned that they have a Chinese shrine in the corner, so I guess they’re probably ethnic Chinese, like most of the people working in Donut shops around here).
August 15th, 2009 at 3:14 am
@steve
“So I don’t really want to know what is on the secret menu, I’ve had enough of that already (then there were the chicken feet, the not-cleaned prawns with head and legs attached, the plain roast chicken thigh hacked with a meat cleaver…)”
Chicken thighs and shell-on shrimp are exotic? You sound like a squeamish little fellow.
@Shine,
I didn’t know that the bills were the part that were eaten, but I saw a fair amount of boiled duck heads (along with duck wings and eggs) in China.
@Gene,
“once I ate a bit of egg that seemed to have come from some bird that became extinct in the sixteenth century.”
Preserved eggs (including “thousand year old eggs” and salted duck eggs) are pretty popular. They tend to be shelf stable (creepy huh) and some turn translucent blue-green-black.
August 15th, 2009 at 3:56 am
Godoggo says: I actually very rarely eat in Chinese restaurants
And you live in San Gabriel? That does tend limit your choices somewhat. Kind of like living in Boyle Heights and not eating in Mexican restaurants.
Actually, not a good analogy. The Mexican restaurants in Boyle Heights go out of their way to serve their Gringo clientele. The Chinese Chinese Restaurants in the SGV, more than a few of them do not have English language menu’s.
August 15th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Yeah, well, the only reason I even knew the Big 3 was because I Chinese guy was treating…
August 15th, 2009 at 9:34 am
I have no idea why, but it always rankles me when I hear someone say he/she speaks “Chinese”. Chinese is a language family, consisting of 13 different sub-languages, many incomprehensible to the others. It would be like saying someone speaks “European”. And that’s just silly.
A big reason this is so, is do to the politics of the sinophone world. Both the PRC and the KMT party in Taiwan want to play down regionalism in China and therefore promote mandarin to the exclusion of other Chinese languages. After Hong Kong came under Chinese rule there has been a big push for everyone to learn mandarin as well.
August 15th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Ask for the special Shanghai menu in Min
August 15th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Puppies and kittens boiled alive. Nuff said.
August 15th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Regarding all those regional languages, I’ve noticed, for example that a SE Asian ethnic Chinese might say he doesn’t speak “Chinese,” but upon further questioning, you find out that, well, yeah, he speaks Chaozhouhua. I don’t think they generally think of all those regional languages and dialects as “Chinese” except Mandarin and maybe Cantonese.
August 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I hope Brad Nelson is still reading this, because I have something very important to tell him: No, it’s definitely “I just want your half.” I just hope I wasn’t … too late!
August 15th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I always wondered what the female vocal was saying at that point in Ana Ng. Thanks!. My LP player didn’t have the audio quality to make that understandable.
August 15th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
At a Vietnamese restaurant, how many Americans … expect a baguette with the meal?
The ones who know Vietnam is a former French colony would.
August 15th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
At House of Nan King in San Francisco you order the not-on-the-menu dumplings. They’re tasty.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
“I have no idea why, but it always rankles me when I hear someone say he/she speaks “Chinese”. Chinese is a language family, consisting of 13 different sub-languages, many incomprehensible to the others. It would be like saying someone speaks “European”. And that’s just silly.”
Maybe you should tell that to the Chinese. One of synonyms for “Mandarin Chinese” is “Zhongwen”, which literally means “Chinese Language”.
August 16th, 2009 at 3:40 am
#32 restaurant tips from tourists are always appreciated
August 16th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
At least out here on the west coast you can order anything in most Chinese restaurants. I frequently order items without ever bothering to check the menu.
E
August 17th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
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