jenny8lee

It depends what you mean by "authentic?" There is Chinese food in America that is what Chinese people in China eat (Pro tip: if there is jellyfish on the menu, it's a restaurant for Chinese people). However, much of what is served in the 50,000 Chinese restaurants in America is not recognizable to Chinese people in China. So dishes like beef and broccoli, chop suey, egg rolls (different from spring rolls), General Tso's chicken and fortune cookies are more native to the United States than to China. It's part of a phenomenon called indigenous foreign cuisine (burritos and spaghetti and meatballs belong to this category).

So sesame chicken and sweet and sour pork have analogs in Chinese, but look pretty different. No pineapple in the Chinese version of sweet and sour pork!

American Chinese food is a recognized cuisine in and of itself. They serve it in South Korea, in the old Green Zone in Baghdad, and even in China itself.

Also note, there is also Indian Chinese food, Korean Chinese food, Jamaican Chinese food, Peruvian Chinese food, Mauritian Chinese food, etc. Chinese food evolves everywhere.

Yes. Definitely. There are regional variations of Chinese food everywhere.

Some examples:

New England: Fried rice in New England tends to be brown, while it's yellow in Miami and lower down. In Boston, dumplings are called "peking ravioli" (Italian roots). They serve Italian bread sometimes instead of rice (that confused me so much when I first saw it).

We saw cajun Chinese food in New Orleans — Sichuan alligator and sweet and sour chicken.

And interesting dishes like chow mein sandwich (carb on carb) in Southeastern New England, and the St. Paul sandwich (egg foo yung on white bread) in St. Louis.

General Tso's Chicken is more prevalent in the East than in California (because that has territory taken by Orange Chicken).

Plum sauce vs. duck sauce is common in different areas.

The other weird thing is that Chinese take out boxes in the western half and the eastern half of the U.S. are oriented in different directions, with the wire running down long way vs. short way. Only in Houston do they mix. Even though 2/3 are made by the same company (Foldpak).

Starbucks is awesome for its wifi. I love the fact that you can go there in essentially any American city and get a place to plug in your laptop to do work.

Random fact. The first time I went to North Dakota, in 2003 for a reporting trip, it was the only state in the country without a freestanding Starbucks. It was very interesting being in a pre Starbucksian society.

I really like Western Chinese food, or Muslim Chinese food, which features lamb and Middle Eastern influence. There is a dish called liangpi, which is available at Xian Famous Food, which is a chain in New York City. It's a spicy sour cold "noodle" dish that is unlike much of what Americans are used to.

So Americans don't like to be reminded that the food on their plate ever swam, walked, flew, or ran. So they don't do animal body parts. Everything looks like it arrived via immaculate conception in a styrofoam tray in Whole Foods.

In contrast, China and countries that food cultures that extended way before refrigerator, embrace the totality of the animal: cow tongue, duck blood, pig hooves, chicken feet. In part because of scarcity and needing to get the most out of animals.

The original General Tso's chicken way back when actually had the skin and bones intact in it!

So you actually have this interesting phenomenon where American prefer white mean in chicken, and Chinese find it bland, while Chinese like legs and feet, which are cheap in America. So you have smuggling efforts that get these animal parts from the West and try to import them into China, often on boats via Hong Kong. Here is a a weird example of one gone wrong