Quote:
Originally Posted by patfla06
We had lunch at Kung Fu Chef ( Southern Trace ) today.
I’m from NY. so really picky about Chinese food.
We loved Kung Fu Chef!!
Husband got Gen. Tso’s chicken with rice & broccoli
and egg roll. I got Chicken LoMein with a spring roll.
Both were delicious!!
Egg roll good (I didn’t like it because I think it had pork)
but it was good. His Gen. Tso’s was sooooo good.
My LoMein and Spring roll were delicious.
I’ve been bringing Chinese food from Tampa where I
previously lived and Kung Fu was even better.
We will be repeat customers.
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Forty years ago I was living in Beijing and eating Chinese food at nearly every meal. I loved the food. I’ve also had wonderful Hong Kong style Chinese food in Hong Kong. But there are a lot of food districts in China. In my opinion, south Chinese cooks don’t really know how to cook Chinese food from other areas, even if they are very good at making their own food. I know New York has some outstanding Chinese restaurants, but definitely not all of them! I’ve had mediocre meals in Chinatown. I’ve also had excellent dishes from tiny restaurants in small towns. It really comes down to whether the place has a good cook at that time, not to how fancy the place is. (And a lot of the cooks in Chinese restaurants may have real Chinese cooks, but that doesn’t mean they were trained as cooks in China. Many were not, but instead learned to cook here because they needed a job.) Some dishes, like General Tso’s Chicken and Moo Goo anything and LoMein anything and spring rolls and potstickers (remember Chop Suey?) may taste good, but they are popular American dishes, and not really Chinese. If that’s what you order, I’m not sure I can trust your review. But maybe I’ll try it.
You may think Chinese is Chinese, and where a cook learned doesn’t matter, but what really matters is what the cook grew up EATING. For example, a cook from Shanghai may know a lot about how many Shanghai foods should taste and so know if he is getting that taste when he cooks, but if he hasn’t spent a lot of time eating Szechuan food, he may make it without knowing how it is really supposed to taste. It’s a bit like going to, say, Applebee’s (where I’ve never eaten) and ordering a Philly Cheese Steak or a Hot Pastrami on Rye or Gumbo or even New York-style Pizza. The food may arrive at the restaurant in a single serving plastic bag frozen or is made by a chef who has never tasted the real thing. Consider that in New York a thousand delis make hot pastrami on rye, yet some are much better than others. Same with pizza. Ever gone to London and ordered a Big Mac at McDonald’s? (No, I haven’t either, but I hear that McDonald’s food in England and France and Japan, etc., don’t taste much like what we are used to. That’s partly because the cooks don’t know what the dishes are supposed to taste like.)
06-15-2023, 07:14 AM
