Dave Smith wrote:
>
> You have to wonder about the authenticity of Chinese food when every
> region of North America seems to have its own version of Chinese
> cooking. Around here the only difference between chop suey and chow
> mein is that the latter is topped with some crisp chow mein noodles,
> but if you order Cantonese chow mein it is made with the soft
> noodles, and if you order War Bar you get basically the same dish but
> with more spice, and some of the noodles are fried crisp. The
> rudest surprise I had was when I had Chinese food in Winnipeg about
> 30 years ago. Where I expected bok choy they used cabbage.

This is hardly a surprise if you're just ordering chop suey and chow
mein. Both of those are catchall dishes--simple stirfries of
whatever's handy. There's no specific list of ingredients. You'll get
bok choy if they have it, cabbage (usually Napa) if they don't, carrot
where the cook likes the color. Differences in noodles are partly
regional, partly again what's on hand. The crispy chowmein noodles are
pretty much an American thing.

But if you start ordering specific dishes with traditional names at
decent restaurants you will find a lot more uniformity wherever in
North America you are. Mapo dofu or ants climbing a tree or kung pao
chicken or hot and sour soup, to name a few that have been recently
mentioned on rfc, are pretty well standardized. Vancouver has such a
large Chinese population now that you can get the same dishes as are
served in Hong Kong.

-aem