Qballer wrote:Jae wrote:benji wrote:Jae wrote:I hate Outback Steakhouse. Least authentic Australian themed place ever.
You'd be surprised how many people think the blatantly standard American cuisine it serves is natural Australian cuisine. All the Australian themed junk on the walls and words are deliberately intended to mislead.
That just makes me sad. Nothing says Australia like an Alice Springs Quesadilla. A Mexican meal named after a city surrounded by desert in the dead centre of Australia. I think we have like 5 Mexicans in the entire country.
now you know how I feel about "chinese" food places like Panda Express and Pick Up Stix. I tried Orange Chicken for the first time at age 18 and I was confused at how fried chicken drenched in nasty sauce is Chinese food
Most anyone who recognizes the difference between Chinese food and Chinese-American food or knows any of the history behind it can feel that way. But almost all standard Chinese restaurants in the bulk of America are Chinese-American, like Panda Express. I like the places that have a secret menu for people who know about actual Chinese food. (I've known a number of these. There's one nearby Michigan St. that has to be half/half income off the Americans and the immigrant students who order off completely different menus. But they're almost always not in English.
)Not saying I don't fucking love Chinese-American cuisine though. Om nom nom nom nom. (But I do know people, many in my immediate family who can't stomach the stuff and only eat American (hamburgers, chicken, etc. kind of thing) or Italian.) Though it can be hit or miss depending on your location. That nasty Orange sauce might be fantastic at another place even if not "Chinese" traditionally.
Chow Mein isn't Chinese food either. Well, now it sorta retroactively is, but it came from the West and found its way back to China. General Tso's is considered by some to be similar in that regard among others.
Short version, for anyone wondering, is that Chinese immigrants adapted tastes and methods for commercial reasons with American tastes of the 19th century and that limited, really kinda "fast food" style, got ingrained and is considered Chinese food now. Italian food and a number of others, recently Sushi, have gone through similar things to where people don't even realize they're eating completely different cuisine systems than those they evolved from that have only a series of related ingredients or concepts and thus do the stupid thing where they proclaim "the best" or "real" is better.
One thing I like about the U.S. and globalization in general is that you can get those hybrid spin-offs, but still can get the "real" stuff in many places. Since I like Chinese-American I'm glad that it caught on to the point every podunk town of enough size in the country has a "Chinese" restaurant I can enjoy, but I don't have to travel to China to get "real" Chinese food, just need a bigger city and knowledge.
Plus I get to make jokes about those two or three Chinese restaurant supply companies that supply the menus and products and deliver it all in big trucks, which is why you'll see the same images and menu design with only minor customization at 75% of all Chinese restaurants. People don't even think of it as "fast food" or "franchised" even though it operates on nearly the same model as McDonalds except they don't share a restaurant name. I especially like the anti-fastfooders who decry how the food comes frozen or pre-prepared or is designed to be made quickly and uniformly, but don't realize the same truck supplies at least half the Chinese places in town, who also prepare your meal in a manner of minutes along similar methods. (And are usually even worse from a sanitary perspective as things like McDonalds have corporate codes with consequences for the franchisee on top of standard health codes.)
I am
over the only Thai place in parsecs that went out of business though. Which was probably more a consequence of the outside appearance than anything else, but we went there so much and knew of more "authentic" Thai places in a larger city and their dishes that they made a translated menu for us. (They made money off their Chinese-American food I'm pretty sure.) There is at least a Chinese place that has a large buffet that 98% of the customers use, so their menu actually has a few more authentic dishes on it.None of this excuses Outback Steakhouse though. Other than Dingo and Wallaby (caught by Boomerang) on a barbie, I'm not sure what Australian cuisine would look like exactly in the U.S. but I doubt it's a very good commercial enterprise. Now selling them the same food as T.G.I. Friday's and Applebee's but with different crap on the walls, that seems to be a very viable one.
