5 Americanized Dishes That Chinese Chefs Will Never Order

These are the dishes first- and second-generation Chinese restaurant kids know not to order.

When I was younger, I was made to feel really embarrassed that I had to help out at my parents’ Chinese takeout restaurant in suburban Long Island, New York. I hated that I was a living stereotype, escaping into schoolwork at the tables in the waiting area to get out of tasks like stapling boxes and bagging fried noodles. I resented that I had way more daily parental supervision than my classmates who lived the freer lives of latchkey kids. I was mortified that kids didn’t want to sit next to me on the bus because my winter coats smelled like old fry oil.

Moreover, I felt provincial that, no, I’d never had chicken nuggets before I’d started school, cheeseburgers were a special treat and pizza was for parties. And therein lay the rub.

Because, although those are far from “healthy” foods, popular American culture indoctrinates in us that Chinese food is inherently unhealthy. But that’s simply not true. What is true is that a typical Chinese diet is very veggie-heavy and that many of the dishes Americans think of as quintessential Chinese are actually Americanized Chinese dishes adapted to Western tastes out of necessity. A mainstream market for “authentic” Chinese food simply didn’t really exist when I was growing up.

Legendary “Iron Chef” Ming Tsai told HuffPost, “When Chinese food was Americanized, the ratio of protein to vegetables changed. Americans want more protein, less vegetables. [Yet] the reason Asian cuisine is so healthy is the higher ratio of vegetables to protein in their dishes because protein is much more expensive” and scarcity made meat more of an accent than a showpiece.

However, “in the ’80s, we didn’t think much about the consequences of our consumption,” explained Justin Lee, the chef and co-founder of Fat Choy, a New York Times-recognized “kind of Chinese, also vegan” restaurant in Englewood, New Jersey. It’s was just how our people ate.