Do Chinese Restaurants Outside China Offer Authentic Food?

Owing to its rich quality and low price, Chinese Cuisine has become so popular all over the world that just about every town claims to have its own ‘authentic’ Oriental bistro. The big cities, needless to say, are home to several such restaurants that compete with each other and lure visitors with their traditional Oriental interiors. They claim to offer ‘authentic’ and ‘traditional’ food and popular delicacies from China. But, do these eateries cropping up outside China really offer genuine traditional food?

Well, they do not offer ‘authentic’ regional food, but definitely a ‘good and healthy’ western version of the original cuisine. They offer a traditional cuisine that has been modified to an extent to please the taste of the local customers. For instance, the authentic Chinese cuisine differs significantly from its Western versions, which are again very different from the European and Indian versions. These versions are so different from the original cuisine that they are now considered as totally independent cuisines, such as the Canadian-China Cuisine, the American-China Cuisine, or the Indo-China Cuisine.

Most Oriental restaurants in the West offer an explicit ‘westernized’ food menu with some variations, which again depend on their location and status. For instance, the food restaurants situated in the downtown have a menu different from that of the ones located on the outskirts. Similarly, the food menu of an elite restaurant is totally different from that of a fast-food one. The dishes that are featured in most food menus include different types of Chow mien, like beef chow mien, shrimp chow mien, chicken chow mien, and roasted pork chow mien. Another western version of the Chow mien is ‘Lo Mien’, which is more or similar to the ‘original’ Chow mien.

Thus, food restaurants in the West or in any other country outside China offer good-quality food, which is not ‘genuinely Chinese’ but just a ‘genuinely tasty’ version of the traditional oriental food from China. Be it the original regional food or just a local version of it, the delicacies listed on the menus of these Oriental restaurants are not only cheap, but also very healthy and certainly not to be missed.