I just finished up on reading Global Cuisine from the “Road Trip” issue of Hyphen Magazine and I was very surprised to see that the “Greatest Chinese restaurant outside of China” is not located on the California west coast. I wouldn’t be surprised to know that San Francisco does not have one because I’ve basically been to almost every fancy Chinese restaurant, in addition to the less decent-looking ones. I thought it was pretty interesting to know that places like Peru has Chinese restaurants. I can totally agree with the belief that Chinese food is no longer exotic due to the emergence of other Asian cuisines. But then again, exotic can be defined in many different ways. Personally, I don’t see Vietnamese and Chinese food as ever being exotic because they lack the thrill of experiencing different food due to their basic ingredients. Indian food, Thai food and maybe even Filipino food seem to retain this exotic feel because they put many herbs and spices into their food compared to Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese. In fact, the sweetness that some main courses of these food can be seen as exotic to me because most main courses are salty in any genre of food. I think it would be awesome if Hyphen did an article on Asian food that may seem strange to American appetites.
- Terence Nip
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