Chinese Food U.S/Canada

I've noticed a big difference in Chinese food even just in the United States. I'm from Missouri, and there cashew chicken is the big thing at most Chinese places. The chicken is breaded there, and it's basically just drenched in sauce, with green onions and cashews. Now I live in North Dakota, and most places here don't have cashew chicken. The ones that do, it's totally different than the kind back home. Here is has a bunch of vegetables, the chicken is not breaded, and the sauce is really thin and watery, instead of the thick sauce from back home. The Chinese place is usually the second place I want to eat when I go back home to see my family. Sonic is the first.

My favorite foo to eat is chinese food. I like to try all the chinese restaurants that I see. I have found that no two restaurants make the food the same way. Sometimes they use a different kind of sauce or some use different vegetables. Which I would guess should be common. I mean the way that I make meatloaf probrally is different then the way that my neighbor makes it. I would assume that everyone has their wn way of making things. I have also seen where one dish was popular in the town I use to live in it isn't as popular in the town that I have moved to so I have either explained what I am looking for. Or I once brought the restaurant a sample of what I wanted. They have now added it to their menu.

this does not suprise me at all. Lol, a few years ago i had the lucky experience in visiting China, i travelled to Shanghi and traveled on to Beiging and then on to Hong Kong. I had been brought up on Chinese take aways in the UK and had quite a shock, lol. Food in China, certainly in the places I visited, is absolutely nothing like the Chinese resteraunts here in the uk. Mind you, I also ate Chinese food in New York also and found that totally different again. I guess it is different local markets that determine what food is produced and sold blessed be

Believe me I've noticed this. I grew up in Michigan where we mostly had Cantonese style Chinese Food. Then I moved to Florida where the majority of it for a long time was Mandarin Chinese Food. Mandarin is very different and I don't care for it. We now have some that have the Cantonese style in and I'm happy for that but for a long time I didn't bother to eat it down here because of how it tasted. There are many forms of Chinese food based on the different areas of China so one has to know what type one likes before going into the restaurant to order.

I find it amazing that chinese food varies from area to area, even within the U.S. Everywhere I go, the same type of food is quite different. We have sweet and sour chicken around here though too. I think it mostly is based on the taste of the people that live in the area as to how popular the foods are.

I'll be the first to admit, I ahve no idea what styles goes to what Chinese food place, I didn't even know there were different types, I always just thought it was Chinese lol. When I lived in northern Illinois there was a place called Happy Wok, I loved this place and ate from there whenever I could. They had the best sweet and sour sauce to go with the chicken and they has this bar-b-que pork that was cut into strips.. good stuff. Sadly when I moved to Oklahoma I have not been able to find anything that comes even remotely close to the great taste I experienced up there. This could be explained by the different style of Chinese food that I did not know exsisted.

lol..this is funny. Chinese food anywhere else in the world isn't genuine chinese food. It is usually modified to suit the palates of the people of that particular place. So, in India you'd find almost all Chinese dishes being spiced up. Earlier, I had this notion about how Chinese food should be. But when I was working in a Chinese company, I saw that their food was in no way similar to what we called Chinese! Later on I read somewhere that even in China, different regions have different styles of dishes! I've tried Chinese in different places and all of them were different! Even within India, it's different in different states!!!

Chinese Food is different at each restaurant that you can eat at around here. I find Cantonese Style Restaurants to be very bland and much prefer other styles. And every restaurant seems to have some things that are the same while they will through in something different. Even in China Town in San Francisco, There are hundreds of restaurants and not one is the same.

I have to taste both of them.I know some chinese people and they tell me that here in Italy chinese food is different form food prepared in China. I'm a fan of chinese food!!!

It is quiet interesting and strange that the same quisine tastes so different. Actually it depends on the cook very much. I have tasted chinese food in different restaurants in my srea, and each platter in the different restaurant tastes slightly different from the other.

Oh man... Yes I have found that it is quite different in Australia. Compared to what you get at even a mall food court Chinese place here American Chinese (Especially in the South) isn't even ethnic tasting. You can get some quite nice dishes here and theres more stuff that isn't fried. The staples are different as well. Instead of crab puffs and egg rolls and sweet n sour shrimp and beef and chicken there is usually only sweet n sour chicken. They use very little seafood except in fried rice though they do have fried king prawns at places that aren't buffet. You get omelet, spring rolls, which are quite different to eggrolls, prawn chips and things like that. At least you still get fried rice! I think the reason it's that way is because Australia is close enough to asia to end up with more accurate Asian restaurants like Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc... instead of a mishmash of the lot being called "Chinese". I rather enjoy Australian Chinese food. It was one of the only things here that didn't make me ill when I first moved over. Crap, now I want chinese.

I love chinese food and i bet that the dutch chinese food is way different than US and canadian chinese food ^_^

There are many type of chinese dishes style. I suppose the dishes have to depend on what region of china did the cooking orginated from (for example hainanese chicken rice and cantonese chicken rice are two different styles of chicken rice) and what's popular in the current country (tends towards saltiness in Aussie, tends to be more spicy and pungent in South East Asia). Also people like to create new tastes and styles. So it might happen that sometime after the dish left the homeland, it was altered. If you go to south east asia, the chinese food sometimes incorporate malay styles. You start getting dish there that uses "belcaan"- a kind of shrimp paste.

Chinese is one of the foods that I love to eat most often. I have noticed that different places have a different style to how they prepare the food. One might use a garlic sauce while another might use a brown sauce. There are many different ways that each restaurant prepeare the food. Sometimes it does irratate me because I have a certain craving and I go in to get the food that I crave only to find out that it is prepared differently at that restaurant. I know this is what makes a certain restaurant stand out for some people but I am still disappointed.

As with most anything, if there are different ways of making something it will happen. Different cooks, different ingredients, different owners, all can have an impact on the final product that you end up with on your plate. These are just a few of the reasons that make this world so wonderful and exciting. Here is an example. My wife and I go to a larger city to our north about 30 miles away. Sometimes we will eat at a Chinese restaurant called Hong Kong Buffet. There is one thing that we have noticed there, that we have not seen in any other Chinese restaurant, they call it Hong Kong Beef. If this food became available in our town, we would probably eat before we went up north. I look at it like Mexican food. I have eaten Mexican food in Texas, Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Rhode Island. You can get some items that are completely different in one place than another. I think this is good. We learn to appreciate different things the more we get exposed to them. My two cents on this subject. Does anyone else have an opinion?