“not complaining about the price of the agnolotti that was last night’s roast that’s ground up”
I wonder about the same thing. Ramen/Noodle vs pasta.
i have nothing to back this up but it seems ironic how the ones complaining about expensive asian food are… mostly asians.
It’s not exclusively Asians. It’s everybody including Asians.
My theory in regards to Chinese food is that places that are more skilled and charges more can’t sufficiently differentiate themselves from places that charge considerably less. High end French and Italian cuisines can easily differentiate themselves from a typical bistro or trattoria through intricate plating so you don’t have to be knowledgeable to tell that it’s at least very “different”. With Chinese food, take a stir-fried or peking duck, they’ll essentially look the same whether you get them at a hole-in-the-wall or any place that charges more. Ergo, to the average diner, what’s the point of paying more when they can get the “same thing”, at least perceptibly so, at a crappy joint for much less?
On the other hand, nobody’s out there educating the masses on what makes these ethnic food “worth it” unlike the plethora of French and Italian sources and programming out there.
both you @moonboy403 are absolutely right @PorkyBelly and fellow asians are the biggest culprit. for the asian complainers…Its complicated but i think it comes mainly that most asians grew up with home cooking so they know the material “costs” to make it…but where this falls apart is they don’t value/appreciate how much work and SKILL their moms/dads/grandparents did to make their favorite comfort food.
Like I said in another post, once that older generation isn’t around to make those dishes anymore and they don’t have the skills to make it themselves…they’ll appreciate it and won’t complain about asian food being too expensive—and by expensive, I mean fair market value, not cheap. another reason is they have been going to immigrant run restaurants, priced for immigrants in the 80s, 90s…so they are used to that price structure.
but even among asian cuisines there is a heirarchy of perceived sophistication/value: Japanese>chinese/thai/vietnamese.
I agree–education and mass media is huge factor @moonboy403 How many countless shows and magazines and cookbooks are devoted to western cuisine as opposed to asian cuisines so that people, even asians, can develop as sense of how much things are worth.
TBH, that’s why we’re hosting that LA foodbowl event about noodle pulling–to show case how much skill is involved in chinese/vietnamese food. I’m not trying to say one is better than the other, but I would challenge any accomplish pasta/ramen maker to try hand pulling noodles and see how much skill is involved. Hopefully they will leave with an appreciation and wonder why a bowl of hand pulled noodles costs $8 and plate of spaghetti, is $16 and ramen $14.
I didn’t understand the point of expensive Indian food until I went to Indian Accent in NYC. The plating does indeed play a role, as the dishes are composed dishes rather than just a curry in a bowl. There are some modern interpretations / techniques going on as well that contribute to it, but it’s fair to say that the food being different than what you get at a hole in the wall helps to justify the cost.
it seems to me that the factors involved in the perception of things chinese goes well beyond food and as such are also beyond the scope of this board. but ignoring some of these factors doesn’t really help. respect is clearly an issue.
i hadn’t thought that ever consciously, but as soon as i read that, i saw the validity of it and i associate that with each country’s history in respect to its history with the western world. japan was ultimately beaten when the US dropped a couple of atom bombs on their country to end WWII, but the western world has had a very different history with japan and japanese immigrants vs. other asians. i’d suggest that japan was treated as more of an equal than any other asian country while other asian countries were subjugated by the west. japanese immigrants got sent to internment camps during WWII, sure. but chinese immigrants were thought to have eaten rats, been restricted by law to do women’s work, been forbidden from having spouses in the US, etc, england introduced opium to china as a means of subjugating the chinese. south asian countries were all colonized by european countries and immigrants are viewed more like refugees. this is reflected in how the US views their cuisine.
that’s not all of it, but ignoring it would be folly IMO.
I think part of the reason that white people didn’t eat upscale Chinese food is that the more you spend, the more “odd” the food is to Western palates. Sea cucumbers, intestines, abalone, shark fin soup, and fish maw cause hesitation.
Part of that has to do with Japanese immigrants being relatively affluent compared to those mentioned ethnicity. Here’s some data from Pew Research. With that in mind, these immigrants have the capability to spend more and the market responds and churns out more relatively expensive Japanese food since they have right audience.
I do wonder how much this is a part of the issue. My parents are willing to spend $ on Chinese, but it has to be something new and different (and generally has to involve a decent amount of seafood that might be prepped in a way that middle America might not enjoy…).
Worth checking out?
Kind of how I felt after going to Cinnamon Club in London. But I have not been to another high end expensive Indian joint since.
Agree. There may be a subconscious belief that family style dishes are less fancy and worth less than individually plated dishes. Even the imperial style Chinese banquets were shared plates. (Upon second thought, maybe it was all for the emperor alone?) Or, at least looked like they were. The dishes were definitely not effete tweezer bites.
i would check it out. I’ve been for lunch and dinner. Lunch was better value.
yeah, i watch die hard at least once a year; one wave came in and tried to buy up LA but there were second/third generation japanese already living here then whose parents had been gardeners, etc. there are probably more 3rd-4th generation nisei than all other asian americans combined and their parents were not all that affluent
it’s true that asian cuisines prize contrasts of texture in a way many western palates find… off-putting, but kaiseki.includes relatively “odd” stuff yet americans seem to have embraced it readily and are willing to pay upscale prices for it. and they’ll spend for sushi and fugu.
definitely. I think the issue is for Chinese cuisine - rarity of the ingredient itself is more what drives the price than actually quality of ingredient. Amazing chinese food can be made with higher quality ingredients with the same recipe.
To me that’s how you truly elevate a cuisine, it’s by people understanding that better quality ingredients in the same style of food we normally eat can lift of a dish we are used to to new heights.
But that’s hard to change the perspective for many people.
To a degree, yes. But that’s only because the Chinese themselves, have little appreciation of labor intensive dishes so these dishes are now a rarity in restaurants because there’s no demand for them.
This quote from the article:
" He wanted shumai , he said, “but they didn’t have it; they only had truffle shumai . My main gripe about it — it’s not like I’m above putting black truffle in shumai — but there’s definitely been this movement in Chinese restaurants where they’re trying to use Western luxury ingredients like foie gras, truffle and caviar, but sometimes they’re just throwing it on top.”
I sometimes get this sense here on FTC that people almost insist on that for “fine dining.” I think that article is quite good.