Interesting Piece on LA Chinese Food By Non-Food Writer

Huh, I don’t recall seeing the term junghwa yori before.

My understanding is that Korean-Chinese cuisine came from Shandong via the very active sea trade with Incheon rather than from, as you might guess from looking at a map, Liaoning or Jilin.

What? No Mexican-Chinese! While I am no expert or even a novice, this writer missed one of my favorite cultural combinations. I suppose somebody from LA might not want to frequent Chinese places in the Imperial Valley.

Well I think Cachanilla in Pomona is the most proximate restaurant of that genre. I’m thinking that the Mexican Chinese restaurants in Chula Vista might all be gone now, forcing us to drive down to El Centro or Calexico.

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if he was trying to be all encompassing also missed indian chinese.

Dallas seems to be the real hotbed for Indo-Chinese food, but NY and Cerritos have their share, too. To me, Indo-Chinese food in the US isn’t that much different from Americanized Chinese food, with an odd Indian ingredient or seasoning thrown in.

There’s sort of a family resemblance, in that both were developed by Chinese cooks to please local palates, but Indo-Chinese is its own thing. People from India often have strong opinions about whether American Indo-Chinese places come up to their standards. I think the ones around here usually if not always add Chinese-American dishes to try to appeal to more customers.

http://www.bamboo-gardens.com/locations

What about Little India (or Oak Tree Road) in NJ?

As an Indian who grew up with (Indian) Chinese food as special occasion food–my parents grew up in Calcutta and the Chinese restaurants of the 1950s and 1960s had been their special occasion restaurants–I have to say that it surprises me that a love of Indian Chinese food survives an encounter with the real thing. Other than chicken corn soup, I can’t think of a single Indian Chinese dish that I loved in my childhood, teens or early 20s that I have any interest in eating now. On all my trips home, Indian Chinese is the one cuisine I have no interest in revisiting.

That Munchies article is wrong to describe Indian Chinese as the only cuisine eaten all over India: South Indian food of the idli-dosa-vada-sambhar variety is even more ubiquitous and wide-spread and has been for a long time.

a pity it lists restaurants that no longer exist.

and he neglected all non-asian fusions.

I have friends who appreciate the real thing and it surprises me that they still crave the gloppy steam-table Chinese-American dishes they grew up with.

He mentioned Chifa (which does in fact exist in LA) and American-Chinese, which he broke down into Hawaiian, San Franciscan, and Canadian, though he does not seem to be aware of the differences between east and west coast Chinese-American.

What other non-Asian fusions are you thinking of?

cuban for one

Did chinas comidas ever exist in LA? I encountered it only in NYC, where it has been extinct for a while.

There used to be a couple in LA, one in Koreatown and another in Pico-Union, but they’ve been gone for maybe 10 years. Also seen them in Miami.