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Comment by dpark | Hacker News Reader

> In an era when (white and co) americans devour all kinds of ethnic cuisines, including raw sushi, all kinds of indian, thai, etc. I find this article bordering on the absurd.

The palate differences are real. I (an American) eat "ethnic" foods regularly: Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Hispanic, etc. I generally love ethnic foods. The exception is sweets. There are a few ethnic sweets I've had that I like, but by and large I've found, e.g., Indian and Chinese sweets to be unpleasant. Some of them I find to be nearly unpalatable. Others just taste odd.

I doubt I'm the only person with this experience. Lots of "ethnic" foods have been modified to fit the American palate (see General Tso's Chicken), and exposure to ethnic entrees also does not imply much exposure to ethnic sweets.

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Is there a large palate difference? Even many Indians agree that their sweets are too sweet.

That can be fixed though. For example, take gulab jamun, drain off the syrup and replace it with old monk rum. Suddenly it's an alcoholic bittersweet delight rather than a blast of sugar.

And Chinese sweets don't differ that drastically from American ones - they are usually less sweet, and incorporate a few uncommon flavors and textures (red bean, green tea, glutinous rice), but they are actually surprisingly close.

You are restricting the list of Chinese sweets to those limited to Western tastes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasma etc. The things put in Chinese jellies and sweet soups are far more diverse than your list which I would not even call uncommon since you can get red bean or green tea whatever at a middle american strip mall buffet. Try a Chinese dessert shop in Chinatown. Personally, I have difficulty enjoying most of the items as dessert.

When I'm in the states I regularly get sweets from a Chinese bakery in Chinatown. I'm often the only white guy there so I think it's reasonably authentic - Chinese friends have confirmed this.

There may be weirder options (any vegetarian suggestions?) out there somewhere, but they don't seem particularly common even in Chinatown. Most folks seem to order similar things to me (albeit carnivorous).

China is much bigger than Chinatown -- and then there are lots tons of regional differences, say between Hong Kong and Hainan. Even in places like Singapore, Malaisia, etc with multi-million Chinese communities you can find much more variety in foods & sweets than what's available in Chinatown.

Somewhat relevant background on history of food in Chinatowns in different times and places in this BBC radio program, which I recommend.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0380gh0

The authenticity of said bakery may be true but one needs to go to a chinese dessert cafe or similar for a full menu of chinese traditional desserts. Various soups, congee (porridge), and jellies, and gelatin cakes. Again as someone else mentioned, it is not just the ingredients (coconut is very common) but the amounts and textures. Cashew nut soup is an example, and probably quite accessible.

Speaking as someone (an American) who has lived in Shanghai for several years, I find the authenticity of the concept "Chinese dessert cafe" pretty questionable.

I'm not sure what you mean? I literally just ate at one in Hong Kong, and last week saw several in Taipei...

I'll take your word for it. I've never noticed such a thing. There's street food all over the place, sit-down restaurants are common, but dessert is vanishingly rare outside of foreign restaurants. The closest thing I've seen to a dessert cafe served waffles. :/

EDIT: I have confirmed that stores exist selling chinese sweet pastries. I'm happy to call this a win for you. (I also got a note saying Guangdong is known in China for the local prevalence of sweets, so Hong Kong would be especially likely to have such a local tradition.)

One person I asked listed 纽约芝士蛋糕 ("New York style cheesecake") as an example of Chinese dessert, so there's that.

>One person I asked listed 纽约芝士蛋糕 ("New York style cheesecake") as an example of Chinese dessert, so there's that.

Yeah, not even close, there are such chinese places (with sweets etc), but "New York style cheesecake" is not even close to what they sell.

"New York style cheesecake" is just something Chinese eat in westernized places -- so that would make it an example of Chinese dessert the same way McDonalds would be an example of Chinese food.

Hasma is very expensive and reserved for special occasions. It's like saying that American desserts incorporate gold leaf and Tahitian vanilla beans.

Source: I ate hasma. It was sort of like tapioca but harder to justify.

It's not that expensive. You can get hasma dishes at a dessert cafe for 15 CAD. Definitely higher end. But it was just one example to counter green tea and red bean. My point still stands.

Eh, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. It at least seemed to be a common item on the menu at many of the mid-range restaurants I saw in China.

I'd say that the sweetness is not the primary difference. It's the uncommon flavors and textures specifically in combination with sweetness that are the big difference. e.g.Cardamom and sugar are not a combination that my taste buds understand. Objectively, there is no reason that sweet cardamom tastes bad to me while sweet cinnamon tastes delicious, but subjectively there is.

For Chinese sweets, the ones I've had were really not that sweet at all. They were mildly sweet and just odd flavors and textures. e.g. Gummy and barely sweet was just not appealing. Others are just boring to my taste. At Chinese buffets there are often a selection of desserts that I can eat but don't care to because I don't enjoy them enough for the calories.

In fairness, I have not interested a bunch of my time trying to find new ethnic sweets that I like. I have them mostly when co-workers provide them and I feel adventurous (or less frequently obligated) enough to try it.

As someone who's married into a different "ethnic" family, the palate difference (at least for us) is incredibly wide on both sides. I can't really stomach most authentic Chinese food, and especially can't deal with the flavor and texture of the desserts.

Likewise, my wife's family can't handle traditional midwestern dishes, nor traditional soul food well at all.

That's just been my experience of course, so I'm not claiming it's indicative, but it's actually the hardest part of our marriage (which, is a good thing, I think).

Oh no, I was just introduced to gulab jamun, and now you're telling me I can add alcohol?

What's old monk rum, though?

Edit: Looks like it's an Indian rum - with good reviews, completely unobtainable in Australia.

In my opinion it's the finest rum in the world. A heavy drinker I know told me it isn't - it's only the finest rum under $100.

(In the US I can get it at a few places for about $15 - either Indian St in Jersey City or Curry Hill in NY - and most liquor stores in India sell it for a similar price.)

Ouch - look at the markup! http://bharattraders.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info...

May have to wait til I'm back in NA.

On a tangent - try Vanilla Ice Cream with Old Monk.

Yum :)

Korean here. I have no difficulty enjoying savory dishes from all around the world, but I just can't stand the ridiculous taste of American candy and mass-produced ice cream (Haagen-Dazs being the only exception).

I guess it's much easier to adapt one's palate to foreign variations of meat and vegetables than it is to forget the taste of sweets that one grew up with.

Often people also have trouble with breakfast foods. There's often no rationale for what makes an "appropriate for breakfast" food except for what you've grown up with.

Breakfasts are extraordinarily diverse: breads and jams in France, cold meats in Germany, hot meat & egg etc. or kippers in the UK, [breakfast] cereals and juice or sweet pancakes/waffles in the USA.

Of course, breakfast cereal made it across the atlantic some time ago, and there's a lot of common ground in Europe. But it's still really quite remarkable in its difference - sweet vs. savoury, meats vs. cereals, hot vs. cold - such a range!

I haven't even touched on the other continents, because I'm afraid I'm rather clueless. Except perhaps kedgeree, which I now understand to have Indian origins (I thought it was French for some reason - probably just childhood association having first eaten it there).

... C'mon. Are they _really_ ethnic foods, or are they the whitewash/watered-down version, for well, you know, Americans?

Certainly e.g. the pizza you get in the US is not much like the pizza you get in Italy, and the Chinese food in the UK is not much like what people actually eat in China.

Not everyone lives in flyover suburbs without real foreign food. You should take GP at face value.

I've eaten in tons of places downtown and in fancy ethnic places in gentrified areas all over America. Even there the "foreign food" is watered down compared to its country of origin. At best it's close to the quality/palette of the touristy places of the original country.

The closer you can get is in some immigrant restaurants (dives etc) that only people of said ethnicity ever go.

I wasn't talking about gentrified/fancy neighborhoods. I agree with you there.

I was talking about the latter where it's definitely possible to find "authentic" stuff.

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