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Comment by sotojuan | Hacker News Reader

My (and everyone's) local Chinese food restaurant has over fifty items in their menu. I'm very boring when it comes to food so I always get the same thing but I've always been curious about how many of the more esoteric (for a Chinese restaurant) items are sold and can be made on the spot - I've seen steaks and even Italian food in some menus.

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Generally speaking, this is a sign of a bad Chinese restaurant practicing what I call "matrix menus": you've got one array of sauces (soy, oyster sauce, teriyaki, sweet and sour, satay, etc) and one of proteins (chicken, beef, shrimp, salmon, tofu, etc). The menu is product of multiplying these, even when the result is completely absurd from the POV of the original culinary tradition (say, satay shrimp or teriyaki tofu) and everything is produced by grilling the chosen items on the same hot plate.

Chinese restaurants intended for Chinese people tend to specialize in a single style of dish: dumplings, hotpot, braised beef noodles, etc.

Who cares about whether it conforms to the tradition as long as it tastes OK? Should you also only be allowed to order a specific drink with each meal on the menu?

Chinese restaurants intended for Chinese people serve food that westerners don't like or find repulsive. "For Chinese people" doesn't mean better, it means better for people who're used to that and worse for people who aren't.

I guess it's just bad Chinese restaurants regarless of who they target. I personnally rank Chinese food as high as French one; these people really are genious when its come to cuisine.

Two of the best restaurants I ate at were in Taiwan (Kaohsiung) and almost everything was delicious. The only challenging dish for a foreigner was chicken-feet (jijiao) and century eggs (pidan). But I was warned beforehand by the people who invited me and I tried them for the fun. But hey, it was pricy for the country (25€/person) so I think the problem lies in the lack of expensive Chinese restaurant in the West.

Edit: if you want to try a good Chinese restaurant and do not mind travelling a bit, this one was very good: http://www.dfy.com.tw/

You may enjoy our foodblog of Shenzhen and surrounds @ http://gastronomicsociety.in/shenzhen/

This is a good Chinese restaurant, but you hint at a way to improve the menu. The menu should be a grid, properly displaying the matrix.

Large restaurants can pull off larger menus, but I agree if it is a small restaurant with a big menu some hacks are going on.

That being said in general Chinese restaurants tend to be able to pull off a larger variety of items with a smaller kitchen.

Yes, I can confirm that Chinese restaurants tend to be like that --- and especially when it's a local restaurant, I really like the fun of being able to think "what will I try this time?"

Another thing about them, that stands in stark contrast to the examples in the article, is that their menus also tend to be far less "designed" and more utilitarian; they're often not much more than tables of items with names/descriptions and prices. Here's an (very badly translated, but you can see the format) example: http://jasonandcodi.com/images/20070119/bigchunk.jpg

I actually prefer that style more, even before I read the article, perhaps because I have a subconscious and instinctive aversion to menus "Playing With Your Mind" --- which a highly stylised, price-deemphasising, limited-choice design seems to imply.

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