I went to one Vietnamese restaurant all the time that was exactly like this. I ate there so often, one time when they were full they let me sit at the table with their son doing homework. I felt so honored.
Did you copy their work
Probably too high level to understand
Oh yeah, I know that place.
- constant stream of Asian students from the nearby university
- enormous menu, but somehow everything is made quickly
- additional staff are either family from the old country, or Latinos
- flyers in Mandarin (?) for things like churches, lawyers, and real estate agents.
Also the menu is huge but it's all composed from like 6 ingredients.
Close; it's usually Cantonese and not Mandarin. But yes, otherwise true.
My understanding is Fuzhounese is also very common to be heard in Chinese restaurants. Fujian cuisine is one of the more commonly exported forms of Chinese cuisine.
But let's face it a P.H.D. Quantum mechanics is probably easier than understanding the regional languages and dialects of spoken Chinese.
Yeah was gonna say the majority of Chinese immigrants who own restaurants in America speak Cantonese. Definitely true in SF an NYC.
I worked at one of these places for a while. My primary duties: Delivery, manning the phones, being a native English speaker. I gained a lot of insight about the Chinese takeout industry.
Also, you've never lived until you've seen the owner's wife march out into the lobby and whack the shit out of some hood rat with a giant spoon.
If it has 3.5 stars on Google, and 90% of the bad reviews are from people with white sounding names complaining of poor service.... You're in for some fucking delicious food from a proper family owned Chinese restaurant!
I judge my Chinese food by the condition of the place, if it's super fancy and well kept, not going to be that good. If the building looks like it's ready to be condemned, you damn well know it's gonna be the best Chinese food you have ever had
Also MSG is the best.
MSG is the king of flavour!
It needs to have those backlit pictures of the food above the counter where most of the color has faded away.
There is definitely an inverse relationship between health department score and how good the food is.
There's a wing joint by my house run by a Korean married couple. Instead of fries with your wings, you get Korean fried rice.
The food is amazing.
What's lacking is the yelling. These two act like every minute of every day is living out their dream and they're openly happy and appreciative of their fortuitous lot in life.
I love giving them my money.
I was going to one for a while where the wife never even asked my name when I ordered. Not even the first time. Yet, when I showed up, she knew. Same for every customer.
I used a seamstress for 20 years. Same thing.
Their excellent yet casual customer service is a thing of beauty. I'm impressed with their ability to do that.
A lot of it, honestly, might be just coming from a society where everyone hasn’t been ground down into a weird consumerist nightmare of uncaring existence.
Once you’ve experienced health care or restaurants or factories or more or less anything, in a location where people you are interacting with treat one another like interesting valuable human beings worthy of respect and human interaction, even if there’s some money involved, it starts to seem really weird the American way where everything has to be on a system and no one gives a shit.
It's generally pretty easy to figure out by the timing and also by context. You know you have three takeout orders up and you know approximately what the voices sounded like over the phone so you can take a good guess at matching a face to it. Occasionally we'd get it wrong on the first guess, but we'd always verify the contents of the order and phone number before forking it over.
And it's dead easy when you only have one takeout order open. The customer still thinks you're psychic. They won't know the other six bags lined up on the back of the steam table are all deliveries...
You also get to know all your regulars pretty quickly.
There was a Thai place I used to go to a lot. Hours were inconsistent and they would close for months at a time when the brothers who owned it would go back to Thailand from time to time. Best Thai food I've ever had. More impressive though was their customer service. Super friendly and they remembered everyone's names.
You could go there for the first time, not go again for months, and the next time you showed up they'd greet you by name and remember what it was you had ordered last time.
We have one of those and it's amazing. They even have a drive through. The only problem is I can't understand a word she says over the order speaker. It sounds like yelling from inside a tin can in a hurricane with a heavy accent. But honestly it wouldn't be the same without that.
And then?
No and then.
As someone who moves around a lot, finding a decent Chinese takeout place is extremely difficult. I'm constantly chasing the high of finding a restaurant that actually makes everything fresh (and had an authentic non-americanized menu). 95% of small town spots just sell the generic and tasteless Sysco meals because people just don't know how much better it can be.
Chinese is a tough one but those restaurants that are just a counter and a table or two in the back of an ethnic grocery tend to be where the really good food is.
I have better luck with Latin grocers in that regard. The only specialty Asian grocer in a few hours radius doesn't even have fresh produce. The only produce they do sell is old and literally has an H Mart label on it lol. They will sell you some black market kimchi if you ask though.
Found a hole in the wall Japanese restaurant when I was doing minor traveling for a doctor's appointment. There were 4 tables and 3 employees. One table was 3 dudes talking about how they don't understand their sons' obsession with Minecraft and another table was me. Anime themes were just blasting from a bluetooth speaker. Food was the best Japanese food I've ever had and was so goddamn cheap for what it was. I have to go back to the area twice in September and I intend to eat there again each time because it was such a good experience.
The variation I’ve seen at some of the places near me is that the husband and wife are both in the kitchen and the 10-year old is taking the orders.
Bob's Chow Mein
I love that show.
Bro you know it's good food when there is a 10 year old manning the register.
This is my favorite place (China Gourmet). $6 for one of those classic 4 compartment styrofoam boxes crammed so full of food it barely even shuts, and the food is the best shit you've ever tasted.
And you get a meal that is like two full dinner's worth for $7
Nothing like scooping a full serving of lo mein out of the container and it's still full afterwards.
Extradimensional takeout box.
went to a korean restaurant with 2 friends, one of them their grandma was the owner. and the grandma refused to let us pay for our delicious meal. absolutely refused. that was a great day
I have a place just like that around the corner.
The food sucks.Ours closed down because health inspector 🙃 it's coming back though thank the lord
I honestly don't care if a rat had it's brood on the food. That shit is delicious.
lemongrass beef with jalapeños extra spicy over fried rice can't be beat.
The one I encountered with the best food by far had a little like 11-year-old daughter who would take orders and work the register when things got busy. Maybe it is child labor but I feel like all the kids in the family were getting a solid upbringing.
It probably is technically, but also those same kids are sitting off to the side doing homework and studying when they aren't helping out a bit, so it's honestly probably a far better and more realistic system. Observing and also being a part of a business is invaluable at a young age. It is letting you be a part of reality and life and practical skills, while also learning and studying.
I miss the one near me that was like this. They were so cheap too. Their dumpling sauce was like crack. Wife screeching at her husband and then telling you to try the fish ball. They’d give you extra pancakes for your moo shu without asking. I didn’t realize how special it was at the time.
I used to live near one where neither parent spoke very good English, so they had their teenage daughter answering phones and handling payment while her five year old brother rolled around on a tricycle.
The amazing thing was she was better at taking phone orders than anyone I've had to deal with. Her voice was clear and easy to understand, with no pots clattering in the background. She would read the order back to me and then tell me how much it was going to be and when it would be ready. You'd think this is normal stuff but it almost never happens when I call in an order, which is why I use DoorDash instead.
10/10 would order from there again.
The best Chinese place I've ever eaten at is exactly this. My sister was on the son's soccer team and my mom gave the kid a ride to practice a few times. The parents paid us in our usual orders for helping them out.
What the fuck, you just described the local Chinese food place to a T, what is this wizardry?
I'm my city this is true, however, a new style has emerged: the two young people who opened a restaurant together serving a limited menu where every item is intensely good. I could post a pretty long list of these.
I deliver to Asian restaurants for a living. So speaking with some authority on the subject, this is absolutely true
That last part is too accurate lol. We sometimes visited our friend's family restaurant and he would always be at the counter doing his homework when we walk in.
And their books are reviewed by a lady with blue bracelets tattooed on her wrists.
Do chain Chinese places even exist outside of malls and tourist traps?
If they can't speak the native language, you know that it's going to be the fucking bomb
This perfectly describes a Chinese joint near me called Jewel's Noodles.
For a viết place you can tell because they keep the mop and bucket in the bathroom with the big ass container of that pink liquid soap.
Nah, the real Viet place is where the old men congregate to smoke cigarettes and play pachisi all day.
We have a local coffee and bahn mi place that had to buy a whole other set of outdoor tables and chairs to set up away from the other customers, chasing off the gaggle of old men gambling became too time consuming, so they just gave in and planned around it.
Never start a terf war with old vietnamese men, it never pans out.
It's true
Fun fact: this rule also applies to bagel shops (or at least the one in my neighborhood).
and donut shops!
Facts. There's a place near me that makes the best salt & pepper tofu and it's usually me and like 10 Chinese people there to buy trays of pork and duck. The first time my mom and I went, we saw the boxes of drinks and silverware stored in the hallway and one of the booths and the open kitchen and we knew we were in for a good time.
I lived near one may years ago in NYC. The young kids would often be outside playing.
Those are also the places where you get food poisoning.
There’s no good Chinese near me 😭
Me either. It's 300 miles to the nearest decent one, let alone great one.
