Where can I get good Chinese food? How come Chinese food in Thailand is not good as other countries?

[Sojuncoke]

Such Chinese foods as the following....

Shrimp in Lobster Sauce

Pan friend noodles with Beef and Bok Choy

[Sojuncoke]

Hell where can I find good Americanized Chinese food like Panda Express?

[David48]

... and you have said it in one.

You want a style of cuisine that the Fast Food companies made popular ...

If you want 'real' Chinese food .. go to China.

... but you probably have never done that ...

[Sojuncoke]

... and you have said it in one.

You want a style of cuisine that the Fast Food companies made popular ...

If you want 'real' Chinese food .. go to China.

... but you probably have never done that ...

No the first two dishes ARE NOT fast food cuisine. I guess you never been to a real Chinese restaurant that serves those dishes.

[ultimate weapon]

I hate american chinese food. You guys need to remember that china is a huge country so there are many different styles of cooking chinese food. Singapore's chinese food is good and unqiue.

Hainanese chicken rice. Lord that's magical. American chinese food is mostly by one group of chinese i think the cantonese. Why do they have fortune cookies? It's like fish and chips and they put in say baked salmon and potato wedges instead of chips.

[ultimate weapon]

i'm actually hoping to eat peking duck and shark's fin soup. Add in some steamed or fried garoupa. Yup that is the hi-so chinese food.

[Sojuncoke]

Seems like there's no hope but to open one up

[IsaanUSA]

I researched this before, but was mainly looking for dim sum in Bangkok. You would think of all the Chinese ancestry there would be more widespread Chinese cuisine in Thailand.

I gave up after finding such a few amount of choices outside of Chinatown. If you open a restaurant Soju, I'll go eat there. Fortune cookies would be a nice touch

[Sojuncoke]

I researched this before, but was mainly looking for dim sum in Bangkok. You would think of all the Chinese ancestry there would be more widespread Chinese cuisine in Thailand.

I gave up after finding such a few amount of choices outside of Chinatown. If you open a restaurant Soju, I'll go eat there. Fortune cookies would be a nice touch

I'll even import some American Sriracha sauce

[96tehtarp]

You can get good Chinese food everywhere in Thailand.

It's sometimes tricky to find it in some provinces because you may not recognize it for what it is. Outside of Chinese-tourist areas all the dishes have been renamed and flavoured to the Thai taste. Ask for a menu in Chinese if you have a friend who can read it.

When searching out Chinese food it helps to specify which regional varieties you want. Thailand has Teochew, Hokkien, Hainanese, Cantonese, and Hakka. Chinese food is definitely here.

The noodle dish in the OP is Ranna Mee Leung Gop. The shrimp and lobster dish is also Ranna served with rice. Although in Thailand these dishes will probably taste different from their counterparts in Hong Kong or Guangzhao because they have been adapted to the Thai taste, just like American Chinese food has been adapted to the U.S. taste. That might be why you think Chinese food in Thailand isn't as good as what you were expecting.

In Bangkok get off the rapid transit at Hualompong and wander the sois and main streets at night. There is lot's of really unique Chinese food around there ranging in price from 50 baht to 5000 baht per bowl (shark fin soup). A very short taxi ride away is the neighbouring area of Pahurat (India town) likewise there are many authentic Indian restaurants big and small serving mostly to the Thai Indian community.

Try they following searches in your favourite search engine:

"dim sum" site:nationmultimedia.com

"dim sum" +bangkok site:nationmultimedia.com

Use your imagination and replace site:nationmultimedia.com with other possible sites, It's not allowed to post links to The Bangkok Post, or other forums like Trip Advisor on TV, but you can figure that out for yourself.

Good luck, and happy eating. I love Chinese food too.

ps. If you ever go south of the border you'll find a fantastic world of Chinese food in Malaysia!

Edited January 29, 2014 by 96tehtarp

[Rooo]

Moved to international food.

[David48]

Seems like there's no hope but to open one up

Are you in Thailand at the moment ... 4am and a need to start talking about USA style Chinese style food

... man you must be wanting it bad!

[ultimate weapon]

kway tiao is a chinese dish. It's sold everywhere. It's a chinese word. It's not in mandarin or cantonese but if you have any common knowledge you will know chinese aren't just cantonese or mandarin speakers and their cuisines.

[thaisaregrt]

the trouble is it is thai chinese food, I have yet to find a chinese restaurant in the streets that actually cooks authentic chinese food and not the thai variation(apart from a couple of 5 star hotel restaurants). Even the so called really good chinese food shops are bad. I love chinese food(real) but it is not possible to find it here because thai people just have to make it thai chinese food which sucks. Dim sum, is not a problem but try to find good stir fried anything in cantonese sauce, a good sweet and sour, all the basic chines we eat elsewhere in the world are just not here and the sauces are terrible. In Australia I had a little chinese shop around the corner from my place and the cook was chased by many of the big restaurants as soon as he landed in Australia, he was brilliant. I would just go there and let him chose the dishes to cook because they all tasted great and he cooked them the same way he did in China, he would just ask me if I liked such and such and then he would make a dish up with the ingrediants and use varying chinese sauces etc. People would travel for miles to go there, it doesnt matter what country you cook in you should always cook each style of food to the actual original recipe, not play with it so that it becomes a half breed of food that is unrecognizable just to suit local tastes, otherwise it is just another thai dish and no longer a chinese dish. I cook my aussie dishes the same way I did in Australia and refuse to change them, strangely enough the thais really like them because they arent thai.

Edited January 30, 2014 by thaisaregrt

[H1w4yR1da]

The best Chinese and Indian food is in the UK.

[wirat69]

96TehTarp has already mentioned the Sam Yan district in Bangkok... but don't overlook Yaowarat for authentic Chinese cuisine. Neither area sells the real thing on the cheap, or on the street. Sam Yan has great Rice Soup, if you are early enough. For Dim Sum, the best is a little shop on Pracharet Bumphen about 300 metres east of Ratchadapisek. MRT exit opposite. Pracharet Bumphen is an extension of Pracha Songkhro running from Huay Kwang market... but io you are not in Bangkok....

[Suradit69]

While the following threads are in the Pattaya forum, they do discus Chinese food in Thailand. There are a few other people equally obsessed.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/699938-best-uk-style-chinese-restaurant-in-pattaya/?p=7355166&hl=%2Bchinese+%2Bfood

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/694770-dim-sum-found-19-baht-per-plate/?p=7260445&hl=%2Bchinese+%2Bfood

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/687493-foomanlou-major-new-authentic-regional-chinese-restaurant-opens-in-central-pattaya/?hl=+chinese%20+food

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/609362-new-chinese-restaurant-in-pattaya-ting-tai-<deleted>-off-3rd-road-north/?hl=+chinese%20+food

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/679639-good-chinese-restaurant-central-pattaya/?hl=+chinese%20+food

[spidermike007]

I too find it ridiculously hard to find good Chinese food in Thailand. The Four Seasons Restaurant in the ground floor level of Siam Paragon is excellent, if a little on the pricey side. Many other Chinese restaurants I find are mediocre, and grossly overpriced. Not sure why the Thais cannot figure out how to do good Chinese food. They can do mediocre, but rarely good, and almost never excellent. I asked for a pan fried noodle dish with crispy noodles recently at a gourmet Chinese restaurant in Bangkok, and they could not do it. They gave me soft, soggy noodles, nothing like in Chinese cuisine, but rather exactly like in Thai cuisine. I explained if you fry it 30 seconds longer, the noodles get crisp. That did I get? Soggy. Were they open to suggestions? What do you think? Any recommendations in Bangkok, Pattaya, or Samui are appreciated.

[RtotheC]

Hell where can I find good Americanized Chinese food like Panda Express?

I want some General Tso's or some orange chicken so bad. It's been far too long.

[recycler]

Chinese food varies a lot in China too, they have so many local varieties, than when Chinese move abroad they also adapt their food to the local taste, market and available ingredients.

Many Chinese have been in Thailand for several generations, so their dishes got localized too. But in most cities you can find reasonable Chinese restaurants also called "Chinese Table" restaurants.

For Chinese food, just compare the spicy variations in taste of food from Szechuan province to the tasteless dishes you get in Taiwan, all Chinese food.

In Holland most restaurants are Chinese/Indonesian as there is a market for Indonesian food, but all spicy is avoided as most Dutch can't handle it so also not very original.

Chinese food outside of China is often Cantonese origin as they where the first to travel abroad.

[tonyja]

There is a Chinese new restaurant in walking street and it is a real Chinese good and the guy owner is a nice and cool person . Located right on walking street opposite U Chiangmai hotel

Sent from up to me from where it was sent

[unclueng]

I grew up in Chicago eating Chop Suey, Egg Foo Young, and Egg Rolls. I still miss it. Fortunately I learned to cook it at a small restaurant in Chicago. I make it at home is Angthong.

[Ajaan]

It would seem that what the OP and most responding posts are looking for fall into two categories:

1) Westernized (especially Americanized) versions of Chinese food, which you are simply NOT going to find in Thailand...surprised?

2) Cantonese dishes...this is also problematic, since the Cantonese are not well-represented among Thailand's Chinese, who tend to be dominated by the Tiechiou...for Cantonese, try Vietnam, where they exist in greater numbers (or...duh...Hong Kong or Guangzhou!!)

That said, there is also this problem: Thais are notorious for Thai-ifying any cuisine they get their hands on...one reason it's hard to find, say, good Vietnamese food in Bangkok (hint: try "Vietnamese and More," close to Suun Sirikit MRT stop! Excellent and authentic, run by a Viet-American and his Thai wife). Basically, if there's a Thai in the kitchen, unless her husband-of-origin-country-of-cuisine-in-question is standing over her, telling her exactly what to do, the food will become Thai. Guaranteed.

Here's an interesting addendum to issues raised in this thread, though...while I agree that the Thai version of kuy tiew is utter crap (it's much better in Cambodia, Laos and--of course!--Vietnam), there is one Chinese dish the Thais have apparently transformed for the better: Jok!!! A Chinese-American friend (who is quite fluent in Chinese culture and language [Mandarin] and has spent lots of time there doing research in Mandarin) told me, hands-down the Thai version of Jok is far, far more interesting and tasty than the bland crap one gets in China.

[fxe1200]

What a commonplace, are you running out of issues?

[ekamaihouse]

try Dragonxpress down Asoke. it's bastardised Chinese but good- Love the chilli chowmein and chicken manchurian Gravy.

For the guy who poasted about good dimsum - try Chock dee dimsum - have one on Ekamai

[slipperylobster]

Actually, the food you see in farang Chinese Restaurants is not the same as what is typically served in China. My mom ended up in the emergency room for 2 weeks there. So you see, the Chinese food being sold to tourists in all these other countries is geared towards "Western" taste. Most people would not be able to handle "real" chinese food.

[alfalfa19]

The only reason Panda Express tastes good is because it is saturated with sugar. I used to love that place, until I read the nutritional info in the store. Haven't been back since.

[fdbob]

... and you have said it in one.

You want a style of cuisine that the Fast Food companies made popular ...

If you want 'real' Chinese food .. go to China.

Well I've been to China and the food is rubbish compared to UK Australia USA

No the first two dishes ARE NOT fast food cuisine. I guess you never been to a real Chinese restaurant that serves those dishes.

[96tehtarp]

Actually, the food you see in farang Chinese Restaurants is not the same as what is typically served in China. My mom ended up in the emergency room for 2 weeks there. So you see, the Chinese food being sold to tourists in all these other countries is geared towards "Western" taste. Most people would not be able to handle "real" chinese food.

Good points,

The Chinese restaurants in Thailand serving Cantonese Chinese tourists serve authentic Cantonese food and mostly do so at outrageous tourist prices. If one thinks farangs sometimes get overcharged in Thailand see first what the Chinese get charged. Really good reasonably priced authentic tasting Cantonese food is not as easy to find as one would think. In USA, Canada, Austrailia, UK where there is a large Cantonese diaspora it can be much easier to find.

The Chinese diaspora in Thailand largely originates from Guangdong province so we have plenty of their Teochew cuisine here. If anyone would like to browse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teochew_cuisine it is interesting to see how many common and popular Thai dishes are not Thai at all. They are Teochew food.

I would prefer more Cantonese and Hakka dishes, and have resorted to preparing some of them myself. It helps if one knows what the real deal should taste, look, and feel like. It also helps to overcome the typical "Thailand NO have"! frequently stated by shopkeepers when I'm trying to source ingredients like Hoisin sauce. I resorted to making my own Hoisin sauce as well.

Please do have a look at the wiki link above, almost all the dishes listed are very common in Thailand. I was surprised how many.

Agree with the other posters who mention superior Chinese food in Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore,.. even Malaysia. In south Vietnam most of the Chinese speak Cantonese.

Cheers,

Edited January 31, 2014 by 96tehtarp

[Jingthing]

You know good sources?

Great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubanjiang

PLEASE tell me where to get authentic SECHUAN PROVINCE fermented broad bean chili paste sauce that is vital to making properly flavored Sechuan food and no you can't make your own?

Also fresh Sechuan peppers that were grown in China, not in Thailand, that still actually have some FLAVOR in them?

Yes I think the Chinese food culture in Thailand is pretty crappy.

Most U.S. cities are much better, even than Bangkok, and I'm talking the authentic stuff, not the "Westernized" and of Thai Chinese is just as bastardized as Western Chinese.

Edited January 31, 2014 by Jingthing