Finding an Authentic Chinese Restaurant
There are many Chinese restaurants around the world. They all look Chinese and they all smell of Chinese food. But the question is, are they all the same? At least, do they all offer authentic Chinese food? Probably not. It's so easy to assume that just because a restaurant comes with Chinese decorations and even Chinese music, then its food is automatically authentic. The sad fact is, there are many fakes out there. The good news is there are many ways of knowing whether or not a restaurant that claims to be Chinese is actually one.
The Language
One of the more obvious signs that a Chinese restaurant is not authentic is the language that majority of the people speak. Most of the time, these people will talk Chinese. Of course! This is true even when you walk into a Chinese restaurant of the site at fattyweng.com.sg/menu in a non-Chinese territory. At lunch and dinner, the population of English-speaking customers thickens, and that is because these people recognize these times to be opportunities to share a meal and bond with loved ones.
The Staff
Try asking the staff what their bestseller is. If they give you something that sounds Westernized, the restaurant is probably not authentic. But when the waiter starts talking about all these Chinese dishes with such expertise, then most probably, you're in for the real thing. The first people who should be Chinese in a Chinese restaurant are those who run it. If you find that the staff is composed more of European-looking guys and gals, you might be in the wrong place.
The Menu
Finally, if you're not in China, a Chinese restaurant of the site at http://www.fattyweng.com.sg will probably have both a Chinese menu and an English menu. If you see that the items are exactly the same on both menus, there's a chance that the restaurant might not be authentic. That's because real Chinese are usually hesitant to offer indigenous dishes to foreigners, because they think they wouldn't like them. So if you find that there are more items on the Chinese menu, then that's a sign that you could be in a real Chinese restaurant.
Of course, these are not absolute indications that a particular Chinese restaurant is authentic or not. But they do give you some really big clues. After all, the Chinese are some of the most pattern-oriented races in the world. If there's something that doesn't look, feel, sound or taste like Chinese, it probably isn't. For additional information, visit the site at http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/eat/usa/50-best-chinese-restaurants-usa-145368.
