lol, i'm chinese and i've never heard of this sh*t till threads on atot
Ok, not trying to sounds like a jerk, but seriously how many of you of 'chinese dsecent' have actually been to every area of china or have known WELL a chef from every area of china and experienced allof thier different cuisines? Its like, if you live in one state all your life and pretended that the only realy american cooking was from that state, and the other stuff you hear about bust be 'asianized' or europenaized' My fmaily is Greek, and my grandfatjer owned his own Greek restaurant, however I nor he have epxerienced the full rand of Greek cuisine. Even in a relatviely small country like Greece, the menu varies from region to region. I believe that the General Tsaos Chicken, as Well as what we know as Orange chicken, and sesame chicken, and most of the deep fried with sweet sauces are variations on traditional Mandarin cuisine. I dont know this for sure, but after reading this thread last night, I had a chat with one of the cooks at my favorite little chinese restaurant, and he told me that much of what we have here is fairly traditional, witht tha names sounding a little wacky because of translation, and the names also vary from place to place for the same food, in order to bbetter market the stuff on the menu, but the actual food itself is mostly the same.
I believe that someone mentiond chinese food is leftovers all thrown together... maybe your refering to something like stir fry? it depends on the place and region of China.
I beleive the Majority of chinese Restaurants in the States are Hunan or Mandarin, because we tend to enjoy food from those regions....