Guide to picking a Chinese restaurant

As anyone who knows me in real life knows, I dig Chinese food. A lot of Chinese food. So much so that I have become something of a connoisseur of it. And with that in mind, here is my guide to finding good Chinese food no matter where you are or what your budget is.*


1. What are they named? 
     This is important. A Chinese restaurant should be named something like "Golden Dragon", or "Number One Panda" or something. Under no circumstances should the place be named something like "Bill and Harry's" or something like that. If it sounds all-american or as if it's trying to be fancy, it's not good Chinese. "Yummy Cafe", "Lucky Restaurant", and "Jade Lake" are also good names. It should be significant, but border on word salad in English. 


2. They speak Chinese.
     A good Chinese restaurant is staffed by people for whom English is a second language. If they sound like native English speakers, your food will suffer a slight hit. If they speak Chinese, it will not. If they speak Spanish, French, or worse yet, Russian, Get out. Mexicans have no place making Chinese food, and Russians don't have a good taste for Chinese food. The French, from my knowledge, don't understand this kind of thing well enough. They're too highbrow.


3. The most expensive item on the menu should be thirty bucks or less.
     How you know you're not dealing with a "high-end" restaurant. Most good Chinese places are low-end or mid-end operations. If you wind up getting two dishes and paying over sixty dollars for your meal, something's the matter. If you have to pay a load for meals, then that means it's a high-end place and will charge you extra for food that isn't as good.


4.  Order noodles, eat them first.
     It is a rule of good food that noodles are almost impossible to fuck up. Indeed, in my life I have met but one person who fucked up noodles, and she refused to add the seasoning to ramen, serving it straight. Her other pasta was just fine. With this in mind, Chinese noodle dishes should, from my experience, be greasy and not very dry. If they are dry, or if they are otherwise sub-par, or fail to slide easily into one's gullet, there's a lower chance the rest of the food has been done well.




So there you have it. My first article here, and it's a guide on how to find a good Chinese place. Here's hoping the other articles go as easily as this.












*Void in China, obviously