Chinese Restaurants: What's their deal?

jimba

Are most Chinese restaurants owned by a group or single owner?

They mostly all have the same menu, even if the individual design is different.
They pretty much all charge the same.
And I can't imagine some Chinese family deciding to come to Ireland to open up a single restaurant.

Do the staff get hired locally or are they brought over from China.


When you think about, it all seems very odd.

Anyone have some info?

MissFlitworth

Watched a documentary on refugees from Vietnam ("boat people") who came to Ireland in the late 70s and a lot of those people ended up opening 'Chinese' restaurants & takeaways here. It's something you see the world over though, when you emigrate somewhere and you face difficulties getting employment because of language skills or visas, being self employed and opening a food based business or another services type business is a good option, for you and your family. Dunno that it seems odd at all really. Same or similar menu is down to the tastes of the people who buy their food and similar prices is because there's a lot of competition and if the foods the same why would you pay more to buy it in one restaurant over another.

L1011

Rather a lot of the owners, chefs, staff etc are Vietnamese or Malay rather than Chinese - not everywhere, of course. Often if a restaurant has "Chinese & [some other ethnicity]", they're the latter.

Menus are down to what people want to buy and also what wholesalers sell to the food service industry.

seamus

The "chinese" food we eat here bears only a resemblance to actual Chinese food. This would be down to regional preferences, but also down to things like the availability of ingredients and spices in the local area. Things which are too expensive or too rare to get a hold of would be removed and substituted.

Over time this would cause traditional dishes to have a regional variance, which then becomes adopted across the region as suppliers either recommend ingredients or supply ready-made tubs of sauces, etc to various restaurants.

The sameness of the menus likely comes down to what customers want. If someone's favourite is chicken balls in sweet & sour sauce, then when they go to another chinese restaurant they'll probably order the same thing. And if the restaurant doesn't carry chicken balls in sweet and sour sauce, they won't go back there. So demand from customers is what will drive the menu. As a vegetarian my choice tends to be limited, so I can tell you from first-hand experience that menus do in fact vary across restaurants, but there are a core set of popular sauces and dishes that virtually every restaurant has.

H3llR4iser

Essentially what Seamus said. If you go to a different country, you'll find out that the "Chinese food" there is different than what is thought to be "Chinese food" here. For example, most Chinese restaurants in Italy won't have "chicken balls" at all, while they'll have more fish based entrees.

Also, anything that looks slightly like a soup here (e.g. curry based dishes) tend to be much drier, as it is the local preference.

Mind you this happens with all foreign cusine; An Italian restaurant in Ireland has stuff on the menu that simply doesn't exist in Italy - think about any pizza with chicken, or the infamous "spaghetti bolognese".

the beer revolu

If you applied the same thinking to Irish pubs would you assume they are all part of one group?
The vast majority of Irish pubs sell an identical range of products with very little price variation.

They are, in a way a group: a cosy cartel of IVF / VFI backed up by the Diagio/Heineken duopoly who make no bones about attempted price fixing and heavy political lobbying.

squonk

I'm not sure that the pub distinction quite nails it. Most chineses do make their own version of popular dishes. A chicken satay won't taste the exact same in each and every Chinese the way a pint of Heineken will across pubs for instance. What is common is the ingredients base. Having spent many evenings browsing around a local large chinese food store that caters to the trade, you can see that a lot of the chilli/plum/soy sauces can be bought in bulk sizes os restaurants all likely use the same common stock of commercially avaialable sauces. That in itself will ensure a lot of uniformity in common dishes however the particular way the dish is cooked can very from place to place. I'm a szechual Chicken fan myself and most places seem to prepare this by lashing in some chilli sauce and a bit of cornflour with some other bits and pieces. One one or two places did I ever get szechuan chicken with actual scechuan peppers in it which makes the dish worth having. I'd guess that szechuan pepper is a bit pungent for the average taste bud hence why chilli is substiutured instead.

BaZmO*

squonk wrote: »

I'm not sure that the pub distinction quite nails it. Most chineses do make their own version of popular dishes. A chicken satay won't taste the exact same in each and every Chinese the way a pint of Heineken will across pubs for instance. What is common is the ingredients base. Having spent many evenings browsing around a local large chinese food store that caters to the trade, you can see that a lot of the chilli/plum/soy sauces can be bought in bulk sizes os restaurants all likely use the same common stock of commercially avaialable sauces. That in itself will ensure a lot of uniformity in common dishes however the particular way the dish is cooked can very from place to place. I'm a szechual Chicken fan myself and most places seem to prepare this by lashing in some chilli sauce and a bit of cornflour with some other bits and pieces. One one or two places did I ever get szechuan chicken with actual scechuan peppers in it which makes the dish worth having. I'd guess that szechuan pepper is a bit pungent for the average taste bud hence why chilli is substiutured instead.

That typo really made me giggle.

CJhaughey

I was talking to a guy from Donegal once, he had been to China to discuss some business.
I asked him what he thought of the food there and he reckoned that the Chinese in Killybegs was much better than the food that he got in China.
The regional variations in a country the size of China and with their population is mindblowing.
Northern China eat a lot of wheat based food, the south has mainly Rice.
In between is a whole lot of people and cuisines.
Chinese Takeaway food here bears almost no resemblance to food in China.

the beer revolu

CJhaughey wrote: »

In between is a whole lot of people and cuisines.
Chinese Takeaway food here bears almost no resemblance to food in China.

AFAIK "Chinese" food here is mostly based on Cantonese food.

silverharp

when the Italians came here first they setup restaurants but then realised the peasants just wanted fish and chips so they served their market. "chinese" restaurants here are in the same boat, cheap food big portions leave feeling bloated.

MissFlitworth

Peasants, eh?

K.O.Kiki

H3llR4iser wrote: »

[...] that simply doesn't exist in Italy - think about any pizza with chicken, or the infamous "spaghetti bolognese".

I work with an Italian and he knows what Bolognese is.

Shenshen

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I work with an Italian and he knows what Bolognese is.

Ask him if he'd ever eat it on spaghetti, though

Bolognese sauce exists in Italy, but it would be considered incompatible with spaghetti. You'd need a pasta that can hold the sauce better, such as spirelli, penne, conchiglie, etc.

Slaphead07

Shenshen wrote: »

Ask him if he'd ever eat it on spaghetti, though

Bolognese sauce exists in Italy, but it would be considered incompatible with spaghetti. You'd need a pasta that can hold the sauce better, such as spirelli, penne, conchiglie, etc.

Bolognese comes from the north (well Bologna) and spaghetti comes from the south. Given Italians insular attitudes to food they would never meet.