What Makes Chinese Food Different Than Every Other Cuisine

Sabrosura! Papi, Papi, Sabrosura! In the heights, in the heights. Oh my gosh, look at that. Even the photos look good here. What does Chinese food look like to you? Because I will tell you this, there are way more varieties of Chinese food in New York City than you would ever imagine and we are about to talk about them in this video. Andrew, this whole video was sparked by a hilarious conversation that I had with a Dominican friend because one day he was like, yo man, living here there's no good Chinese food. And then somebody pointed out, you know, Chinatown is just two blocks that way. And he was like, yeah, but that Chinese food is for Chinese people. And I had to laugh and really think about it and then I realized, Andrew, he had grown up in a Dominican neighborhood eating at like 10 different Chinese Dominican restaurants, so what was in Chinatown did not constitute Chinese food to him in his own mind and based off his own set of experiences. So, Andrew, that's why we had to categorize every type of variety of like Western, diasporic Chinese food you can find in New York City. So, of course, leading off, Andrew, we had to get into Chino, Latino food. Chinese Dominican, Chinese Puerto Rican, Chinese Cuban. This is the papi, papi, papi, Chino. I need the char siu with the mofongo. Guys, look at this food. This is Nuopalo. We actually filmed here for a video in the past. It's actually very delicious. I would say this is on the cheaper side. Look, they got crazy big henny coladas and all these drinks, but as you can see, they're gonna use yellow rice, chuletas, which is like pork chop. They're gonna put a little bit of lettuce and tomato on the side. Guys, clearly this looks different than other Chinese food that we've seen. I had never had Chinese Dominican food until this time living in New York City and I've got to say, Andrew, I was impressed. It's good. It's good. And there's a lot of levels of it, too. Nuopalo, still good, but this is the cheapest level. Alright. They got like two more levels of Chino, Latino food. Let's move up. Here we got this restaurant, Sabrosura. Sabrosura. Hey, papi, papi. Hey, Sabrosura. In the heights, in the heights. Oh my gosh, look at that. Even the photos look good here. Honestly, that looks good. I would say the chuleta with the shrimp fried rice is probably the number one item that I see people order at... Oh, Andrew, this is like a tostones cup. Yes. And actually, so the way that they make the tostones into a cup, they like mash it up and then they have to double fry it into that shape. And this is actually more done at these Chino, Latino spots, these Chinese-owned Latin American spots. This is where it's mostly done. And I would say a lot of the owners, they're actually originally from like Anping, China and then they went to Cuba and then from Cuba went to either DR or PR and then back to America. So it's not necessarily like the owners. I think they grew up over in the Caribbean or, you know, the Spanish-speaking areas, but they're not necessarily like native born to the DR. Guys, Maduro's tostones on the same plate as chashu, I'm telling you. This is what Chino Latino food is about. But David, we have the premier, most expensive Chino Latino spot in all of New York and it is actually very delicious. It is Florida Mayo. Oh man, yeah. This is... This dish is not that good to open up on but Florida Mayo is good, guys. Let me show you, let me show you. As you can see here, you got the Maduro's. This is a banger dish. Oh my goodness. This squid ink fried rice, this is really good. Elicioso. Yeah, so it has a little bit of Peruvian food because I think Peruvian food, to be honest, is kind of like the first Chino Latino fusion because it has a lot of deep, old Chinese and Japanese influences. Right, but I do think that the Chino Latino of Puerto Rico, Cuba and Dominican Republic, it's more recent. And that's why it's more like jarring in a way, but yeah, the Peruvian one is like maybe, I want to say like 100 years old. Oh my goodness. Okay, so that's almost like a aulam. And yeah, Andrew, Chino Latino has become such a popular genre in New York. They even did like a high end gentrified version of Chino Latino where you can spend like $100 a person, maybe $200. This is Cayo Dow in Chelsea. They have a couple locations. It's Cuban-Chinese. Of course, Andrew, the bougiest Chino Latino would be the Cubans. This is where Marco Rubio would feel comfortable. Hey, they got Cubanos here. Yeah, as you can see, obviously the inside is very well decorated. Very cool looking, right? And they do have chow mein on the wall. This is for hipsters. The bao's. Yeah, I mean, I would say that these are not fully like old school recipes. This is a, that's a Cubano egg roll right there. I believe those are yucca fries. Some sort of Chinese, Chino Latino paella. I guess, David, like what would you say about Chino Latino food, man? Like, because it's something that I feel like a lot more people need to try. Because it's actually really prevalent in New York City, but it's not really something you'll stumble upon unless you're looking for it or someone tells you about it. Yeah, I mean, I think my prior exposure was like Mexicali. And it wasn't even that I went to Mexicali, but people were just telling me about the Chinese Mexican food in Mexicali, which is across the border, obviously when we were living in LA. But as far as New York goes, I got to say, man, specifically Cantonese flavors and Dominican flavors blend really, really, really well at a level that, to be honest, I had never anticipated. I'm going to go ahead and say this is one of the best fusions of the Chinese Western diaspora. Moving on to number two, Andrew, this is probably the most talked about type of Chinese diasporic food in New York City on social media. Andrew, we're talking about, for lack of a better word, hood Chinese food. Hey, you got a hood of Chinese food. This is what you call it in New York City. If you say hood Chinese food, everybody knows what you're talking about. It's very saucy. You can always get your chicken wings over fries, which essentially chicken wings over fries at that point, to be honest, is not a Chinese dish at all, but it is cooked by Chinese people. The way the chicken is fried, though, it's like usually sort of almost using a wok. David, other terms for these type of spots are also just like Chinese spot. The Chinese spot down the block, this is what it is. And you get like your, oh, this. Oh, my. No, that's the high schooler plate. That you see high schoolers still get the four chicken wings. So you can get that, the chicken wings with the hot sauce and ketchup all over it. And then you can also get some dumplings. Yo, I've seen people even put like char siu red pink barbecue sauce on the plate of fries and chicken wings. Look at those spare ribs. Oh, guys, actually, I'm not going to lie. I know that this food is known to be very greasy or known to be have a lot of sodium. I guess this is kind of the stereotype. It probably does, but it does taste good. Yo, it's always interesting to see just like hella kids after high school just hanging out in a Chinese restaurant with like the big glass, you know, in the turnstile. They'll just be hanging out there for like hours at a time. Yeah, the bulletproof glass. Yeah, and they'll sell things like chicken nuggets, mozzarella sticks. Sometimes it depends on which neighborhood. They'll serve basically anything that they need to sell to the market. Yeah, anyway. Oh man, Google's hilarious. David, but this is just the cheaper level of kind of hood Chinese food because there's kind of like this, in a weird way, a fancy version of it. Yeah, and I think it's fairly recent that there's people who grow up eating hood Chinese food, but then you get money. You become successful in your life. You want similar dishes, but not in that setting. And you go to places like Say Less. So let me explain to you our perspective, basically. I know some guys in New York who grow up eating the hood Chinese food, right? And then they grow up, they get some money, and this is actually their next favorite style of Chinese food is coming to spots like Say Less. You can still get egg rolls. You can still get bok choy. You can still get these sauté skewers with the orange sauce and the peanut sauce. Right, a little bit more from Philippe Chow's, but yeah, it's like a fusion, but I still think they have beef and brocc here. Oh yeah, I forgot. I feel like the most popular dish is not beef and brocc at the hood Chinese spots, Andrew. It's actually chicken and brocc. But that's because at a cheap level, the beef usually doesn't taste that good. But once you pay a lot for beef, you know, it starts to get to be high grade. These are the iconic chicken sauté skewers. Honestly, if they look red and have the peanut sauce, that's how you know you are at a bougie Chinese spot. And by the way, Andrew, Say Less is where Kanye and Phileo Foreign debuted that New York City, please go easy on me tonight. Yeah, they literally played it over the speakers there. So yeah, definitely a very cool spot. Andrew, when we went there, we saw Saquon Barkley, maybe like five other influencers that had like a hundred thousand. But the rock shrimp and the sauté skewers, man, premier dishes. But honestly, I would say these prices, to be honest, as a Chinese person, they are probably overpriced in my opinion, but it still tastes good. Andrew, what do you take it out of? Mr. Chow, Say Less, Budokan, Hakkasan, Nobu, even though that's more Japanese. Let's just go through Philippe Chow's real quick. Listen, you can get Peking Duck there. That's a splatter of some Saquon Barkley. Oh, there's actually also this place called Brooklyn Chop House. Oh, let me bring that up. Oh, Brooklyn Chop House. It's a steakhouse that you can get xiaolongbao at. And I believe those xiaolongbao, you can even get them fusion, like cheeseburger style. Guys, these are the sauté skewers that everybody grows up with, man. Yo, that's crazy. Okay, see, look, you can get also like some wonton. Is that a xiaobing? Is that a like wonton? Oh, that's like a big wonton strip. Oh, this is a big bowl of lobster fried rice. Oh my gosh, is that a big steak? Is that a filet mignon on probably soy sauce noodles? Yo, yeah, you know what? The beef and broccoli at these spots would be like filet mignon and broccoli. Yeah. No, actually Andrew, they will still bring the lobster out to you at these spots in a very, very Chinese fashion. By the way guys, I think a lot of the chefs at these spots are Chinese, but the owners are definitely not, I would say the majority is. They got Peking duck. Okay, moving on, Andrew. Number three, we've got yips, and this is sort of representing cheaper Chinese food, I would say maybe for the older New York crowd that is potentially even, you know, white or Jewish, but you know, definitely not with any sort of like food restrictions based off religious. Yeah, and this spot, for example, is in the financial district, so clearly a lot of business people on their lunch break eat it. I mean, if you can see, this is kind of a buffet style. Actually, yips is one of the few restaurants that you go in and grab food and then you weigh it, so it's kind of like, it's not a buffet, but it's like a deli style. Oh yeah, it's just a per pound buffet. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I actually want to try this. Actually, I'm curious. Yeah, I mean, I would say that this is your base level, and then once you get to your mid-level, Andrew, you're starting to see what I like to refer to as true white people Chinese food. If you go back, you can see the chicken breast slices right here. You can see the large pieces of broccoli. You can see the snap peas, the whole bok choys, the imitation crab sticks. This is definitely sort of like, I don't know, I guess anglicized, possibly. Yeah, lots of cabbage, man. I think that I'm not going to lie, just have a lunch that white people like a lot of cabbage in their stir fry. Yeah, well, cabbage is an ingredient that is obviously very native to the British Isles, where a lot of people can trace their ancestry to. Look at the amount of sesame seeds they put on top. Yes. Alright, so Dave, if you want to go up in price point, of course, we have the premier PF Chang's at this level. This is considered the premier white people Chinese food. The chain, as far as the chain goes, PF Chang's is premier white people Chinese chain. Guys, this type of food is always going to have really thick dumpling skin for the most part, but honestly, I'm not going to front and say PF Chang's isn't good. I'm not going to front like I don't eat Panda Express at the airport, guys. Seriously. Yeah, I would say, you know, the interesting thing about Panda Express is it's a very, very mixed demographic in terms of who eats Panda, but PF, I'd say you start to get, you know, real like, hey, I'd like some PF Chang's. Yeah, I mean, I think the presentation here is just a little better. It has like the fresh, like, scallion shavings and stuff on top. Oh, actually, Latinos, I forgot, Latinos actually really like PF Chang's as well. Alright, David, so even at a higher level, if we want to go... Oh, this, those white strips, those white fried strips, also super Anglo Chinese food. What are they? Literally, what are these things made out of? You see them in the salads, you'll see them on toppings. Alright, but David, we got one more spot in this lane. Alright, it's even more expensive, and it's called Red Farm. Oh, shout out to Red Farm, RIP to the owner. I know it was owned by a Jewish American who had a very, very deep appreciation for Chinese food, hence the pastrami egg rolls right here, sort of a fusion between New York Jewish community and the Chinese community. They have the gigantic Tang Bao's, you know, like the extra huge soup dumplings. We have some other dishes. They make everything look like Pac-Man here. Yeah, as you can see here, you got the pineapple ribs, you got some really nice desserts. Still the sesame seeds. Hey, this dish right here, this is like grilled chicken over fried rice. I think a few things you're gonna see in white people Chinese food is usage of more European vegetables, for example, zucchinis, asparagus, like you said Andrew, cabbage, butter, lettuce. Can you hold the MSG, please? No MSG, please. Andrew, mandarin orange salads. I like them too, guys. By the way, when I'm calling out all these restaurants, there are absolutely ones that I like better than others, but they all have banger dishes. I would literally eat at all these restaurants, maybe not all in the same day, or like I wouldn't eat at them frequently, but... Yo, they fried the s*** out of those jowls. Oh, I think this is kind of the Asian salad you were looking for. It's done up a little differently, though it does have kind of your nuts and I want to say your mandarin oranges in there, too. Got some sesame oil, maybe perhaps ginger, teriyaki sauce dressing. Beef chow fun topped off with some duck it looks like, so that actually looks pretty good. And I also noticed that sort of at like white spots, they'll kind of just throw in some edamame sometimes, you know, a little bit of mixing with the Japanese. It's totally cool. Oh, though I did not notice they put the little eyeballs on these things. Yeah, they kind of look like stingrays, I guess. But yeah, I almost want to say they more went with the Pac-Man thing. What? 3, 2, 1, go! Whoa! I didn't know they had this dish. These are like some sideshow bobs slash like, I don't know what design they were making out of these one-ton ships. Yo, hey, come on. The zucchini placeholder, though? That is hilarious. Man, they're kind of crazy. They're having fun with it. Shout out to Red Farm. For number 4, Andrew, as far as the Chinese western diaspora cuisines go, Andrew, we're going to go with something that even Jamaicans themselves might not be fully aware of. Andrew, I think this place is called the Bamboo Express, man. And, forgive the accent, and this is Jamaicans Chinese food, because obviously you can see they do jerk chicken. They do a jerk chicken chow mein there as well. And they've just got regular beef patties and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, this is like, guys, obviously there is a large Chinese population in Jamaica. They run a lot of businesses and they came to America and opened up another shop. I'm sure the people who own this are Chinese, probably also speak some form of Cantonese. And they probably speak Patois too. Yeah. They probably, you know, do you think people in Jamaica one day are just like, Wagwan man, where Mr. Chin go? He done open up move the Bamboo Express to New York. I tried. Alright, guys, the next spot we're gonna check out is actually Chinese Mexican. Yes, you can find all this in New York City. This is number one restaurant, Tex-Mex Express. Let's take a look. Yo, you know what's interesting, Andrew? More in Mexicali, it's like authentic Mexican mixed with Chino food or Chinese food. This is specifically Tex-Mex food mixed with Chino food. I mean, look at this quesadilla. I'm not saying that looks Chinese, but it does look different. It does look like a Roja Mua, actually, from Xi'an. Look at these dumplings, gigantic, like empanadas. Saucy rice plates. Yo, hey, those fried wontons. Here we go, fusion dish. What is this? Is this grilled? Is this like a chicken bowl? Yo, keep looking. I think there's a picture of a taco salad with like chashu in it. Yeah, that's a taco salad. But yeah, I mean, like we said, guys, number one, Tex-Mex Express. I mean, for somebody, this is their favorite Chinese restaurant in the world. Andrew, moving on, number five. Andrew, we've actually got a gigantic cuisine here called Hakka Chinese food. It actually comes from India and the most famous dish is Gobi Manchurian, Andrew. And this is one of the cheapest spots that serves it in the tri-state area, Andrew. It's called Calcutta Chinese Restaurant. Calcutta, I believe, is the Indian city home to the largest Chinatown in all of India. Yeah. Man, look at this plate. This is like definitely looks different than other Chinese food. The Gobi Manchurian, I've had a couple other spots. Actually, there's some more expensive higher-end Hakka Chinese food spots in New York and it's pretty good. And it's funny, one time I did a Hakka Chinese food video about like Hakkas in Taiwan and Hakkas in Guangdong and I remember a lot of Indians came out on YouTube and they're like, this is not the Hakka Chinese food I expected to see, man. I need to see chicken lollipop. That's what they said. They left that comment, by the way. Alright, so if you want to get nicer, I guess, Indian Chinese food, Hakka Chinese food, you would go to a spot like Spice Symphony. Look, you have nice samosas and silverware and you have this and that and let's take a look. And it's interesting because unless you really know what is like real Indian food, it's hard to understand what is Hakka like Indo-Chinese because I almost want to say it looks more Indian. Would you say? It's hard, like the other dishes, it was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you took a chuleta and you put it next to Cantonese shrimp fried rice. This, you're looking at it, you're a little bit like wait, wait, what dish is this based off of? These are the chicken lollipops though, by the way. Those are good. Those are delicious, by the way. These are really good. Oh, this is like, they're kind of like chopped up chow mein. Oh, they have a fried rice dish. Yo, that's crazy because that's like noodles and fried rice together. This is their lo mein dish right here. Dude, every country has a lo mein. I swear to God, lo mein, lo mein, lo mein might be the dish. You know what's really interesting, Andrew, about India is I was doing some research and the first like Chinese Chinese to go into India, it wasn't until like the late 1700s where it happened but basically like Chinese bloodlines and Indian bloodlines had been mixing in the Himalayas for like thousands of years but in terms of just like 100% Chinese person just transporting over to India, it didn't happen until quite recently so clearly the Himalayas created quite a separation. Andrew, last but not least, as far as Indo-Chinese goes, Andrew, this is how deep cut Indo-Chinese goes. They told me, Andrew, that this is Calcutta Chinese and not Hakka Chinese. Wow. So now Chinese food has gotten so big in India, there's two different variations. One is the traditional Hakka Chinese and this one's called New Calcutta Chinese. Yeah, this is at a spot called Ghazab over in the East Village. You guys can check it out. Honestly, we filmed here before. The food is pretty good. I would definitely recommend the fried cauliflower. The people are nice. But yeah, I mean, the food's got a lot of flavor. It's pretty intense. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think a lot of these cuisines are really driven by a couple things, right, Andrew? They're driven by what region of China like did the majority of the immigrants in this Western country like immigrate from, right? When did they immigrate and who are they catering the food for? Like what group of people? Is it railroad workers? Is it government, you know aristocrats? Is it just like local people in their village that they landed in? Yeah, and oftentimes a lot of these recipes, they kind of get preserved because of like one family from Anping, for example, might move over there. They become successful or they start a restaurant. They bring in more people from Anping because they like send word back to Anping like, oh, you guys come over here. This is how you can start a life, start business. So then they kind of all cook the same food. That's why I think these Chino-Latino recipes and combinations have kind of lasted so long. So that's how the recipes are kind of passed down is because people just see it as good commerce like if there's always the market for it, they're going to keep serving it. What's your favorite? Oh my gosh, my favorite out of all these? Yeah. All of these? All the different levels? I think the most interesting to me is definitely Chinese Jamaican for sure because I actually did not get a chance to get the jerk chicken lo mein yet, but I will say my favorite is probably Chino-Latino, Chinese Dominican, but there literally is dishes in all of these that I really, really enjoy. Oh, I actually really like hood Chinese food too. Oh, dude, when people make the chicken wings and I know that in the chicken wing batter or seasoning, they put extra chicken powder into it so it's like chicken powder on the skin of the chicken wing. I don't like too much red sauce on it though, but I will say this Andrew, there are a lot of hilarious TikToks about like ordering at hood Chinese restaurants and yeah, I'm not saying some of them are not problematic but I'm just saying they do make me laugh. I think to end it off guys, overall I think we did this video and hopefully you found it interesting and informative but honestly we did this video just to talk about how like Chinese food went all over the world along with Chinese people and it just adapted to every country every city and every neighborhood that it went to and Chinese people you know, there's something about Chinese people at work they just want to go anywhere and just work so that's what they do. They set up shop and they start serving food and they'll like tweak it and be like Oh no, you don't like this? Okay, oh what am I in Jamaica? Okay, let me do this Oh yeah, I'm in Dominican Republic. Okay, let me do this Oh, I'm in a country of Africa even, you know, I'm sure there's African Chinese food getting fused together right now, you know? Yeah, I don't know like if the Chinese people on a social level are, I wouldn't say like 10 out of 10 adaptive but let me tell you this, the food is 12 out of 10 adaptive I don't think that there is a more adaptive food on planet earth and I think it has to do with the stir fry, I think it has to do with the wok, I think it has to do with, you know, the knife skills but yeah, shout out to all these different diasporic cuisines and we could do like 3 more of these videos because there's like a bunch of stuff we left out. Alright, so we're gonna close it off right there. Everybody in the comments down below, please let me know what is your favorite type of mixed Chinese food from the diaspora outside of Asia We didn't even get into like the Midwest yet with like almond chicken and Louisiana with like bourbon chicken and all these like crazy things. These are just the types of Chinese food you can find in New York City and we didn't even cover the other Chinese Asian diaspora Chinese food so anyways it gets deep but anyways you guys let me know in the comments down below shout out to all the different types of Chinese food we've actually eaten at all the different types of restaurants at least once for the most part so and just let us know in the comments down below what you think and until next time we out. Peace!