There are Sichuan, Shanghai, Canton, Beijing and other cooking style in China. In USA, you’ll mostly find Sichuan Food, American Chinese food, Shanghai Food and Canton food. We’ve introduced the Authentic Sichuan food and the American Chinese Food. Here’s some brief information about Shanghai Food and Canton Food.

Shanghai Food

Every body knows Shanghai is the biggest city in China. Shanghai food has a history of more than 1300 years, starting in the Song Dynasty, around 600 or 700 AD.

Shanghai is the place where many lakes and rivers meet the sea. It has four seasons and is rich in river fish, seafood and all kind of vegetables. How does its cooking look like? Similar to Sichuan food, its basic cooking technique is sauteed (stir-fry), and basic food ingredients are meats, poultry, fish and vegetables. However, Shanghai food is a typical example of Eastern Chinese cuisine including Zhejiang and Jiang Shu Province. We don抰 know why Shanghai food was formed in that way. We do know that mild seasons and a central location in China contributes something to that. Shanghai cooking style is definitely between Sichuan and Canton.

1. River fish and seafood is a big part of the Shanghai menu list. Shanghainese eat a lot of them. The famous lake crab is their best loved dish.

2. Red cooking is very popular in Shanghai. Red cooking means stew or braising with red soy sauce. In this way, the food is first marinated, lightly cooked and mixed with red sauce soup, then simmered over a slow fire. The Shanghainese use rice wine, red soy sauce and sugar (especially red sugar) for red cooking. The sauce has a dark-red color. For cooking such a long time caused the seasonings and spices to be absorbed into the food completely.

3. The Shanghainese eat light tasting food, not too salty or spicy. For most dishes, they always put sugar and salt together. Very often you don know a Shanghai dish is sweet or salty. Generally speaking, Shanghai dishes taste a little sweet, but not too sweet. The Chinese always say that Sichuan is salty, Canton is plain and Shanghai is sweet.

Canton Food

People are familiar with Canton food. In Chinatown most people are Cantonese and most restaurants serve Canton food. For comparison, we emphasize some points here.

1. The Canton menu list is strange and quite different. The Cantonese eat almost everything including snake, mice and monkey. Other Chinese say that the Cantonese eat everything except chairs and tables. It is very hard for other Chinese and Americans to accept their stranger dishes..

2. In their moist tropical climate, the Cantonese have lived to tolerate hot weather and sweat all year around. Under these circumstances, the Cantonese have developed their eating habits: eating light and mild tasting food with much soup.

3. Cooking theory and practice are also different from Sichuan cooking. The Cantonese eat a lot of live seafood and the Sichuanese do not. The Cantonese know how to cook live seafood well. For example, a Cantonese cook can cook a live fish freshly yet a Sichuanese cook probably could not. A Cantonese cook doesn抰 know how to cook a frozen fish well but a Sichuanese cook can be counted on to make it greatly. For most dishes, the Cantonese think the cooking is just fine and the Sichuanese think it is quite undercooked. On the other hand, the Sichuanese think the cooking is just fine and the Cantonese think it is overcooked.

4. The way to cook. In the hot weather, the food in Canton can be easily spoiled so that the Cantonese emphasize on the freshness of their food. They steam, boil food more than stir-frying it. The emphasis is on keeping the original taste and juice of the food. For this purpose, they make the sauce, marinate the food and cook lightly. On the other hand, the Sichuanese put emphasis on the taste. Anything, live or dead, they cook heavily in most cases in order to give a taste to the dish. If you want fresh seafood, you should go and have Cantonese food. If you want tasty food, you should go and have Sichuan food.

One more interesting thing is: the Cantonese introduced the concept of sauteed to create American Chinese food. However, the two basic and most important sauces, kung bao and garlic sauces, are from Sichuan. Many years ago, the Cantonese first came here to cook Chinese food. Now, the Sichuanese also have come here to cook real Sichuan food.

American Chinese cooking –”Capital intensive”

American Chinese food can be called American Szechuan food or Chinese food American style. Most Chinese restaurants outside Chinatowns cook this type of Chinese food to meet Americans’s needs. It would be very hard for you to find any Chinese to eat this type of Chinese food.

The standard American Chinese food dishes are: Chicken with broccoli, Beef with broccoli, Pepper steak, General Tso chicken, Sesame Chicken , Orange beef, Mushu chicken, Sweet and sour pork and so on. The Chinese never find these dishes in China and just know them in America. Who invented American Chinese food? Have you ever heard American Japanese food or American Korean food? They are all the same both domestically and internationally. The Chinese are probably too smart to be so foolish.

The Cantonese were first come to the USA and cook Chinese food. They thought they had to cook Chinese food, which was not only loved by Chinese but also loved by Americans. They watched the Americans enjoy the sweet and sour tastes. Then they changed Chinese cooking and basic flavors to re-invent American Chinese food.

The basic points of American Chinese food are as follows:

1. The basic tastes are sweet and sour. The basic sauces are Kung Bao sauce and Garlic sauce. These two sauces originated from Sichuan cooking. However, they made these two sauces less spicy yet sweeter. Many other sauces are made from these two. For example, adding more sugar or vinegar, turns kung bao sauce into General Tso chicken sauce. When adding more sugar and vinegar to garlic sauce, it becomes sweet and sour sauce. This is why when you go to a take out restaurant, often you will find most dishes taste more or less the same. It makes some sense: as long as the sauce is made, any cook can make the same flavored dish. That paved a road for standard and scaled production of Chinese food. The sauce concept is from Canton. Sichuan cooking never makes any sauce in advance in big quantities. Sometime they just make sauce on the spot only for one order right before cooking.

2. American Chinese restaurants always marinate, mix or coat the meats, poultry and seafood one, or two or more days in advance. This practice is also followed in Cantonese cooking. The Cantonese think the meats will be tenderer if marinated. For any real Sichuan cooking never marinates food so early and is just right before the cooking. Marinating the meats one or two days before cooking will cause some chemical changes. The animal protein will be dissolved. As a result, the meat will lose its texture and aroma and no longer be as tasty.

3. Hot oil soaking and parboil (water boiling). All-American Chinese restaurants go through this step for all foods. With this step, the food has been 100 % pre cooked. Real Sichuan cooking may or may not have this step. With hot oil soaking, the food is only 50 % to 80 % cooked. The remaining percentage will be completed through stir-frying. Through this step, American Chinese dishes can be cooked very fast thus saving a lot of time. However, Sichuan cooking is relatively slow. Good cooking takes time!

4. Stir-fry. American Chinese food cooking has changed stir-frying technique fundamentally. According to American Chinese cooking, the food has already been 100 % pre cooked; the so-called stir-fry has nothing to do with the food. The only thing for stir-frying to do is to heat the sauce and add the cooked food and mix them well and finally get them out into the plate. In this way the sauce is only covering the surface of the food, not getting into the food, no natural aroma emanating from the food. This way simplifies Chinese cooking: you don’t need to work 3 years as an apprentice to learn how to cook. Any one who can heat the wok and mix the sauce and food can become a cook. This is why there are so many Chinese people working in Chinese restaurants in America, but in China thing is not so.

We can conclude that if real Sichuan cooking is “labor intensive”, American Chinese cooking is “Capital intensive”. It adapted American advanced equipment and technology to transfer a traditional Chinese restaurant into a food assembly line like Ford or General Motor car assembly lines. It makes Chinese dishes fast, standard and in large quantities.

Do you think American Chinese cooking has made any progress or just produces Chinese junk food?

1. on May 3, 2008 at 2:42 pm Yang wrote:

   I absolutely hate those Americanized stupid “Chinese” food. Americans will think those are our typical everyday menu.

2. on October 28, 2008 at 10:50 pm Andy wrote:

   I must agree, I am among those who thought “Chinese food” was General Tso’s, and sweet and sour pork. I would love to get to know the real tastes of China. Restaurants should put some pride into their menu’s and become more authentic. I for one would love to try some exotic tastes for a change, even if they cost alittle more due to the need for talented chefs.

3. on October 29, 2008 at 10:58 am Ying wrote:

   actually, no Yang. Americans KNOW is is not real everyday Chinese food. Hey, and don’t blame the americans! The Cantonese were the ones who invented it…. think about it and read the passage.

   BTW – Grand Sichuan, AMAZING ARTICLE!

4. on October 31, 2008 at 12:01 am admin wrote:

   Hi, Ying,
   I read your message and try to figure out the whole meaning you say. Talking about Cantonese food, it is one of great cuisines in China and major Sichuan restaurant chains in Beijing serve both Sichuan and Cantonese food. The big four Chinese cuisines, Canton, Sichuan, Shanghai, and Beijing(ShanDong), have long history and root in different areas in China. Since half time every month in Beijing, I can see the trend of mix of these four.

   John

5. on October 31, 2008 at 12:02 am admin wrote:

   Dear Andy,
   Welcome you to our restaurant to try to anthentic Chinese food. On the other hand, we are working hard on many dishes such as General Tso to make them more authentic and tasty. One interesting book written by Jennifer Lee who is from New York Times and called “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles” describes how she searched the root of General Tso around the world. I understand that the Chinese food is developing and evolving and hope we can do something to help eliminating the difference of General Tso and authentic Chinese food.

   John

6. on December 23, 2008 at 1:33 am Christie wrote:

   I loved NY Chinese Food. I have moved to California and it you think Ny was not real, California is disgusting. I would love it if anyone could tell me how to make the sauce in the NY style Chicken and Broccoli. I miss it so much.

7. on December 31, 2008 at 1:55 pm admin wrote:

   Dear Christie,

   Thank you for your appreciation of Chicken with broccoli. The sauce making Chicken with broccoli is called brown sauce or Kung Po sauce, which is used in almost every restaurant in America. There are thousands of recipes about it, and I do believe that most of them are the same, more or less. If you look around, you can find the same tasted chicken dish in your area. If not, the problem is not just sauce but the cooking process or other reasons. I am looking forward to hearing your new finding.

   John

8. on June 4, 2009 at 10:37 pm sumYumGuy wrote:

   What are some traditional foods served in most take out dives? What would a real Chinaman order for example?

Authentic Sichuan cooking — “labor intensive”

At Grand Sichuan Chinese restaurants, we serve mainly the authentic (real, original or genuine) Sichuan food.

Sichuan food originated from Sichuan province in China and has a long history of more than 2,000 years.  Sichuan is an inland province in the Southwest of China and far away from the sea.  Geographically, it is a huge basin surrounded by high mountains.  The subtropical climate is hot and humid.  For thousands years, agriculture was a major part of life.  Under these circumstances, Sichuan food was formed.

1.Sichuan food is famous for its “ Ma” and “La”. “ Ma” is one kind of peppery taste from the wild pepper growing only in Sichuan.  “La” means spicy in Chinese.  Most of the famous Sichuan dishes have the taste of “Ma” or “la” or both.  Including Ma and La, Sichuan cooking has 22 different kinds of basic tastes. On the other hand, Shanghai cooking or Canton cooking has only about six kinds of tastes.

2.Sichuan food has strong and heavy flavors.  As a result, the strong flavor comes from the heavy use of salt, spices and oil and also a lot of cooking.  The heavy cooking ushers the salt, spicy or oil to get into the foods deeply, not just covering the surface of the food.  Chinese thought this type of food was very hard to be accepted directly by westerners.  This is why you never saw a real Sichuan restaurant before in the USA.

3.Sichuan is an inland agricultural region and has standard food structure: pork, chicken, duck, beef, fish and so on.  These are more popular with Americans.  However, there are still some differences: Chinese enjoy eating animal fat, skin, head, foot, internal organs and so on.  Americans never eat them.  This is a cultural difference of food.

4.Because of the humid weather, they often dry and cure food to preserve them.  As a result, they are good at cooking dry and preserved food dishes.  On the other hand, even today, many Sichuan cooks still look awkward cooking fresh food such as fresh seafood.  You have to remember that the Sichuanese are far away from the ocean and have had very few chances of learning how to do such things.

There are Sichuan, Shanghai, Canton, Beijing and other cooking style in China.  All of them use such techniques as sauteed (stir-fry), steam, bake, stew, boil, preserve and others to cook food.  However, the most important cooking technique, or core technique, is sauteed, or called stir-fry. This technique differentiates Chinese cooking from other cooking in the world.  Sichuan cooking takes stir-frying as its symbol.  In other words, Sichuan cooking is in the number one position in stir-frying techniques in China.  The Sichuanese call the technique: small fry and small sautéed.   For doing this, first they heat the wok, then add oil and seasonings to cook.  Then they add raw foods to stir in instantly until everything is 100 percent cooked.  There are three basic steps:

First:  marinated or non-marinated food.  If marinated, doing it just right before cooking.

Second:  hot oil soaking or maybe not.  If doing it, just frying the raw food until it is about 50 % cooked.  Never 100 % cooked.

Third:  stir-fry.  Stirring the raw food without stopping so that the food can be heated evenly and sauce ingredients can be absorbed into the food.  When the food is completely cooked, it will achieve the best combination of food color, aroma and taste.

At the same time the oil protects the food from being burned and makes the food more tasty.

There is this interesting theory:

Chinese people taste buds at the front and middle of the tongue are for salty and spicy foods. When they eat, they first taste the salt. This makes Chinese like salty, strong and stimulating food. For Americans, their taste buds are at the front of their tongues are for sweet and sour tastes. When they eat, they first experience the sweet and the sour flavors.

Talking about the gullet and stomach is a different story. For Chinese, their gullet and stomach walls are small and thin. Strong and heavy tasting food will stimulate their stomachs and gullets too much and make them feel uncomfortable after meal. For Americans, their tongues don’t accept strong tasting food well, but their gullets and stomach walls are big and thick, so they need strong tasting food to stimulate their gullets and stomachs to make them comfortable after a meal.

If this theory stands up to science, what do you think about Sichuan food?

1. on July 21, 2008 at 5:59 pm J wrote:

   Uh, that’s impossible. Especially since American is not an ethnic group that could have evolved separate taste buds. Also, congrats on the new restaurant!