Hrmmph! No Chinese menu!
My mom and I went to P.F. Chang’s tonight, a restaurant I had only heard of because it was made fun of on South Park. I asked them if they had a Chinese menu, firstly because many Chinese restaurants really do have a secret Hanzi menu with stuff the other one doesn’t have, and second, I really didn’t know what some of the dishes were. However, the server said they didn’t have any menu in Chinese on the premises at all, and in fact a Chinese customer who couldn’t speak English had to give up and leave the restaurant earlier that day because he couldn’t order anything! Sad but true. Also, some of the dishes had stupid names like “Great Wall of Chocolate.” Chinese people don’t even eat chocolate very much! Where were the real Chinese deserts, like red bean cake, bing sha and hot candied banana (although sombody would probably burn him/herself eating it and sue)? It was just Chinese food for foreigners.
August 18th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
You were looking for real Chinese food in America?! I’ve never been to PF Chang’s, but I know it’s a huge chain, which means it ranks low for authenticity.
http://www.pfchangs.com/
This could be a Shangzilla article.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
The General Tsao’s Chicken is pretty good there…. but it is about as white as a Chinese restaurant gets. I bet there was not even a chinese cook back there.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:10 am
P.F. Chang’s has *terrible* tea! I’ve never been to China but I’d like to think I know enough not to trust a Chinese place that has bad tea (or, that actually charges you for tea, for that matter…)
August 21st, 2008 at 1:40 am
I worked at the Mark Pi’s in Bloomington for awhile — I was a bartender — and the entire staff of cooks were Mexicans. It was kinda strange. I’m sure what they made wasn’t authentic Chinese, but DANG it was good. Welcome back stateside, MF!!