When I watch short videos, I often see the following content, that is, a few foreigners say that Chinese food is delicious with very exaggerated expressions, or when international students cook, they attract foreigners from the whole building.
Video screenshots, invaded and deleted
Video screenshots, invaded and deleted
After watching too many videos of this type, it is easy to think that Chinese food has conquered all the foodies in the world!
Chinese food is indeed delicious, any one of the eight major cuisines can crush the catering of many countries, and the techniques and flavors of Chinese food are also the most abundant.
However, this does not mean that foreigners really like to eat Chinese food, contrary to what everyone thinks, many foreigners can at most accept the improved "pseudo-Chinese food", they will not like authentic Chinese food.
In fact, to put it bluntly, the main reason is that the eating habits are different!
Chinese food is an exotic cuisine for foreigners, especially Europeans and Americans, and the ingredients, side dishes, seasonings, cooking techniques, etc. of Chinese food are very different from what they have eaten since childhood!
I remember someone once said, "The best food is the hometown food, the food that my mother cooked in the kitchen."
Therefore, in terms of eating habits, it can explain why many foreigners do not like to eat Chinese food.
Not to mention foreigners, people in different provinces in our country are not used to eating each other!
For example, if you let Cantonese people eat numb and spicy Sichuan cuisine, Jianghu cuisine, Hunan cuisine, and Jiangxi cuisine every day, then he will definitely not be able to accept it.
Let the northerners, who are accustomed to eating steamed buns, noodles, and flatbread, eat rice every day, and I think it will be difficult for them to adapt to it.
Therefore, it is very unlikely that foreigners with more different diets will like authentic Chinese food!
Many Chinese people are also not used to eating foreign meals after going abroad, such as steaks, hamburgers, sandwiches, when I first went to Tu Xian felt okay, but at most I insisted on a few days and shouted to eat Chinese food.
However, although there are many Chinese restaurants abroad, most of them are not authentic enough, so it is better to eat instant noodles to satisfy your cravings!
In fact, the popular Chinese food abroad is basically an improved version that caters to local tastes!
Taking the United States as an example, according to incomplete statistics, there are nearly 50,000 Chinese restaurants of various kinds in the United States, most of which are so-called "American-style Chinese food".
For example, Panda Fast Food, the largest Chinese food chain in the United States, is a very typical American Chinese food.
Due to Americans' penchant for sweetness, most of the meat dishes in American Chinese food are sweet and sour, such as "tangerine peel chicken" and "broccoli beef tenderloin".
Even the classic Sichuan dish of mapo tofu can be made sweet, and it seems that there is no dispute between "sweet and salty tofu brain" in the United States, because there is only sweet!
In addition, there are also various fried rice, fried noodles, fried dumplings, and fried foods that are more popular.
These foods have a common characteristic: they are all relatively cheap fast food!
The real big dish of Chinese food, the real essence has not gone out at all, of course, it is difficult to go out, unless the taste is improved, but after the improvement of the taste, is it still serious Chinese food?
Others say that Chinese food is not popular because it is too greasy.
I'd like to say it's complete nonsense!
The oil in Chinese food is all visible oil, which mainly plays the role of cooking and seasoning, but it looks like there is a lot of oil, but in fact, there is very little oil ingested.
The "oil" of Western food is invisible, mayonnaise, peanut butter, butter, and cream are put in as if they don't need money, and the calories are bursting in one bite! The oil of Western food is completely integrated with the food, and although the oil is invisible, all of them are eaten.
In the Western concept of eating, it is not acceptable to accept the clear oil in the dinner plate, while most of the stir-fried dishes in Chinese food have clear oil, so they also accept incompetence.
Another point is that most Chinese dishes are made with soy sauce, and as far as I know, many Westerners are not used to the taste of soy sauce, so they don't have the opportunity to taste most authentic Chinese food.
The name is not distinctive and hard to remember!
One thing to say, Chinese food has not been very good in overseas names!
For example, dumplings, what is "dumpling", why not directly translate to "jiaozi"?
There are also steamed buns, which are obviously called "steamed buns", but they have to be turned into "steamed buns", which makes people look in the clouds!
The translated name is too much to cater to foreign countries, but it is self-defeating, undistinctive, and unrevocable.
The name of the dish is not distinctive, and diners may not even remember it, let alone expect how much they like it.
In Asian regions with similar eating habits, the popularity of Chinese food has increased significantly!
The food culture of Europe and the United States is quite different from ours, so many people in the local area do not have a high preference for Chinese food.
However, in Asia, especially in East Asia and Southeast Asia, the status of Chinese food is very high!
One reason is that these places themselves have a large number of Chinese, and Chinese food has a strong "mass base".
There is another more important reason, and that is the similarity of traditional food culture.
The eating habits and cultures of the whole of Asia (especially East Asia) are very similar, for example, the tableware is mainly chopsticks, and the staple food is mainly rice (in northern China, noodles are the main dishes).
In addition, the most representative of the convergence of East Asian food culture is the use of soybeans. For example, making tofu, making soy sauce, miso, and so on.
Therefore, Chinese food is very popular in East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea!
Japan is full of "Chinese restaurants", and the most popular ones are ramen, fried dumplings, fried rice, etc., and there are long queues at every meal.
Although Koreans do not admit it in their mouths, they express their love for Chinese food in action. In addition to Chinese, the largest number of overseas Chinese restaurants and hot pot restaurants are Koreans.