US vs UK Chinese Takeout | Food Wars | Insider Food
We wanted to explore the differences between Chinese takeout in the US and in the UK.
00:00 - Intro
00:08 - Exclusives
22:42 - Plate Wars
26:20 - Packaging
27:50 - Portion Sizes
30:20 - Ingredients
31:45 - Culture And History
35:51 - Credits
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US vs UK Chinese Takeout | Food Wars | Insider Food
I feel like the “exclusives” are very subjective. Since most restaurants are independent, the menus vary wildly depending on location.
no sh**
I doubt we could get the shrimp toast thing in the states.
For the UK at least, 90% of Chinese takeaways will have basically identical menu's with maybe a few small bits of variation. Everything Harry showed is something you'd be able to pick up any any of those typical takeaways.
@@lemme_c_ur_buns9102 Come to New York, I've never been to a chinese takeout here that didn't have shrimp toast. It's also pretty easy to make at home.
@@anastasiarene6617 yeah im in Cali, and I've never seen that, I wonder if their are any other major differences just between new york and cali chinese food.
I think Harry’s dishes are fairly typical of a UK Chinese takeaway. But, that doesn’t mean they’re the best you can get. There’s some fantastic places which do their own thing and don’t use the same general menu as the rest. There’s one such place near me, and its food is head and shoulders above the normal Chinese places.
Yeah this. It's what people will mostly understand by Chinese takeaway, which is basically gloop built to satisfy the country's tastes in the 1960s which hasn't really evolved since; but we definitely have a lot of 'better' Chinese restaurants, especially in larger cities!
Yep, I enjoy my local Chinese for when I want sweet gloop but it's basically a completely different cuisine to the excellent food I'd get as a takeaway from a proper Chinese restaurant.
@@ad3z10 I think you have to see it in the context of the show - its a show about fast food. So, this is about "fast food" type Chinese. And actually, my local Chinese place is often faster than most pizza places here, so it is fast food in a literal sense.
@@MichaelOcherz It depends, at least on the West Coast some of the places can be traced back to the 1800s thanks to the demand for railroads and the hype around the gold rush(even though the majority of them ended up being forced into other businesses).
@@ad3z10Point missed completely
It's fascinating to see the US food being so different from where I'm at in the US. There's definitely regional American tastes, but also people from different parts of China moved to different parts of the US, so some parts of the US may get more Hunanese, or more Cantonese, or more Szechuan, or what not, meaning each parts of the US will get a different variant. For example, here in central Texas (where I've lived 28 years), I've never seen that curd soup, but instead the three most popular on menus here are egg drop, hot and sour, and wanton soup. Also while it could just come down to the restaurants itself, I've never actually seen shrimp as a meat option in an eggroll, thought that was really interesting. You could do a whole video featuring common Chinese-American foods from around the US itself.
This is exactly the same as the UK
Yea, I'm surprised by some of the choices here. One of the most common things is simply protein with either broccoli or mixed vegetables that's stir fried in a Chinese brown sauce. Also Chop Suey definitely is served in a sauce, not pale white like what was shown.
@TonyEvers-bucksin6 our chop sued is browner sauce and our chow main is pretty clear/ whitish sauce with a lot of vegetables .our noodles are low mein and Mei funare really thin noodles and chow fun are thick noodles. Im near Philadelphia, which has a " Chinatown " that's huge.
We have shrimp,vegetables or pork egg rolls and like 3 different kinds of spring rolls. I live near Philadelphia, pa
I agree. I'm from Colorado, lived in Washington State for a decade, and am now in the US southwest, and I've never seen those prawn crackers anywhere but an Asian grocery store.
Speaking as a Northerner from the UK, most of this is similar to what we’d expect, but a lot is slightly different too. Sweet chilli sauce as an example. And the sweet and sour sauce is normally a neon red colour. Love the video
The colour tends to fade the longer it has been out thus turning more of a orange colour. Can't explain the science, but you just add some red food colouring to get it back.
Yeah, never seen that colour sweet and sour sauce before. It is normally a reddish, pinkish colour and thick and sticky consistency normally in the UK to dip your chicken balls in.
Sweet and sour sauce is fantastically easy to make at home, it's equal parts of ketchup, sugar, and oil, warmed slowly until it combines together, if you want to elevate it then add a few pineapple chunks and some of the juice to it.
Speaking as a resident of the US west coast, I never realized how different east coast Chinese food is.
It’s so bizarre, I was expecting so many dishes that weren’t there and also not at all any inclusion of dim sum? They have Cantonese Chinese restaurants on the east coast too so it sounds like they just didn’t do their homework or put in the effort to go to places that offered more stereotypical American Chinese dishes.
I would say Northeast because this stuff wasn't common in Georgia/Alabama when I was growing up at least (I haven't lived in the States in 10 years, so maybe some stuff has changed...).
That shocked me as well, having lived in the Midwest and NE they are pretty much the same. A lot of what she said seems so foreign to me. Even something as simple as sweet and sour chicken, never heard of it coming pre-sauced
I think it's just the place she picked lol
@@asiamichelle4729 yea she goes to a spot that charges 25$ for a plate. You have to go to the places that have dinner combos for 12$ and they're stacked
Also good to note in the UK the food generally comes in plastic containers which we reuse and fill a cupboard with and never recycle! Great for using later for meal prep in the freezer
Yeah I do that too, mostly for portioning lentil soup to be frozen for later. I use those ice cream tubs from Carte Dior for that too lol.
@@veeeks2938 looove a lentil soup!!!
Wow so resourceful. Such a win
As a Guyanese American I found it so bizarre that Americans don’t reuse there Chinese take out containers they throw it away.
We do that here in the US, too 😂. I haven't bought food storage containers in YEARS, because we keep our take-out containers! Hey, reduce, reuse, recycle, right? 😊
Something to note, as an American who lived on both the West Coast and East Coast, is the way the noodles are referred to. What is called lo mein on the East Coast-the soft wheat noodles-is called chow mein on the West Coast, similar to the UK. Chow mein on the East Coast refers to the crispy noodles, like the pan fried noodles or the (shudder) La Choy noodles you find in supermarkets. Same thing goes for chow fun (wide noodles) on the West Coast vs. lo fun on the East Coast.
'Something to note, as an American who lived on both the West Coast and East Coast, is the way the noodles are referred to. What is called lo mein on the East Coast-the soft wheat noodles-is called chow mein on the West Coast, similar to the UK. Chow mein on the East Coast refers to the crispy noodles, like the pan fried noodles or the (shudder) La Choy noodles you find in supermarkets. Same thing goes for chow fun (wide noodles) on the West Coast vs. lo fun on the East Coast.' - At least you are an American who doesn't call Pasta, Noodles (well, hopefully).
why did you quote the entire comment@@robertryan6782
The UK has spare ribs! I order them every time! A starter if ribs with rice, followed by the main which for me is either sweet and sour pork, beef in black bean or oyster sauce, or a prawn dish.
Yeah there's usually multiple types of spare rib as well but I've never seen a boneless one.
We have loads of stuff they said were exclusive to the US
@@gingerninja5449 It's got to be that Cantonese people used to mainly be in pockets of the US, not everywhere.
Salt and pepper ribs mmm
Singapore noodles Special fried rice sweet and sour prawn balls Seaweed Crispy shredded beef Sichuan chicken Boooooom
Something that might be worth mentioning is that the UK doesn't usually do fortune cookies. Not sure how popular they actually are in America but they seem to be common in all of their tv shows.
They are pretty ubiquitous! It would be notable/unusual for a restaurant to _not_ include them with an order.
Yeah, near universal here. Of course, they were invented by Chinese Americans in California so that makes sense.
Every Chinese restaurant gives u fortune cookies
what's weird is that i've never gotten a cookie with a bad fortune. knock on wood.
I hadn't had fortune cookies until I went to the US on holiday.
A lot of Chinese restaurants have two menus. There is the regular menu and another menu for Chinese customers. The regular menus are the “normal” safer items and the other one are the most exotic items. If you are not Chinese and want a traditional Chinese restaurant experience go with a friend with a Chinese background that speaks some form of Chinese. Also go to a Chinese restaurant where the staff actually speaks Chinese. You will have a wonderful experience.
Yes! And if you can order from a banquet menu(usually requires 5+ people) you can get some incredible dishes that really show off the breadth of Chinese food and the skill of the chef.
This is about chinese takeout rather than takeaway. You'll find chinese restaurants are more varied and traditional whereas takeouts that are only takeouts are pretty much the same menus but with various quality depending on who's made it. You might find that the odd ones will have extra things though that are special to that chef.
I would say the " regular " is the exotic one and the " exotic " is the normal one.
My mum and I went to an amazing Chinese restaurant in Southampton that was clearly aimed at Chinese students wanting a taste of home. We were the only obviously non-Chinese people in there and the restaurant staff were convinced that we couldn't possibly know how to use chopsticks (they actually tried to take them off us) and brought us forks which we didn't touch. They then spent the whole time watching us eat with our chopsticks (which was a little off-putting)! The other great Chinese restaurant I've been to is in Milton Keynes, when we went for mum's friend's funeral (separate to the wake). Both her and her husband are from Hong Kong and ran their own Chinese takeaway (he still runs it). So they had a lot of overseas relatives over for the funeral that needed feeding and invited a few other people as well. He ordered a load of dishes for everyone that were just brought out to the tables and some of which aren't on their regular menu. We had loads of lovely dishes like whole fish and this crispy tofu which I'd never have thought to order.
Not my experience in Boston and Chicago, at least. It's been either restaurants with entirely American Chinese menus, or restaurants with authentic/regional Chinese menus that include a limited number of popular American Chinese mainstays for the conservative of palate.
Here in China, we have 干煸土豆丝 which is basically wok fried chips as the UK ones. So it’s actually a legit Chinese dish
Part of the reason that chips are part of a lot of UK takeaways is because lots of immigrants took over chippys, so they serve a double purpose really
I didn't know this! Neat!
I highly recommend the book Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui. The author goes on a cross country tour to learn about the history of Canadian Chinese food and interviews families who own restaurants in small towns. A couple fun tidbits: Chinese buffets in Canada may have originated in Quebec and chow mein in Newfoundland tends to be a cabbage based dish since the specific noodles weren’t widely available decades ago.
Good recommend on the book! It's one of my faves.
From just this episode I would say Canada has the best Chinese food. (Well best out of UK,Canada USA)
Canada has like the best options for Chinese food. You can get really authentic ChInese, Hongkongers, Taiwanese and even Malay/ Singapore style Chinese food, and also the take out chop suey in smaller cities.
I'd like to see more takeout comparison eps like Indian takeaway for example
Ya
Now that won't be close to a fair fight.
Unfair. Americans dont have any proper food like that
Indian food would be intresting.....people would get to know there are things other than BUTTER CHICKEN and NAAN.
@@kartiksharma-bg6kk I know butter chicken and chicken tikka masala are a bit of a meme on Indian social media but you don't really see the latter much anymore and anyone picking the former usually gets ribbed for it. British 'curry houses' don't really exist now to the extent they did in the 70s/80s/90s.
Idk where she's based but here on the east coast, pork fried rice and vegetable fried rice are standard
In Ireland, the main and most popular exclusive item is the 'Spice Bag' which is crispy shredded chicken, chips, peppers and onions tossed in multiple spicy seasonings and served with curry sauce!
And the curry sauce is Japanese.
that sounds amazing!
@@futureskeletons66669 Japanese katsu curry, and British chip shop curry, are basically the same thing, because the Brits introduced curry to japan.
*potatoes Chips are like Lays, Doritos, Takis, Ruffles, Cheetos.
It’s just salt and a pepper chicken and salt and pepper chips , that’s all a spice bag is
Most Americans eat the standard Americanized Chinese food that has been around since the 50's. Pork fried rice, won ton soup, egg rolls, sesame chicken, beef and broccoli, white rice, egg foo young, chop suey, chicken chow mein.
As someone who has had Peking duck in Peking (AKA Beijing); the pancakes, cucumber, scallions and hoisin are the actual way it's eaten. Good job, Harry! Fun fact: "Singapore" rice noodles was invented in Hong Kong
They have Peking duck in the US as well, but it’s usually at fancier restaurants, not takeaways
i'd love if i was served an actual joint of duck done like that instead of shredded up crap... never eaten a piece of poultry like that in my life !
@@nighttimedaytime1192 Loads of places do it where you shred it up yourself
You can get it in most supermarkets all over China. Cheap or expensive it’s basically the same.
Pretty sure singapore noodles atleast here in oz is a thinner egg noodle rather than any rice noodle.
This was a weird episode but surely a difficult one to make considering the numerous variations of chinese take out in both countries. It was very interesting to see as a big fan of this type of food. Kudos to the production team!
It could be because of the "getting a Chinese" thing from tiktok. Ppl were judging the uk's version
we basically have all of those things, with very few differences. Not the greatest topic for a comparison video.
"The colour will vary" as he shows the brown sweet and sour sauce - it's usually always a red!
I've had sweet and sour sauce of all colours. The best ones are when it's glowing like nuclear radiation!
@@JayROwenYes!! And it turns into congealed jelly as it cools down 😂
@@ViolentMoth I zap it in the microwave when eating leftovers for it to go back to it's normal consistency x
In most American Chinese Takeout, they have a nearly identical menu everywhere. But the quality is absolutely not all the same. Once you find that one spot that gets you General Tsos or a spicy (usually chili oil added) orange chicken after being delivered - you know you found the one.
Yup. Very similar menus, but different quality. One place i occasionally go to is the only one nearby with Mein Fun noodles (rice noodles). But to me the big selling point is egg rolls. Lots are small like the frozen ones you get at grocery store. I like a lot thicker one full of cabbage and stuff. Found one place with great egg rolls. I will stop by when nearby and just get 3 to go. Had a place we went to since i was a kid but they retired. They had huge egg rolls like that. To me the biggest importance is Egg Rolls and fried rice. If those two are great, then I am good.
Umm bro no lol. You must have only been in one region if you think it’s all the same. WTF?
I love Kung-Pao chicken. I used to go to a spot that had a subtle light flour coating on their chicken and I've yet to find another place that does this. It was sooo good. Similarly, back home in Colorado I used to get almond chicken as a kid. I don't recall much about it, excepting that it had almonds and (I think) shredded cabbage. I've yet to see it anywhere else.
@@KalEL224 depends on where you live. A huge city like LA, NYC, or Chicago yes you have massive variety. I live in the midwest in a town/area of about 200,000+ people in a 20 mile radius. Several chinese places. Most menus will have the same items like mongolian beef, sweet and sour chicken, combination fried rice, etc. Every one has the big stuff like that. A few have items others do not like Mein Fun or Mushu. Some have crispy duck, others do not. It depends on the place. But the menus will still usually be 90-95% the same items. Now QUALITY is where they differ. Some have great food, others you are better off at Panda Express. There is a buffet place that has frog legs and salt and pepper squid. But the quality is usually meh on most stuff and occasionally gets bad inspections. No place i know else has the squid or frog legs dishes, but they do. It is rare to find a place that has unusual items like that. Maybe in a big city you get lots of places with odd items or more authentic dishes but other places it is all just the standards.
Where are the wings? Is that East Coast? No Chinese take away is complete with out them. Also, very New England, but I miss lobster sauce, which shockingly has no lobster.
In the US, mu shu is served with pancakes. It is safe to eat tails on shrimp. It is delicious and adds to the textures. In standard no-frills US Chinese takeaway, the white folded boxes are very common. The other options are also more common now. Rice almost always comes in the white boxes.
The white folding boxes are a holdover from the old oyster shacks that largely went out of business when a lot of the US' coastal oyster fisheries collapsed, so they got bought out by Chinese takeout shops who kept using the white boxes because they were convenient.
Mu shu is one of my most favorite orders! I wonder if she just overlooked the pancakes and hoisin sauce? And yeah, I always eat the shrimp tails. When we order salt and pepper shrimp from our favorite local place, it comes super crispy pan-fried with the heads and tails still on, with the dry-fried chiles all over it, and you just crunch the whole thing. It's soooo delicious! 😋
Harry, omelettes are an option in every Chinese takeaway in the UK You guys have to do an Indian takeaway episode 👌👍
*takeout A takeaway is a moral value or lesson "taken away" from a story or narrative. Takeout is fast food to go.
@@lexruptorIn the UK, we refer to takeout food as a takeaway.
@@lexruptor I’m from the UK mate
@@lexruptorI've never heard takeaway food referred to as takeout in the UK. I say that as someone who has lived in Southern England, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Always takeaway. Takeout is just an American term.
Bro if I get a chinese it takes 20 to 30 minutes for them to cook it, how is that fast food?
Love that you included the segment about MSG. It adds so much flavour to dishes and I love cooking with it myself.
I think the only thing they didn't cover here, is how chinese takeout is so varied regionally in the USA. Some dishes will be prepared differently in certain regions, while others won't be available at all. Also, some regions won't have duck sauce available at all.
Plus seafood and overall meat quality varies a crazy amount based on geography
I know when I was on the East Coast, fried rice always seemed to come with little pieces of pork? that was charred red. But I have never seen that in the midwest. It's only ever seasoned with a sauce or some vegetables unless you specifically order it with a protein. I just wish every place prepared their sweet and sour dishes with pineapple and green peppers as the chicken and sauce alone just isn't as good.
We also have regional Chinese food in the US that's pretty neat. In Michigan we have boneless almond chicken or war su gai. In Virginia in the Tidewater region there's yock-a-mein which is heavily influenced by the African American community in the area. New Orleans has ya-ka-mein, but that's a different thing too. I love finding regional Chinese American food when I can.
Yeah the UK does too
Was going to say that. Here in Chicago it isn't uncommon to see dim sum available but I don't see that often on menus outside the city. But I'd say generally, the US Chinese takeouts are closer to what is normally eaten in China especially if you live in a city with a high Chinese population like Chicago. And we have a lot of asian fusion places. Chinese/Japanese or Indian/Thai for example.
Yup, and Chow Mein in Chinese restaurants on the West Coast of the US is a completely different creature than the East Coast.
St.louis has St.Paul sandwich. St.Louis has an intreasting chinese food take.
Good call! I only lived in St. Louis for about 5 months for work and I totally forgot about that one! @@babecat2000
Whenever I'm sick, I love getting a big quart of wonton soup delivered. Always so comforting!
Feel like this video would have been better if the American actually ate more Chinese food in their life. Half the stuff it seemed like she was tasting for the first time / seemingly had no idea what half the things were…
I think whats cool about U.S style is that it's very heavily inspired by other cultures that immigrated to the U.S in the 60s/70s, such as Taiwanese immigrants. I also think it's very cool that every restaurant/city in the U.S has they're own staple dishes
It's kind of the same with the "English Chinese" a lot of it os deep fried as most uk Chinese takeaways are in ex fish and chip shops so they had to adapt the cooking not only to the uk palate but to the cooking equipment they had.
@@emmysharples9708 Also, a lot of our Chinese takeaways are Cantonese or Hong Kong as that's where the Chinese immigrants to the UK came from. So it's the same as the US, just different regions.
I would disagree and would say that this is a bit inaccurate. “American Chinese” restaurants and the cuisine were created by Cantonese immigrants from Guangdong and Hong Kong. If anything I would say that American Chinese food takes influence from singaporean and Malaysian culture. Also, immigrants coming from Taiwan in the 60s/70s means that it would only have been 10-20 years since mainland China and Taiwan were separated due to the Chinese civil war so I wouldn’t say that they’re different cultures. Especially since culturally, Taiwanese culture is southern Han Chinese. I would say that immigrants from northern China opening their own restaurants made Chinese food in the US more diverse.
This is such a sad indictment of Chinese places in the UK. There’s so much better than this to be had if you can be bothered to look
The US stuff doesn't exactly pop either here. Both still look tasty tho.
I don't know. Every Chinese take away up North has identical menus, all very much the same.
this is the basic stuff you're going to get from a takeaway though. a proper restaurant will be different but thats not what the average brit is ordering on a saturday night
@@acelovesitnot necessarily, I live in Newcastle and there’s more traditional places I go to. Having said that they tend to have two menus, one that’s westernised and one that has more genuine cuisine.
What's sad about it? This is an authentic depiction of real food eaten by millions of people every week.
If you’re not getting wor wonton soup, you’re missing out! I think it’s a perfect soup- great broth, nice mix of veg, and always an alarming amount of dumplings.
Love your channel and absolutely adore the inclusion of the history of the culture and history at the end! It's one of my favorite topics :)
In the Washington DC area we order French fries at the carry out joints , mostly with cheeseSteaks, wings? burgers etc, but we dip our fries in mumbo sauce and it’s always hitting
My favorite order is called Dragon and Phoenix. It is a combo plate of Szechuan shrimp and general tao’s chicken.
Harry’s plate is exactly how I’ve been taught to enjoy Chinese food in the UK. It’s absolutely spot on. Yes the items people order are all subjective, but generally the ones Harry has picked are the most popular! I’m vegetarian so I tend to get: Veggie Singapore chow mein Salt and pepper, black bean or chilli tofu Salt and pepper chips Peanut/satay or curry sauce for the whole plate Vegetable spring rolls Crispy seaweed In America I’ve ordered a veggie orange “chicken” with a mock meat and had some fried rice to go with it! Orange chicken sauce is similar to sweet and sour but less sour (I think)
It's funny because his plate is exactly how I enjoy US take out. He showed just about everything I get at my local Chinese place.
You know, most UK chinese restaurants, use a type of fish sauce, whether its in the soy or not. 100% avoid if youre veggie and don't want cross contamination. Also, go fund a proper veggie chinese take away that do not use anything meat related.
@@kdotroy1 Same for Japanese (dashi stock) - also the same in Hong Kong - I advise vegie friends heading over there to describe their diet as being the same as a Buddhist
@@kdotroy1 thanks for the tips I always make sure the sauces and ingredients are listed as vegetarian and if I’m unsure, I check. Also there’s a couple of veggie Chinese style takeaways in my city and I use them quite a lot (so long as I’m not with other meat eaters) but you’re so right to mention it because the ingredients like fish sauce and even chicken stock etc are easily hidden!! :)
@@1Jetsurf oh wow! Maybe not so different after all :D
I was already thinking of getting Chinese for dinner tonight and now it's definitely happening!
Now you've made me really hungry.. Thanks guys.
Odd he thinks Egg Foo Young wouldn't catch on in the UK. Every Chinese I've use and both that ive worked for had Foo Young on the menu and it was pretty popular. 🤷♂️
I get fries and gravy from my local Chinese carryout spot, and they are top tier. Not a part of my usual order, but when the craving hits for salty/savory/crunchy/saucy, french fries and gravy hit the spot. Might be a regional US thing.
These history facts are amazing, more of these plesee. Fascinating!
Also, egg roll (USA) and pancake roll (UK) are the same thing and on this video, so many dishes are missing. We have egg foo Yung, we have Yeung chow fried rice, we have spare ribs...etc They have Chinese curry sauce in the states too...I had chicken curry from a Chinese take-out when visiting Florida and it was almost the exact same as the chinese curry sauce in the UK but was significantly more spicy.
In NYC Fries are ordered with the Chicken wings plenty of times
Ive never seen a chinese restaurant without foo yung on the menu, i use it to see how well they cook fresh items. Its very popular in west yorkshire
Yes! I live in the US and love vegetable egg foo yung with extra water chestnuts. It is my go to Chinese restaurant dish.
Cornstarch slurry equals that gloopy texture. Standard if you can’t cook it out. But if you can it’s velvety and thick.
I’m an American and I’ve never sauced the plate like that and I don’t think I ever would.
I love hot and sour soup. I started ordering it when some other options started upsetting my stomach. Crab Rangoon is my favorite tho!!!!
Hot and sour soup is the best, usually full after it because it’s so packed with meat then take a break before the main 😂
Hoisin sauce is fermented soy beans NOT plum.
What's really awesome about this is that Chinese takeout can be anything from any country. Every country is different in how they do it which is really surprising. This is amazing but overall Chinese takeout is so good 😋🤤😛
in UK: Hoi sin has nothing to do with plum sauce :) its just often mistaken as plum sauce and usually the "spring onion" for the peking duck is usually leek. generally young/yeung chow fried rice is house special fried rice
your videos are amazing also the food makes me hungry
I might blow your mind here, but the orange sauce used on that dish for the American side will taste identical to our English Chinese sweet and sour sauce, as the actual main ingredient in our sweet and sour sauce is orange dilute/squash. Traditionally sweet and sour sauce uses pineapple juice, but that's significantly more expensive, so isn't used. Source: I used to work in an english chinese take-away.
But you get pieces of pineapple in sweet and sour chicken here in the uk so it’s probably pineapple juice too no?
@@davidz2690 If the restaurant you use add pineapple to the dish, it probably has the juice too. They'll just use tinned pineapple that sits in its juice. The 3 I've worked at didn't add pineapple though.
For Peking duck, use the spring onion as a mop to spread the hoisin over the pancake (learned that tip from a fancy, Chinese restaurant in San Francisco)
Uk here, that’s how I’ve always done it too 😊
Ribs and omelete are on every chinese menu in the UK and ribs are a very common order.
I am firmly in the Brit camp of dipping food into sauce not pouring sauce everywhere. Especially for crispy foods. I don't know anyone who does the pouring thing. I do like to order a couple of different dishes, I usually go for 'chicken' satay and maybe veg chow mein (but I'm up for other noodle dishes or maybe rice, my local does Singapore udon which is so inauthentic for Chinese food yet very tasty), plus hot and sour or sweetcorn soup. My local Chinese takeaway is a vegan one which is handy since I'm vegetarian. They have some slightly more interesting and possibly more authentic dishes in the specials section. One of the best is aubergine dragon, which is a whole aubergine (eggplant) cooked until soft with spicy sauce, I think maybe doubanjiang, and various vegetables.
Same - I’m British and I’ve never poured the sauce over the plate in my life
That’s not some thing only done in there. As an American I don’t like my sauce poured on my food either.
Please make a food wars series with Australia
Our Chinese takeaway is a whole other thing entirely, Dim Sims (steamed or fried), spring rolls, Singapore Noodles, etc.
Curry sauce from a Chinese takeaway/restaurant is completely different to that from a traditional chip shop, and the chips from a Chinese are also usually cooked in a peanut oil giving them a different flavour
There was a place I used to use in the UK where the egg roll was as thick as a rolling pin! Found one similar restaurant here in Canada, but is a long way away near my granddaughters University
she doesn't like multiple meats, it's weird. But what about meatlovers pizza
she doesn't like multiple meats, it's weird. But what about meatlovers pizza
But what about meatlovers pizza?
she doesn’t like multiple meats, it’s weird. But what about meatlovers pizza
what about meatlovers pizza
What about meatlovers pizza
You forgot to show how the "pail" breaks down to a plate!😊
Orange Chicken is one of my signature Chinese takeout order dishes but i’ve actually had Lemon Chicken before at a local Chinese restaurant in the town i grew up in it’s basically the sane thing as orange chicken except the sauce/glaze is replaced with lemon instead of orange and it was a more tart/tangy with the addition of sweetness to it it wasn’t terrible at all just different if your used to eating orange chicken
The salt and pepper chips sound good! Fries are common in dc carryouts. Wings, fries, mumbo sauce. I looove hot & sour soup. My mom prefers the egg drop soup
If I had to sum it up, I feel like UK Chinese takeout is more of like a Chinese takeout combined with a general asian fusion takeout. Like the "aromatic duck" which is basically pretend Peking duck would be from an actual Chinese restaurant here in the US or the grilled satay chicken sticks would be from a Malaysian/Vietnamese place instead of a Chinese takeout
We have actual Chinese restaurants in the uk
How would you describe us Chinese takeaway?
@@Jimmyconway77 US Chinese takeaway is American Chinese style cooking that later evolved to cater to American tastes developed by the Chinese migrant workforce during when Chinese labor built the US Transcontinental Railroad. So you'd have the American Chinese style of dishes like General Tsos, Egg Foo Yung, Chop Suey with usually also dishes developed specifically for the American palate like crab rangoon as well as dishes that are specifically American like fried chicken wings and french fries. Like Beef with Broccoli is a dish that is American Chinese that was an adaptation of the Cantonese Beef with gailan (chinese broccoli) since they wouldn't have gailan in 19th century America So i'm not saying the UK doesn't have actual Chinese restaurants, but specifically Chinese takeout based on the menu/dishes shown in this video seems more like Asian fusion takeout as opposed to Chinese takeout. Like satay is Southeast Asian for example.
I think the presence of southeast Asian dishes has to do with Asian dispora dynamics. Within Europe Chinese communities are very close to malay, Vietnamese and Indonesian communities. Like we have similar histories and socio economic positions in Europe. Its not strange that our restaurants have some menu items in common as a result
@@rainzerdesuI never seen fry’s in a Chinese place , I do see like wings ? Not really fried chicken. Here in England fry’s and curry is like everywhere in every Chinese place . I enjoy both, there’s things I enjoy in England (spare ribs,chicken ball,rice noodles ) and things I prefer in the states. (The meat dishes like gso or orange, lo mein, dimsum) They both got the same kind of Asian influence imo, they definitely put the palate towards the people though , like in England when it comes to Indian or Mexican or anything really , something is suppose to be spicy but it’s not but to a lot of British people it can be. (My spouse is British btw) Also each Chinese place has “authentic “ but it’s like a different version of it , for example dumplings might not be actual Chinese dumplings in America or black bean sauce in England is not the same as authentic Chinese black bean .
Did not like this video as much as normal. Kind of hard to compare restaurants when regionally or even locally they differ so drastically.
US resident: crab Rangoon, crispy fried noodles w/hot mustard, lo mein, & a protein/veg. Generally pepper steak, sweet & sour chicken or general tso chicken.
Brit here and I also find it super weird that a lot of us pour sauce all over the food. Also I have never met anyone that pours BOTH curry and sweet and sour sauce over the food 🤢
Serial killer behaviour that
I'm in the UK (Scotland), and Ive also never seen anyone pour both sauces over everything like that - weird!
Yeah just curry sauce
Midlands England, and we pour curry sauce over most of it but dip the chicken balls in the sweet and sour if we get it. Normally I get what harry has less the sweet and sour chicken.
I prefer satay sauce over curry sauce personally.
You didn't do the forgotten feature where the paper pail unfolds into a plate. I guess you would keep it folded if you weren't eating the whole portion or were making up a separate plate with several foods. Leftovers also keep well in that pail.
That's a myth. The little paper pails were originally developed to carry oysters in. Long before there was anything like a Chinese takeout restaurant. How do you know? You have to reach down into the hot food to unbend the little wire that holds the pail together.
Re: the whole Brits saying, "a Chinese" for short for Chinese takeout, Americans actually do something similar. We often say, "Let's have Chinese tonight," dropping the word food or takeout. The only difference is the article "a" that got everyone up in arms on Tiktok. Obviously the other thing that Brits sometimes say, according to Tiktok (that's actually a slur) is not something people should say anywhere, but as far as saying, "a Chinese," I don't think that any offense is meant and I don't think it's any different than Americans saying, "Let's order Chinese tonight."
Off the bat, saying “Chinese” without specifics sounds like a direct person since that form also doubles as an ethnic description, while saying something like let’s have “Chinese”. Obviously clues in the context that the person is referring to food.
Quite a few have already said it but yes omelette is basically on every UK Chinese menu, however normally its just a basic egg omelette with nothing extra added. Mainly a fussy eater/kids option.
Young chow is popular in Guyana🇬🇾
You can definitely get ribs here in the UK (also how could you possibly have a boneless rib!?) and usually a couple of different flavours of them. I've also seen hot and sour soup on several menus here, but I've never ordered so not sure what's in it. I think our classic soup used to be crab meat and sweetcorn, but nowhere seems to use actual crab meat anymore. You can absolutely get a selection of vegetable dishes as well, you just chose not to order any of them! My grandparents' local Chinese is actually a proper combined chippy and Chinese with two separate menus, but you can order from both menus if people want different things. Packaging wise, I've never seen it come with a broken lid - I'd be pretty annoyed if it did, because then you can re-use it and it also allows heat to escape. Plus, I've always seen sauces in little hard plastic pots, not polystyrene ones. Although, I've never seen anyone just pour the sauce over everything... you're supposed to dip and it's only crispy dishes that have the sauce on the side.
Boneless rib is just belly pork.
From a Chinese perspective, the main difference seems to be that UK Chinese takeout includes more traditional Chinese dishes with a Cantonese style, such as prawn paste toast, fried wonton, chicken satay skewer, and Singapore fried rice. On the other hand, the US Chinese takeout incorporates American ingredients in a Fujianese style that caters to the American palate FYI - crab rangoon, orange chicken, sesame chicken, chop suey are not authentic Chinese cuisine but they do taste good.😋
As a Cantonese, prawn paste toast is definitely not an authentic and traditional dish
@@jtdx_ Prawn toast or shrimp toast (蝦多士) is a staple snack that originated in Hong Kong's Cha Chaan Teng nearly a century ago, influenced by British afternoon tea. It has since spread to other nearby Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and more, each creating its own variation. In the 1950s, restaurants in Hong Kong even featured shrimp toast in their banquets to showcase it as a fancy delicacy. Prawn paste toast is both a traditional Cantonese dish and an appetizer with a long history.
Hong Kong isn't in Canton/Guangzhou@@nlssln1
@@nlssln1 Do you go around saying things wrong so confidentaly everywhere you go? Or did you just look that up in wikipedia and think it applied?
Salt and pepper seasoned stuff everywhere I've had it is salt, red chilli peppers, garlic. And that's it.
Salt and pepper, garlic, chili chips are so, so good. One of my favourite meals
Definitely can get hot and sour soup in the UK
No chicken balls in the states? In Canada they're pretty common, but the sauce would be a neon red cherry sauce rather than sweet and sour.
Chicken Balls? No, no, we don't have those here. Sounds strange. We just have meatballs, which are usually beef, as they should be, but may be bison, if you're in the right places, and none of that is chinese or from a chinese place, it's usually a stroganoff or spaghetti thing, or sometimes noodle places have "Korean BBQ Meatballs", so yeah.
Yes, we have them. They're just named differently. If you order sweet & sour chicken you will get those chicken balls served with neon red sweet & sour sauce.
my go-to for Chinese Takeout is Sesame Chicken, Egg Drop Soup, Egg Rolls and Crab Rangoon.
When i was at uni fish & chip shop and chinese takeaway round corner were right next to each other shared a kitchen and run by same family! Their curry sauce for fish & chips WAS delicious Chinese curry sauce. Most excellent chips too. I recommend battered white fish and sweet & sour sauce served with egg fried rice.
Any time i go to a Chinese takeout place here in California, there’s always kungpao, sweet & sour pork, and some sort of orange chicken or General Tso’s chicken, lo mein, and of course spring rolls.
I live in philadelphia and its pretty much exactly the same here. i found a lot of what they showed here, especially the American fried rice, odd.
I'm coming to London in March and I'm hitting up Chinatown. Actually I've decided i want to try chinatowns wherever i travel. Lol I'm Chinese with Chinese immigrant parents and my mom's family owned a takeout place in NYC. I know the authentic stuff and Americanized stuff. I tried the Chinatown in Montreal and it was pretty good.
The food is very good in Chinatown. You’ll love it!
Can I ask how your trip went? How did you find Chinatown and London in general?
I used to live near Sydney Australia and Chinatown is the only thing I miss about it.
@@esmeraldagreengate4354 this is why I won't move far from where I am now 😁 I need my Chinese food, especially dim sum!
@@yaowsers77 yeah I live in rural area now and the Chinese food is not great ☹️ there was one restaurant in my town that made amazing food but they retired and closed the restaurant not long after I moved there
The scallion pancake is great with Hoisin sauce. Also fries and fried chicken or even burgers are popular to get in the hood.
Hard to make comparisons here. As mentioned previously, restaurants/ takeaway dishes vary enormously from ingredients, cooking time to just plain skill and consumer preference.
I don't know where Harry gets his Chinese takeaway, but egg foo yung is definitely a thing in the UK...
I hate when they don’t have the complimentary fried wontons when I’m eating Chinese takeout, they used to do it in almost every single restaurant and now it’s getting more rare. To me it’s part of the whole experience, along with the red booth seats that you can lay down in after you eat too much, which is also a part of the whole experience. Sometimes they even try to stick those trader Joe ones in but they’re not the same, kind of like those things she said were for the soup, and I’ve seen them in salads as well, but again, not the same.
They probably can’t afford to anymore. Covid tanked the restaurant industry
8:30 hot and sour soup is a chinese classic wymmmm 😩😩 it’s perfect omg
The UK does have spare ribs in two varieties: barbeque (with or without the sauce) and salt & pepper. It does have dumplings - pork and prawn and we also have two curries - english (a sweeter curry) and chinese. However, I think you only get the english curry from a chip shop rather than a restaurant. That's another weird difference here. You can get chinese from a restaurant and sometimes a chip shop - but if you want better chips, go to the chip shop.
Always gotta get pork wonton soup from my local Chinese food restaurant. It's my soup appetizer 🤓 Edit: i also get egg foo yung alot 🤔 Get a small white rice and mix the leftover gravy into the rice afterwards 😋
Sounds tasty!
Egg fu young is hella good with sweet and sour sauce (not ketchup though), and rice.
absolutely love wonton soup. i could eat it as a main dish if they up'd the size and number of wontons.
Disappointed by the lack of Chinese BBQ in the US takeout. These things are everywhere in LA and NY.
BBQ feels much more of an American thing. I could see the point of it being in larger cities like NYC and LA, but I wouldn’t think it to be a staple in Chinese American food
I was the same way as a kid. I wasn’t a picky eater but when it came to Chinese food, it was always a hot dog and fries. From what I can remember, it wasn’t that I didn’t like Chinese food, it was more I didn’t want to try it. I don’t know why because it’s amazing
Honestly ben deen did UK takeaways way better than any other channel.
When I go to my local Chinese takeaway I order salt and pepper with egg fried rice and prawn crackers, I’m surprised that Harry did not mention salt and pepper chicken because I’m pretty sure it’s exclusive to the uk
We have salt & pepper chicken in the US too
Thumbs up of approval 👍🏼 from a former UK Chinese takeaway kid that used to help their parents in said takeaway. 😂
*takeout
Uk it’s takeaway. Foreigners say “takeout “ in a whinny voice
It's not a proper Chinese unless you have a 12 year old manning the till in my eyes.
In the 🇬🇧 my local chinese do, something similar to prawn toast but with chicken it is so good. Also they do sausages, nuggets, etc for the kids
I have to know where u got your food! My favourite shop in North London closed and I was heartbroken but your food looks identical to theirs
as a Brit, I'm all for the individual dishes Harry went through. That plate though, covering sauce over everything was disgusting. I have never done that, I would have one dish or share a couple but I don't condone that mess ;)
Carb, carbs and more carbs, drenched in sauces. Looks Disgusting 🤢
as a human being, that looks disgusting to me as well
ive had hot and sour soup at my local chinese in the UK. its quite nice
Was going to try and work out how to post here that all bar a couple of the US invented (well arguably Taiwan for General Xao) dishes most the rest are readily available in the UK. Main reason being much in the US being Pekinese/Court style due partly to Taipei. In the UK we are more Cantonese/Hunan based due to Hong Kong and Shanghai, however we also have heavy Peking style as well.
Shrimp are smaller crustaceans in different genera than prawns, but are only really fished in the Northeast US. Gulf "shrimp" are actually three gulf prawn species marketed as shrimp.
I'm a takeaway child of immigrant parents as per the story about General Tso's chicken at 14:00 all the food they cooked was altered for the UK palate which was less adventurous in the 60's and 70's. All our meals cooked for the family did NOT contain any MSG either 😅. Egg Foo Young with fried rice was immensely popular back in the day Harry. Boo!
Judge Harry individually for the double sauce over everything, nobody else I know does that in the UK hahaha
Usually just the sweet and spur sauce over everything
Could have been worse, I know a couple of people who have their Chinese with ketchup...
@@ad3z10 Yeah that's not the one
Yeah I think that's a tad extreme use of the sauces
I've got through the starters section so far, and apart from the scallion pancakes, and the crab & cheese (why cheese?!) wonton-type thing, all the US items are also available in UK Chinese takeaways, at least the ones I use. I also wouldn't touch the UK-listed items in my order. Though I may get mini vegetable spring rolls or mini samosas. Steamed dumplings are becoming more common, and other dim sum items are beginning to spread.
Soups - you can definitely get Hot & Sour, as well as others. I have often seen crab-based soups in menus, though have never ordered soup from a Chinese either.
Singapore Mei Fun is definitely over here as Singapore Vermicelli - very common, as is Singapore Chow Mein. Chop Suey is also in the UK, though the other mains are more US exclusive. Particularly General Tso's Chicken, which I had never heard before I got into watching Foodie channels on KZhead.
Ah, UK takeaway Szechuan beef (or other protein) - so disappointing. Where's the spice, where's the mala numbing? Carefully excised from this to avoid scaring the UK palette, unfortunately! Of the UK sauces, my picks would be Chinese Barbecue or Chilli Oil. But then, I am a bit of a chillihead, and have Chiu Chow Chilli Oil at my table as a routing add anyway. Curry Sauce and Sweet & Sour are so boring for me.
That UK plate is truly horrific - I am so embarrassed for my country now! My plate would be a ramen bowl, with a base of either singapore vermicelli/chow mein, or Singapore rice. Topped with a dry dish (if noodles), or a strongly flavoured saucy dish if rice (my preferred is Black Pepper beef or chicken, not mentioned in the video). Both options with a side of mini spring rolls or some other fully veg spring roll.
The Crab Rangoons are from the 1950s when people were beginning to make weird combinations with common foods. Something else commonly found here that might be horrifying to you is what is called a Philadelphia roll. A sushi roll with salmon, avocado, and cream cheese wrapped in seaweed and white rice.
We can actually eat British Chinese food here in Hong Kong at a restaurant called '1908bc British Chinese' which is popular because Hong Kong & food!
Irish Chinese has fried AND steamed dumplings and we have spice bags. Chips(Fries) with spices and fried chicken