As with most world cuisine, if you're looking for quality, then you're looking for authenticity.
We can't make any promises, of course, but if the restaurant you're in hits these marks,
then it's got a decent chance of being a tasty and authentic Chinese restaurant.
Location, location, location!
Location is everything.
A Chinese restaurant sitting in the middle of your city's Indian neighbourhood isn't
going to inspire confidence, and neither is one that's on the side of a highway in the
middle of nowhere.
But if that restaurant is situated in the heart of the Chinese community, there's a
fair bet that the owners and staff are going to constitute a part of that community.
Certain regions in the U.S. like New York City and parts of California have a very high
concentration of Chinese immigrants, so they're a good place to start.
Within your town or city, look for the residential Chinese neighborhoods and see if you can find
a place nearby.
Beware, however, of Chinatowns: they're meant to bring in tourists, and that's hardly an
indicator of quality grub.
Spice up your life
It may sound weird, but if your Chinese restaurant is, well, a "Chinese restaurant," it's probably
not going to serve the best Chinese food.
China itself is made up of eight culinary regions: Cantonese, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, which
are known for their light, sweet dishes; Sichuan, which does spicy food better than anyone else;
Hunan, which goes for spicy and sour recipes; Anhui and Fujian, which utilize mountain ingredients
in their dishes; and Shandong, which specializes in seafood.
Find a restaurant that uses one of those regional labels instead of throwing all its food under
a general "Chinese" umbrella, and it's likely you've found a place where the chefs know
what they're doing.
The added bonus of visiting a region-based restaurant, of course, is also that knowing
the region well will give you a good idea of the menu before you even sit down.
A word of advice
This might seem obvious, but it's worth saying anyway: It's a good sign when the staff speaks
Chinese.
According to Mission Chinese Food's Danny Bowien, the places where the staff uses the
language as their first are, more often than not, the best.
It's simple logic, and similar to choosing the right neighborhood, who else would you
trust to serve authentic, quality Chinese food than culinary-minded folk who've maintained
such a strong link to their culture?
A leap of taste
So you've been shown to your table and handed an English menu to peruse.
What's the first thing you should do?
Throw it away.
Any Chinese restaurant worth its salt will cater to a Chinese clientele, and that means
there's bound to be a Chinese-language menu available.
This menu, which is likely to contain some of the more out-there dishes, might be tricky
to get hold of without somebody who can speak a Chinese language.
If you're willing to throw yourself into the challenge, however, you'll have a whole new
world of Chinese food opened up to you.
And if you've found a place where there isn't even an English menu available, congratulations:
You've struck gold.
Fortune cookie fail
There are some dishes out there which might appear Chinese at first glance, but are actually
simply western inventions designed to appear that way.
"All of these dishes popular here in China might seem unfamiliar to you if you're used
to eating Chinese food in the United States."
Examples of "Chinese" food you won't actually find in China include crab rangoon, which
is an American invention, and duck sauce, which is made from fruit that doesn't exist
in China.
Stay away from broccoli too, which is a Western vegetable, and remember that fortune cookies
were most likely invented by Japanese immigrants to the United States.
Beware of any Chinese restaurant that offers them.
"I refuse to play your chinese food mind games."
At best, any restaurant serving dishes like these is trying to cater to Westerners, or,
at worst, they don't really know what they're doing.
Neither of those should strike you as the best place to get authentic Chinese food.
Dim sum, win some
While there are a handful of Western dishes you should keep an eye out for on the menu,
there's one dish that should reassure you that you've found the right place: dim sum.
For the uninitiated, dim sum is a type of bite-sized food that's usually served in baskets,
often with tea as part of brunch.
Dim sum dishes can include dumplings, rolls, buns and cakes, and are usually pushed around
the restaurant on carts for customers to pick and choose.
According to David R. Chan, an L.A. lawyer who's eaten in over 6,000 North American Chinese
restaurants, almost every single one he's ever found which served dim sum has been an
authentic restaurant catering to Chinese diners.
Use this as your authenticity barometer.
Tea time
Similarly, you can gauge how authentic your Chinese restaurant is by just how seriously
they take their tea.
"It's sniffed, sorted, and served piping hot right on the street.
This is the tea harvest in China."
The Chinese, of course, don't mess around when it comes to the stuff: the drinking of
tea in China is a major part of their culture.
It's used as part of the cuisine, sometimes, even medicinally, and it has a whole load
of rules, signals, and customs attached to it.
Tea is offered to show respect, to demonstrate apology, and to celebrate or show gratitude.
The teas most commonly served in authentic Chinese restaurants are oolong, green tea,
jasmine tea, and pu-erh.
If the restaurant you're in makes a point of offering tea to you, or even insisting
that you drink it, take that as a plus.