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Anyone ever owned/run/worked at a Chinese take out resturant?
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By contrast, the cheap chinese places are fluorescent lights and dirty linoleum.
I'll second the carpeting question. Is that specifically for chinese restaurants, or all eateries? I've never paid much attention to the flooring, but I'm fairly sure most places I've been to have had carpeting, high end or not.
I really doubt this. Start paying attention and you'll notice most places absolutely do not have carpeting.
Not that a Chinese food restaurant will be much higher, but I can see why.
I tend to agree with VoC, and feel MSG is a masker which is usually used to cover up the use of ingredients that are no longer fresh. No one jumps into the "Help me cook a tasty steak/burger" and says to use a ton of marinade or seasonings on the meat and let the "meat's flavor should speak for itself" crowd enjoy shitty beef. MSG is an enhancer the same way ketchup is -- they're both big on the umami thing -- and people go nuts if you talk about putting ketchup on good meat.
re: Rudeness
Chinese tend to overlook rudeness, I think because in China and Taiwan the norm is for customers and staff to be horribly rude to each other, at least in normal, non-touristy restaurants. It doesn't seem like an ideal system. I don't see how being polite could possibly hurt, though, especially among people without that expectation.
http://www.gordonramsay.com/grautrianon/
It's very visible right there.
Back to work or I'd keep looking.
My local place doesn't use MSG and I was wondering what I was missing after spacemilk really liking MSG.
The first has floors of wood and stone tile and a nice modern decor.
The second is a 200-year-old inn, and some rooms have dark carpeting and some rooms don't.
The third is a very, very upscale steakhouse. I mean, all their food is good, but you go there for the steak. They have flowy curtains and candlelight and the whole nine yards. Their floors, with the exception of tiling in the host area, are entirely carpeted.
The moral of the story is that I've never heard anybody judge the quality of a place by whether or not they have carpet, but whatever way you decide to go make sure it looks nice and is always clean.
Think of it as the feeling you get when you really crave something and your mouth waters. It's a similar "excited-ness" when using MSG. A lot of places abuse it though, but it's really, really handy way to make dishes taste better if you exercise caution. Savoriness, or, Umami is the term used to describe it's effect on cooking.
As far as I know, a lot of chefs use it frequently in their dishes, just not quite as much as you'd get from a bouillon cube or Chinese food restaurant.
A good example you're probably really familiar with is Ramen Noodles. The little packages that you pour into your noodles tend to be absolutely loaded with MSG.
Yes, you'll very occasionally see it in high end restaurants. But there's less traffic and less spillage happening there. Also, Gordon Ramsay has the money to bring in professional carpet cleaners on a regular basis.
Either way, it's a tacky throwback.
It's a salt, not really uncommon for people to be addicted to salt in the US. Some people love sweet tastes, some love salt tastes, some even really like bitter tastes. It could also be a mineral deficiency too, so, look into that.
Try some bananas duder, other "electrolytes" tend to work in harmony in helping to reduce cravings.
Friendly staff -both on the phone and in the restaurant
A clean restaurant - sticky/greasy counters will send me running, also (I know it's picky) but if I can see that the phones/credit card machine/pens are covered with dirt/grime/filth I will be very wary of what I'm eating from there
Different sized portions - meaning I don't want to have to order an entire gallon of orange beef to get my fix...leftovers are one thing...if I'm ordering for 1, I don't really need leftovers for a week. (this includes rice)
Combo deals - not just for lunch. One of my favorite places will allow you to order their combos for dinner as well but they charge like an extra $1.50 (or thereabouts)
Tasty food - If all the dishes taste the same with a different assortment of veggies tossed in, I'm probably not going to go back. Also, if I ask for spicy and it still tastes bland as bland can be, then I probably won't try again.
And that's why the sodium level is through the roof and why people like myself avoid MSG and places that use it.
This is super important to me as well. It seems basic but places that primarily do take out with very little eat-in service seem to have the biggest issues with this.
And if it's going to be eat-in as well I know a lot places up here do very well with lunch buffets.
Do you avoid places that use salt (MSG is pretty much a salt), pepper, garlic, butter? A place could be MSG free and still be filling you up with MSG. Did you know Parmesan cheese has more MSG than soy sauce? The more you know!
It's all about how you prepare the food and I keep saying it, but not serving MSG just because of some health nuts is silly, advertise that you'll exclude MSG from food if requested, that's just as good.
tldr; Telling somebody that something is basically safe because it's a salt (rather than "as safe as table salt" or something similar), even a sodium salt, is actually really wrong. Just because something is chemically a salt does not mean you should put it in your mouth.
That's pretty pedantic. I don't think someone is dumb enough to google common chemistry salts and choke down some Lead sulfate.
That's not what I said.
I asked if they avoid restaurants because they use salt, pepper, garlic, butter. And then I mentioned MSG is just a salt, in the loosest culinary sense of the word.
Why did I ask if someone avoids restaurants for using salt, pepper, garlic, and butter? Because those are ingredients a lot of restaurants go overboard with to improve the flavor of their dish. Vis-à-vis, MSG is also overused to improve a dish.
That's pretty silly.
How about; MSG is a sodium salt, an non-essential amino acid, it is found in a lot of foods, mostly in cheese, tomatoes, and soy sauce.
It's a salt.
I used to live on the Upper West Side in NYC and the chinese was terrible, sooooo terrible. Recently moved to Brooklyn and the neighborhood is mostly Puerto Ricans, the chinese in this area is so awesome.
Why? MSG. Puerto Ricans use a lot of sazon in their cooking, sazon is msg plus some spices. This neighborhood they could get away with MSG whereas the upper west side is not a fan of the stuff.
I completely agree that the "no-msg on request" thing would be the best way to go.
I hate it when we want to pick up Chinese and we need a new place after moving and there's not a damn thing on the menu that doesn't have meat. And the "Vegetable" section is all "vegetables with meat".
How hard is it to leave the pork/seafood/what have you out of an order or rice or lo mein?
The fact is, you'll likely gain more customers than you'd ever lose by going no msg. Anyone who wants to dispute that has to do sonwithout talking about why they like msg, what it is, and whether or not it's a good thing. It's a marketing question, not a personal preference question.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
My favorite Americanized chinese place here offers all dishes as vegetarian, add $1 for pork or beef, add $2 for chicken or shrimp.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
I just came in to say a well organized menu and people who can answer questions about it. I understand if your staff isn't all perfectly fluent in English or whatever the native tongue may be in your area, but make sure the person answering the phones is able to communicate clearly and answer questions about the menu.
I swear I've tried so many places where they just sort of say "Yes, Yes, Yes" to every question you ask just to get you to hurry and order, even if the questions are conflicting.
Organize the menu in a way that allows folks to order what they want immediately. I don't know why Asian restaurants seem to like having one epic list of shit with no pictures, categorized only by what animal it's made from.
Do not put pictures of the food in the menu. Quite possibly the tackiest thing you could ever do. They list it by ingredient because they assume people can put 2 and 2 together and figure out what the dish is like. If you need pictures and your hand held, go to Denny's.
Oddly enough, Denny's is successful while many Chinese restaurants are only sustainable because they employee family members and pay slave wages. Go figure?
And if there are several dishes that have similar ingredients, it helps to know WHY they're different (spicy, type of sauce, etc) instead of saying "beef with sauce and vegetables" for each one.
Edit: Oh and if you have an online menu/ordering system certainly put pictures up there in links.
A lot of places with terrible food are successful. Maybe I just have high standards, but I don't like spending my time at Sizzler or Olive Garden.
EDIT: All pictures do is drive up the cost of your printing. Just have nicely detailed descriptions.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH