Chinese restaurants aren't the same everywhere
I discovered that when we moved from Holland to Spain in 2016. All my life in Holland, there was one food I loved when we ordered food or went to get takeaway: Chinese food. Now I admit, I was not the most spectacular eater when it came to Chinese food, I usually ordered the same things but it was something I really loved and homemade could actually never top what we ordered there. I loved the simplicity of "Nasi goreng" and the spring rolls needed to come from a certain Chinese restaurant because the others didn't have spring rolls that I loved. I also remember that when we ate Chinese, it was always enough for 2, sometimes even 3 days. We didn't eat it often though because that was something my mother could not afford most of my childhood, ordering in or takeaway was something special when I grew up.
When I moved abroad
I discovered something that I never really thought about before, that Chinese food ordered in another country was not always even slightly similar to the Chinese food I was used to in Holland. Thankfully for me, the Chinese restaurant around the corner where we lived had awesome spring rolls and wasn't even expensive. When we moved to Budapest, we never found one restaurant that came close to the Chines food I always loved. I really never thought that this was such a strange thing and when I was younger, I assumed all these dishes were clearly understandable by Chinese people in Spain for example, I can tell you, that's absolutely not the case! I still have to laugh when I could not make the lady understand that I wanted a "Loempia" as we call the spring rolls in Dutch. I didn't know yet how it was called in English, so that was an experience. Eventually, I found out they had them but I just didn't know how to order it at first.
The first time's a charm
Now I don't know why it happened but the spring roll pictures weren't there when I got home, oops. The food was simple but good and not expensive. The best thing about finding this restaurant was that our daughter wanted to have fried rice with chicken and ate very well, and what we ordered was nothing special but good enough. I was happy to eat a nice spring roll again as well as the nasi goreng with some other chicken dish in sweet sauce. I don't remember the name of it, but we all left totally satisfied without feeling poor afterwards. The great thing is that they also do home delivery so next time we will probably go for that option because this restaurant was so hot, the fans they had didn't help much, when we were done eating we left right away because of this. It was cooler outside than inside.. not ideal to stay longer than needed.
At least we have something to add to our list of "approved by our daughter" which always makes me happy. This way we can compromise when needed :)
Do you like Chinese food? Have you also experienced how different this is prepared in different countries? Tell me about it in a comment below if you like..