What Is Considered Authentic Chinese Food?

We’ve gotten this question before, but we’ve never been able to easily explain what constitutes authentic Chinese food in a single sentence. That’s why we’re breaking it down here with this monster of a blog post so you can see some of the different perspectives we’ve captured for yourself.

One quick note: This is a hotly debated topic that requires nuance and garners lots of opinions from lots of different people—and that’s okay. At MìLà, ours is just one opinion of many, and no group is a monolith with the same perspectives across the board.

The Two Largest Camps

Everyone likely has their own hot take on Chinese food and an idea of what constitutes authenticity. However, from everything we’ve seen, most fall into one of two stances.

Only Chinese Food from China Is Authentic

This camp tends to favor the original recipes that grandmas, great-great grandmas, and great-great-great grandmas would have used in their respective regions of China. In the past, these involved what was available or grown in the area—and what’s still affordable there today.

The roots of this line of thinking are likely one of the origin points for the eight culinary traditions of China. While this isn’t necessarily a wrong way of thinking, it captures exact points in Chinese culinary history and tends to take a more purist stance on ingredients, whether or not they’re available in your given area. 

Authenticity Is Fluid and Subjective

On the other hand, some people involved in Chinese gastronomy have the general perspective that “authentic” is a very loaded word by design.

Back when Chinese expats came to the West Coast, they didn’t have access to a lot of the ingredients we have today thanks to international shipping and agricultural adaptations, so they had to make do with what they could find. This particular perspective acknowledges that not every Chinese immigrant in the long history of the world has had easy access to the ingredients they grew up with—and that authenticity is as fluid as the Chinese community itself is abroad.

First: What the Original Chinese Foods Were and Are

Naturally, there are certain types of dishes that come to mind when someone is cooking authentic Chinese food—or what they think is authentic. A lot of it includes classic ingredients and doesn’t have much deviation. Namely, these are some of the common recipes you’ll see chefs attempting outside China:

• Egg fried rice (with or without the ingredients that traditionally go into it)
• Dim sum
• Dan dan noodles
• Scallion pancakes
• Dumplings in their many, many delicious forms
• Literally hundreds of different dishes involving vegetables, legumes, fish, and other ingredients with various preparations that have been fried, steamed, braised, baked, or anything in between.

However, when it comes to determining authenticity for an individual version of these or the literally thousands of other Chinese dishes, the onus of authenticity often unfairly falls on the chef making the food. 

They might receive complaints of inauthenticity whether they’re using Italian-style broccoli, Chinese broccoli or gai lan (芥兰), or any other veggies they can find. How is that fair to the third-generation, culinary institute-trained chef using wagyu beef and gai lan for their take on beef and broccoli, or the restaurant-owning parents making the same dish with less glamorous ingredients for the next pickup order that helps them pay for their kids’ education funds?

In short, it’s not. Let’s explore why.

An Extremely Brief History Lesson on Chinese Food in America

What the majority of Americans think of as Chinese food originated from laborers who came to the West Coast as immigrants. They often came to cities like San Francisco with next to nothing—at first because they were seeking opportunities for a better life with the California gold rush.

Many learned how to adapt the classic dishes from back home to feed themselves. They used the local ingredients and utensils available to them in California to get that taste of what mom used to make, and they used it to sustain themselves through some of the most brutal labor conditions America has ever had to offer.

Through this ordeal of survival, racism was a problem that stoked fear of Chinese food. Stereotypes, discriminatory employment policies, and legislation effectively forced Chinese Americans to rely on self-employment through businesses like restaurants in cities.

Times were slow to change over the decades, and the Chinese Exclusion Act was eventually repealed in 1943. However, there was still some caginess from white Americans around Chinese food for a few more decades. Slowly—and we do mean very slowly, thanks to the ebb and flow of international relations—Middle America caught onto how delicious Chinese food can be.

However, Chinese restaurants only became a true staple in both large and small towns in America after Nixon visited China. Curiosity led to non-Chinese Americans getting a taste of the culinary experience for themselves, and it ultimately became a hit—plus or minus plenty more issues relating to the anti-MSG movement—that we still enjoy today.

How Chinese Chefs Adapted to American Tastes

When the first Chinese-American restaurant owners started working in America, they had very little to work with. They effectively had to work with whatever they could find—mostly if it grew in America or within easy shipping distance. Cheap cuts of meat and readily accessible vegetables like cabbage and carrots were staples.

Once the rest of America caught onto how good Chinese food is, these chefs had to get creative. So, they started adapting Chinese dishes to American tastes.

That eye for innovation is how smaller Chinese restaurants in America stayed afloat—they developed dishes like moo goo gai pan, cashew chicken, and General Tso’s chicken to appeal to the masses.

Crab Rangoon, Egg Rolls, and Chop Suey

Chances are, you have at least one overbearing friend who would say none of the dishes we just described are authentic. While they might not have had cream cheese or imitation crab in 19th-century China, we can’t help but cry foul a bit when someone says these adapted dishes are not “real” Chinese food.

In a sense, these dishes are no more inauthentic than the spaghetti and meatballs an Italian-American’s grandma made 90 years ago. They were both adapted to either make cheaper ingredients go further or to appeal to the broader American palate at the time—and they were made by enterprising Chinese and Italian Americans respectively.

In short, none of these dishes, whether they’re chop suey or cream-based carbonara, are necessarily inauthentic. They’re a byproduct of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents trying to survive and feed their families or make a living. To us, that’s not something to be ashamed of—it’s worth celebrating because they used it to thrive.

Hot Pot, Peking Duck, and Dim Sum in the Age of the Internet

The internet has changed a lot of things about how we as a society view food. It’s been great for helping the world see the true extent of what Chinese food can be because it shows a different side of the cuisine—that of dim sum, hot pot, and Peking duck.

There’s a double-edged sword here though. While social media and the internet have been great for spreading culture, there’s always been an undercurrent of criticism for the Chinese dishes that were adapted to American palates. It’s occasionally meant Chinese restaurant owners get written off, despite having survived and innovated to make it in an unfamiliar culture.

While they may not be dishes our fourth- or fifth-great-grandparents would have eaten, the dishes adapted to American tastes aren’t necessarily wrong. They’re just a different interpretation.

Where MìLà Fits into All This

We’re not strangers to these discussions about whether Chinese food in America is authentic. Our founders had just as many experiences wishing to blend into the landscape of bologna sandwiches and subpar pizzas as plenty of other third-culture or second- or third-generation kids. While we’re speaking to what’s authentic in our personal experiences with our soup dumplings and noodles, we also want to acknowledge where the Chinese-American community started and how we’ve progressed.

In our humble opinion, the Chinese food you’ll find on the takeout menu in a town of 4,000 people in South Dakota speaks just as much to that experience as the white-tablecloth dim sum experience in San Francisco. Communities in the 19th century faced a different subset of challenges from what new Chinese immigrants do now, but that doesn’t make their heritage—or their food—any less Chinese.

Taste Our Take on Authentic Chinese Dishes

Don’t think of our Xiao Long Bao (小笼包) as the finish line for authentic Chinese food—think of them as the starting point. Order Chinese noodles, potstickers, or soup dumplings with your favorite filling today and experience our take on Chinese comfort food for yourself.