It goes without saying that Chinese food culture, which spans regions from Canton to Mongolia, is one of the greatest and most diverse in the world. But looking at the menus of Chinese restaurants in America from Chattanooga to Salt Lake City, it’s hard to come to that conclusion, since the menus are so similar to one another and full of non-Chinese dishes. Sure, the U.S. has a fair number of excellent Chinese restaurants, especially in big cities with Chinatowns where the clientele is largely Chinese and speaks the language. But even if you track down a special little Sichuan or Hunan restaurant full of Chinese customers, the likelihood of getting the best of the cuisine is highly questionable.

One problem is the non-Chinese customer himself, who, as Andrew Coe writes in his book, Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Cuisine in the United Statess, “most Americans still expect Chinese food to be cheap, filling, familiar, and bland.” Coe describes how Chinese food was Americanized, just like Italian, Jewish, and German food, when Chinese cuisine became popular in the 19th century.^th and 20^th Centuries. Dishes like egg foo yung, pu pu platters, mu shu pork, chow mein, and General Tso’s chicken were, at best, adaptations of Chinese ingredients and flavors to please the American palate. Americans also expected fortune cookies at the end of their meal, as well as fried ice cream with bananas. There are even kosher Chinese restaurants in New York.

I’m looking at the typical Chinese-American menu of a suburban New York restaurant, which lists 193 dishes plus 13 “chef’s specials,” including 25 shrimp dishes and an equal number of beef dishes. Among this confusing tirade are dishes named “Bourbon Chicken,” “Orange Tofu,” “Snow Pea Roast,” “Happy Family,” and “Lover’s Chicken.” The most expensive item on the menu costs $17.

I once learned an important lesson about how to get the most out of a Chinese restaurant, even the prestigious ones in New York and San Francisco, some of which are as elegant as any restaurant in the city. A Chinese restaurant owner named Paul Chou invited me to dine with him at his favorite place in York’s Chinatown. The name is now forgotten, but it doesn’t matter because, he told me, the experience is the same everywhere.

As we sat down, the waiter brought my wife and I pink menus, all in English, and Paul a blue one, in Mandarin. Paul said, “Give me those menus,” folded them up and put them aside.

“See the Chinese characters on the notes pinned to the wall? Those are the dishes the Chinese order, and I’ll choose a few. But since I know where the chef is from, Canton, I’ll order his special dishes.” Paul then asked for a pad and pen, wrote down his desired dishes in Chinese, and called over the captain, who had obviously been asked the same thing by many Chinese guests.

While waiting for the food, Paul explained, “The dishes on your pink menu are for Western palates – Gen. Tso’s Chicken, Kung Pao Chicken, Lo Mein; the ones on mine are authentic Chinese, but the ones on the wall are the specials of the evening. What I’ve written down are dishes that the chef came up with. You may not like them all, but they will be the best and most authentic.”

Dishes on the table included sea snails with the bottom cut off so you could suck out the contents; chicken soup made from seaweed; grilled crabs; chewy duck feet in a rich, winey dark sauce; a seafood platter with seven kinds of molluscs and fish; and, last but not least, congealed duck blood with noodles in soup, a speciality of the city of Nanjing. Paul was right that some of these were a bit too exotic for me, but I knew what he was getting at.

Then, to my surprise, he ordered orange beef from our pink menu, and it was sticky, sweet, and unlike anything I had just eaten.

“I just wanted to prove,” said Paul, “that if you don’t understand Chinese, never to get the best out of a Chinese kitchen. It also helps to know the chef, as they change frequently. If another restaurant hears of a great new chef, they will quickly poach him.”

This lesson was very important to me. Because although I have eaten some special dishes in the US in Chinese restaurants whose owners, like Paul, are willing to take a risk with a Westerner’s palate, I can honestly say that it is very rare for the food to taste like it did in the restaurants I ate in China, especially in Taiwan, where I never had a bad meal and ate most of the dishes for the first time. Most dishes in the US are fried, while the Chinese, like other countries, have many traditional cooking techniques, including Cuan (quick cooking), Shuan (instant cooking), Ao (stew), Hello (stewing), Jian(Fry in a flat-bottomed pan, not in a wok), Lu (frying in two stages), as well as steaming, baking, roasting, smoking and “clay baking” – only a few of these processes appear on Western menus.

Perhaps the easiest way to enjoy authentic Chinese food is to visit one of the large dim sum restaurants in Chinatown. There, everyone is shown and served the same dishes, which they can choose from rolling carts. And many of these dishes are not just dim sum dumplings. Take a look at the tables filled with Chinese. They might even have congealed duck blood for you to try.