Is authentic Chinese food like steamed buns mainly found in places with high numbers of Chinese immigrants?

32 comments

1. More or less.

   Stuff like that is certainly not unheard of outside Chinatowns but your local Chinese restaurant serving the general public is likely to be very, very Americanized in a way Chinese restaurants in Chinatowns aren’t.

2. You could probably find them in places without many Chinese people but would be much harder. It’s hard for me to give an accurate assessment because I live by a lot of Chinese immigrants.

3. You’re definitely more likely to find more authentic ethnic foods in areas with a large amount of that ethnicity.

4. Places with high ethnic communities have food service that is relevant.

5. It depends on how granular you want to get. You can get authentic Cantonese food in large to midsize cities, especially if they have a Chinatown (Boston DC and Philadelphia for example). However, if you want your pick of regional Chinese food (so, like, a Shanxi restaurant, or Hui food, etc.) you are most likely to find them in parts of New York City (particularly Flushing in Queens) or San Francisco and LA and their suburbs.

6. I’d say steamed buns are pretty mainstream nowadays, I would expect to see them in any major city. More niche/regional foods, yeah, only in areas with big Chinese populations.

7. You can find steamed buns at the nearest sauna.

8. Authentic Chinese food is starting to become a bit trendy and is getting easier to find. That said, there’s a huge variety of “steamed buns” and some are easier to find than others.

   The small little dumplings served in Cantonese restaurants are IMO way easier to find than the big baozi buns stuffed with pork or vegetable that I guess are a common breakfast item in much of mainland China.

   In central Indiana, there’s one Chinese restaurant tucked away inside an international grocery store that does good baozi. There’s also a couple of Chinese markets in town that get them shipped in from god-knows-where and those are just…eh…okay. The sit-down restaurants that serve more authentic stuff tend to specialize in Sichuan food.

   Places with larger Chinese populations will have more variety. The west coast cities tend to have pretty well developed food scenes. Boston has a pretty decent variety of Chinese restaurants including one Uyghur restaurant.

9. I didn’t see, say, bao living in New England, except in Boston’s Chinatown, and while it’s easier to find in NYC you kind of have to look for more as-made-in-China food specifically.

   (Though there are some Western Chinese restaurants- as in Western China, not westernized food- that are popular here.)

10. Yep. It is a tragedy.

11. Places with large Chinese populations will have Hunan, Szechuan, hot pot, bao, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, etc. restaurants. Places that don’t will have a Chinese restaurant with a bottle of ketchup on every table.

12. You can find it around, a lot of places might be more Americanized Chinese. If I want the real traditional stuff, I go to Chinatown.

    That said, I did live about an hour out from the city for a while and we had a Cantonese place that my friend who lived in HK for a while said was pretty close to authentic

13. Steamed buns have become more popular in the US in the last 10 years. This is not a surprise; they are delicious. I have seem steamed buns served in the cafeteria in small rural universities in Indiana, not just in larger cities. I would say that you are mostly correct, but they are becoming increasingly prevalent.

14. Yeah pretty much.

    Big cities have authentic dim sum places. Big cities have authentic places from other parts of China.

    Rural areas without Chinese populations usually have a Chinese restaurant or two but they generally focus on Americanized dishes.

    Now, the secret is this, places that focus on Americanized dishes often are owned by Chinese families and have Chinese chefs. So they may focus on Americanized dishes but if you know the restaurant you will find they make authentic stuff if you ask even though 90% of their take out orders are general tso, orange chicken, lo mein, crab Rangoon and egg rolls.

15. There’s a lot of authentic Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel valley region of southern California.

    There’s also some in orange county too.

16. If they’re trying to make money selling buns then customers needs to keep buying them. The non-Chinese will buy some but they will get other cuisines too.

    There are exceptions though. If Chinese food is highly appreciated by the local community then it’s possible to thrive. This happens in place like Hawaii. Non-Chinese customers will drop by early to get a box for the office meetings.

17. I can find steamed pork baozi without much difficulty these days, but find any other sort of stuffing is very, very difficult. At best, maybe you’ll find some “spring vegetables” stuffed ones.

    You’re not gonna find anything like roujiamo or jiang bing very easily. Scallion pancakes however, are incredibly common.

18. Like most things, the larger the city is the more likely you are to find an authentic Chinese restaurant there. I would imagine that there are more on the west coast where there’s a higher concentration of Chinese people

19. In Hawaii, you can find steam buns all over, even at gas stations.

20. You’ll mostly find them in areas with a Chinese community, especially freshly made steamed buns. You might be able to find steamed buns in the frozen or Asian foods section of a supermarket if you’re somewhere far away from a Chinese community.

    I have relatives who live in a somewhat rural but growing city called Princeton, TX and they have to travel half an hour to Plano or Dallas to get all their Vietnamese ingredients. There’s some things you can’t get at your local Walmart for Vietnamese cooking.

21. All the diverse cuisine in the US is found in its many diasporas.
    Pork steamed buns are common where there’s a lot of Chinese Americans, but also Korean Americans, Japanese Americans and Filipino Americans. And at least where Im at, more “authentic” Chinese food is branching out of their enclaves.

    Din Tai Feng, Northern Cafe, Sichuan Impressions are some chains that have branched out to more diverse neighborhoods.
    Even in my neighborhood, steamed dumpling spot just opened up. Before I’d have to drive to an adjacent neighborhood to grab some Chinese dumplongs.

22. From what I have seen, places that don’t have large Asian populations don’t have good Asian food. They might have the food. And they probably do if you look hard enough and find small shops. But for a decent selection and for decent restaurants you mostly have to be where there are a lot if Asian immigrants.

23. I’d say so, or at least in larger cities

24. Imo any larger city you will find them. Austin is REALLY white and doesn’t have many Asian diaspora and I have many places I can go for this

25. I have had pork steamed buns but I am in an area with Vietnamese and Korean. There was a place I walked into that had a custard in it that was really good but I don’t know if it was seasonal.

26. Any major or even mid sized city. In both Raleigh and Charlotte I’ve gotten some great ones fresh from Asian supermarkets.

27. America has a different culture than other places. Yes it is influenced by other counties, but often it puts its own spin on things. Finding “authentic” food is difficult unless there are a large number of immigrants and ones who grew up in the nation from which they come. Certain dishes are eventually adopted into what can be deemed general American culture and sometimes these dishes will remain unchanged or a “true” there will be a recognized “true” version. Steamed buns are getting to the point where you can find them many places but often you have to find immigrant communities.

28. I live in a fairly smallish city (160k people) that is like 81% white and 4% asian. We have 4 different places that serve authentic chinese food including steamed buns. We do however have a large university that may influence that though as there are a number of asian students here during the school year.

29. Yes but that’s pretty much any major metropolitan area now.

30. You can get steamed buns/soup dumplings everywhere. In my experience tho you can only get good steamed buns and soup dumplings in areas with heavy Chinese influence

31. My local grocery store sells pizza bao buns. They’re great

32. Overseas Chinese here, if you go to an area with a high density of Chinese people, absolutely, but if you go to rural nowhere, Chinese food is like chop suey