Try the "Australian Chinese food" of lemon chicken and Mongolian beef

Thanks to the instant success of General Tso's Chicken, we have a clear synonym for the Chinese food that foreigners are used to.

General Tso's Chicken is a popular Chinese food in North America. In the Southern Hemisphere, there are also exclusive Australian-style Chinese dishes. Common dishes include lemon chicken, Mongolian beef, and honey chicken.

The American website BuzzFeed previously launched a campaign to vote on classic dishes commonly seen in Chinese restaurants in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to see which country is more popular. It was also divided into appetizers, staple dishes, rice, pasta, side dishes and sauces, etc. Category, the result is that Australian Chinese food won the championship in the appetizer, main dish and side dish categories with "Spring Rolls", "Honey Chicken", and "Dim Sum" (there are so many things to complain about in this competition that I don't know where to start).

After coming to Melbourne, Australian-style Chinese food has been on my to-do list of cultural experiences. I happened to go to one tonight and wanted to talk about the experience of ticking this to-do list.

Lao Dan has been eating fried rice for thirty-five years

Lao Dan is a funny and humorous local Australian. He has a very persistent side. For example, he has never left his first internship unit after graduation for 35 years. He goes to watch horse racing almost every weekend. He often disappears secretly at noon on Fridays because he has to go to the same Chinese restaurant to take out a box of fried rice.

One Friday, he decided to invite several Chinese friends, including me, to his beloved Chinese restaurant and hear our reviews.

That evening, everyone went to the restaurant to meet up. When we arrived at the door of the restaurant, there were two big phoenixes printed on the window, matching the red color. I took a breath and thought I was in a wedding banquet hall. The restaurant was called Happy. Phoenix Xifeng Tower is indeed very festive.

Pushing open the door decorated with lace window screens, the restaurant is not big, with about two round tables, one long table, and two four-person tables. The guests are all white, and they are eating stir-fried vegetables and red wine. The proprietress brought the menu, which was a thick old-fashioned menu. Most of the dishes had four characters, with Chinese and English juxtaposed. After looking at the dishes for a while, you can probably guess that this restaurant is based on Cantonese cuisine. Like most old Chinese restaurants in Australia. Before a large number of Chinese students and immigrants immigrated to Australia in recent years, the Chinese immigrants in Australia were mainly from Guangdong. The signature dishes were fried noodles, mixed stir-fried vegetables (Chop Suey), and sweet and sour pork. Later, other dishes were developed.

Lao Dan first ordered a few of his must-order dishes: chicken balls with plum sauce, sizzling beef tenderloin, chili shrimp balls and special fried rice.

We ordered: beef brisket pot, dry-fried beef river, Xingzhou fried rice. Old Dan smiled after hearing our choices, "They are all things I have never ordered before!"

The dish Lao Dan ordered has arrived. It is a very typical Australian Chinese food - whether it is meat or seafood, it will be covered with a sweet and sour sticky sauce. Some media once wrote that anything dipped in lurid-orange sauce (bright red orange sauce) (Materials?) is the taste of Chinese food recognized by British-Australians after the 1930s . I have to say, what impressed me most was the plum sauce chicken balls, which were really plump, with each piece covered with thick sauce. Fried rice is probably not rated well by Taiwanese people - there is no wok gas and it looks very "white".

Fortunately, the dry-fried Beef Brisket looks darker in color and has actually been cooked by the fire; the most delicious thing is the braised beef brisket, placed in a casserole, salty and fragrant with rice, but I secretly observed that Lao Dan hardly ate it A few mouthfuls.

While eating, I also observed the table next to me. There was a woman sitting at a table for four. She seemed to be a regular customer. She slowly walked to the table with a walker and sat down. Not long after, the boss lady brought a plate of fried rice. , she scooped fried rice into her mouth and read an English book. Later, she came with a plate of beef. Regardless of the wine at the next table, she calmly enjoyed the Friday ritual alone.

As a Chinese restaurant loved by white people, Xifenglou has a high score of 4.7 on the map. For me, it is more like a cultural experience that goes back in time. Unfortunately, Xifenglou announced its closure last year, probably because the owner and his wife were getting older and wanted to retire. Before closing, it is said that Lao Dan ordered 20 boxes of fried rice at once, took it home and froze it, so that his sense of ritual could be remembered for a longer time. .

Asian Palace on the Golf Course

This is a restaurant I often pass by on my way home. It's in an out-of-the-way location. The building itself has a roof that looks like some kind of circus, with "Asian Palace" written in big neon lights. In a place where there aren't many Chinese people. District, I never thought about walking into it. One day when I had nothing to do, I passed by it again and decided to go in to check it out. It turned out to be a golf course and casino (the kind with slot machines and video game machines), with a Chinese restaurant attached inside, which was really interesting.

Tonight, I invited a neighbor to go with me. The neighbor is from Beijing and has been in Australia for more than ten years. "When we came to study abroad, we ate lemon chicken and Mongolian beef. We had to eat it even if we had no choice." This is the common experience of many Chinese students who came to study in the early days. Even though these flavors are closely related to the dishes of their hometown, they are better than fish and chips and meat pies, and they are like an aftertaste to him. When ordering, the neighbor said that he was actually very full because he had just finished Haidilao at noon (yes, there are now three Haidilao restaurants in Melbourne, and spicy hot pot is everywhere).

This time we agreed to order the classics - lemon chicken, Mongolian beef, and also added a plate of Xingzhou fried rice (again!) and satay tofu and stir-fried vegetables.

Before the food is served, free shrimp cakes are placed on every table to satisfy your appetite. The restaurant's business is very good, except that we are all white (again!), and the waiter's face looks like a representative of various Asian countries, busy delivering plates of sizzling iron plates. The first thing that came was the lemon chicken. It turned out to be fried chicken cutlet drizzled with a yellow, orange and slightly sour lemon sauce. It was quite sticky as usual. To be honest, the chicken was fried well, not greasy and dry. The second dish was Mongolian beef. I originally thought it would be black bean sauce, but it turned out not to be the case. It tasted sweet, which was really weird. The Sin Chew fried rice has always been a dish that I can't understand. The rice noodles have no wok flavor (again!), the shrimps are very small, and I didn't know there was a faint curry flavor until someone else explained it. In the end, my favorite was the satay stir-fried green vegetables, which uses fried tofu that is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside to stir-fry cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms and water chestnuts. At least there is no sweet and sour sauce.

SBS, Australia’s public television broadcaster, previously launched a cultural program about Chinese Australians. I was deeply impressed by this dialogue:

"Every time a friend asks me to recommend a good Chinese restaurant, I really want to ask him, are you thinking of a Chinese restaurant that Australians love to eat? Or do you really want to know a Chinese restaurant that my family will go to?"

It is actually very fun to regard Australian Chinese food as a cultural experience of exotic cuisine. This is a re-creation of an immigrant group in order to survive. Every bite you eat is of historical significance.