Asian food is every bit as diverse as it is delicious. I used to think that I knew Asian foods growing up. You see, we used to go out to Chinese and practically every weekend. They were a couple Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood, and they were perfect for us kids. They were greasy, flavorful, and we got a cookie at the end of every meal. What more could a child ask for?
What I didn’t realize was how much better Asian food could be than what my experience of it was. A lot of Chinese cuisine in America is actually nothing like the traditional style. It is much too greasy, and dominated by a simple array of flavors that doesn’t really capture the complexity of Asian cooking.
I wasn’t really aware of any of this until I moved to San Francisco. If you can picture an Asian food Mecca, this is it! You can get Thai food, Vietnamese food, Japanese food, Chinese food – you name it. Although all of the Asian gourmet food there is tinged by local cuisine – traditional Asian cooking doesn’t incorporate cilantro, for example – there still is quite a bit of authenticity to it.