A lot of the 'the best chinese food is the stuff you get in a hole in the wall' posts are irritating, the Chinese people I know are super fussy and picky and love spending money on high quality fancy food AND at hole in the wall places.

Most of all this nonsense plays into the idea that Chinese food should only ever be cheap and under-valued, especially in the US. When we celebrate special ocassions going to nice places with each other, and our families.

People who say these things also haven't seen the opulent money pits that are 'places that ethnic chinese people take each other to to show off or do business deals'. A bottle of cognac costs more than hole in the wall dumplings for 10 years.

And also usually have phenomenal food, because you can't show off unless the food is phenomenal and expensive. The best Chinese food in the world is usually found in places like that.

Speaking for myself, my primary mode of emoting with my Chinese loved ones is 'silently picking the right expensive restaurants and treating them to a meal from time to time'. Without expensive Chinese restaurants, many of our familial connections would totally collapse lol

There is a difference tho between high end Chinese-run Chinese restaurants, and nonsense badly curated expensive fusiony 'Chinese' restaurants. The latter usually just does basic subs for ingredients and claims to 'elevate'; the former is decades of skill and training;

.. operating at a different level than a mom and pop operation. I usually think, can this kitchen churn out this food with fewer than 50 or 100 people? That's the scale of the kind of high end Chinese restaurant I'm talking about, cos they make most of their money on weddings

I say all this as I am making plans to get to various high end Chinese restaurants in Singapore a few weeks out, because you can't even get a seat anymore!!

This restaurant is top on my list. Teochew private dining. I don't know a single Bay Area restaurant at this level. Our nicest places are very basic places back home.

https://thewolfandbulldogchronicles.com/2021/04/29/san-shu-kong-private-dining/

Obviously not saying that good Chinese food must be expensive, but acknowledging that there is a range and variety. Speaking for an entire cuisine to say it must only be X, it must have numbers in the name, sticky floors, totally disregards culinary traditions and reality.

Very SF specific but god I’m tired of people recommending dimsum spots to me that are worse than the food I had in my primary school canteen, because it’s cheap and therefore must be great.

For cheap AND good dimsum in SF, I only like Dim Sum Bistro.

Dol Ho is also good, but Dim Sum Bistro is better

But also, with good ordering strategy at an expensive Chinese restaurant you can have much better quality food for not that much more than a regular place.

1. Don’t order whole fish, ever (unless you know what you’re doing)
2. Go for lunch

This should apply.. most places.