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It is always a novel experience for me to go to a Chinese restaurant here in the US. We just got back from lunch/dinner at a Chinese buffet place. I sampled over half a dozen different hot dishes (heavily supplemented with canteloupe, honeydew and pineapple. Oh, and they had some wonderful little donutesque things that I unfortunately was too full to have more than one of) and the only one I had ever had in Norway was the fried rice.
Chinese restaurants in Norway are the most prevalent international dining options, but we never had a large immigrant population, and there never was a culture for eating exotic foods before them. The result is that there are certain staples you'll find in almost every restaurant: Sweet and sour pork or chicken, curried chicken, beef chop suey, assorted fried rice. None of these are particularly adventurous, so they were the easiest to get boring old fisherfolk to try, I guess.
In the US, I rarely see any of the Norwegian staples. Here, the staples are assorted Lo Mein, sesame chicken, kung pao chicken, chicken and broccoli, General Tso's chicken (yes, I am biased towards chicken, I forget the names of beef and pork dishes). More variety, and more spicy stuff.
The result? I get to try a far larger range of foods when I eat Chinese here, and I don't really miss the Norwegian menus, as all I usually eat from them is sweet and sour pork/chicken and fried rice :)
Chinese restaurants in Norway are the most prevalent international dining options, but we never had a large immigrant population, and there never was a culture for eating exotic foods before them. The result is that there are certain staples you'll find in almost every restaurant: Sweet and sour pork or chicken, curried chicken, beef chop suey, assorted fried rice. None of these are particularly adventurous, so they were the easiest to get boring old fisherfolk to try, I guess.
In the US, I rarely see any of the Norwegian staples. Here, the staples are assorted Lo Mein, sesame chicken, kung pao chicken, chicken and broccoli, General Tso's chicken (yes, I am biased towards chicken, I forget the names of beef and pork dishes). More variety, and more spicy stuff.
The result? I get to try a far larger range of foods when I eat Chinese here, and I don't really miss the Norwegian menus, as all I usually eat from them is sweet and sour pork/chicken and fried rice :)
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