What is real Chinese food like?

lovely just had one for tea curried ..

It depends on what kind of food you're talking about - the type of dish and what region it came from. It can be very plain, heavy in black bean or soy, or be very spicy. Each region is known for certain dishes and ingredients, so the cuisines vary.

A lot of the foods you see on a take-out menu are American style of actual dishes (like beef/chicken & broccoli). Some of the take-out foods are completely American - meaning, it's not found in China/HK/Taiwan at all, or at an authentic Chinese restaurant.

The flavors can be more complex, with more ingredients used to complement the dishes. The dishes can be very simple or very fancy/complex.

Authentic Chinese food is not completely different from the Americanized version. To please the American palate, Chinese food made for Americans is often sweeter, has more meat and oil, and has fewer vegetables than original versions of the same dish.

In China, different areas of the country may make a dish with the same name, but they vary greatly from one place to another. They're all authentic Chinese, but they're are many differences.

Don't be foo concerned with the authenticity of a dish. If you like it, eat it. If you don't like it, knowing that it's authentic won't make it taste better.

What real Chinese food is like is asking what real European food tastes like. There's a lot of regional variations in Chinese cooking. The food you would likely be familiar with is Cantonese (which is similar to what most suburban 'Chinese' restaurants in places like the US, UK, Canada and Australia serve), which is from the cities of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. There are several other different regional cusines in China, such as Shanghainese, Xi'anese, Dongbei and Uighur cuisines.

To try 'real' Chinese food, I would recommend checking out little hole in the wall Chinese restaurants in an area with a high number of Chinese immigrants.

A frugal Chinese food can be simple like hot steaming rice with one tablespoon of lard, dark soy sauce and slices of red chili mix well and sprinkle of deep fried salted fish or preserved veggies"