When it comes to Chinese food, I judge restaurants by their fried rice. If a kitchen can’t turn out a good fried rice, the rest of the food will be pretty lousy too.

Different people have different ways of judging a restaurant. Some Europeans will tell you that the true test of a kitchen is the quality of the stock. If that’s no good, then nothing – the soups, the sauces, the flavours etc. – will taste right. Read more

According to estimates, Chinese is the world’s most popular restaurant cuisine. It’s not just that the Chinese themselves – in the mainland, in Taiwan, in Singapore, in Hong Kong and all over East Asia – love eating out, it is also that non-Chinese have taken to their cuisine at all levels. Read more

Anyone who has been to China will tell you that the principal difference between a real Chinese menu (i.e., at a restaurant meant for Chinese people) and an ‘international’ Chinese menu (at a place frequented by foreigners) is the nature of the ingredients. Read more

A couple of months ago, I suggested on these pages, that the old rules for Chinese restaurants in India were dying. We’d seen Sichuan (and its offshoot: Sino-Ludhianvi). We’d seen the next wave of Pan-Asian restaurants (India Jones in Bombay the many ITC places etc.). And, now we were ready for the new generation. Read more

Few dishes have fascinated me as much as Chicken Manchurian. It is a dish that is unknown outside of India – certainly nobody in China has ever heard of it – but is, nevertheless, possibly the most ordered dish at Chinese restaurants in this country. You’ll find it on the menu of nearly every Chinese eatery – outside of the five star hotels where expatriate chefs are employed – and now, even McDonald’s does a Manchurian-style burger. Read more