The Chinese buffet seems to be America’s answer to the Roman’s Bacchanalian feasts in which civility and propriety give way to lustful appetites and ecstasies in unbridled consumption that would shame a competitive gurgitator. My second pet peeve about Chinese restaurants is the all-you-can-engorge-yourself-on buffets and the acres upon acres of troughs overflowing with every conceivable food item (and by the way, when did chocolate pudding, Southern fried chicken and spaghetti with marinara sauce become Chinese?). Chinese lanterns are more than ornamental in the opulent Ping Pang Pong Cultural anthropologists might call this “reciprocal expectations” in that many Chinese restaurants look and feel like the way we expect them to look and feel. It’s as if a sole template was created that defines how each Chinese restaurant will look and how its food will taste. What I dislike most about Chinese restaurants–not just in New Mexico–is their homogeneity–the boring, stereotypical “sameness” that seems to typify each restaurant. Now, it would be easy (and fun) to wax mean about the things I didn’t like about each of those Chinese restaurants–and it might even be a service to my readers, but that negativity could be summed up in a few points.

Fewer still are those which execute consistently from visit to visit. I’ve tried dozens of Chinese restaurants in New Mexico (and continue to try them in hopes of finding a rare hidden gem), but only a few have the qualities I like in Chinese restaurants. Considering Chinese restaurants outnumber those of any ethnicity other than New Mexican, that’s not a good sign. In my years of reviewing Duke City restaurants, I’ve deemed only nine Chinese restaurants worthy of taking up space on my Web site. This is a sentiment that’s been echoed ad-infinitum on Chowhound and other restaurant blogs. The complaint I hear most often about the Duke City dining scene is that we have a lamentable lack of quality Chinese restaurants.

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