【海外の反応】アジア飯はなぜあんなに量が多いのか?海外ネット民が徹底討論した結果www

Kinda? To start a lot of the food they give away is rice and veggies, which are cheaper. And for the meat it’s not that they have some cheaper source of meat, it’s that the meat they use are the cheaper parts of the animal.

Like if you’re going to grill and sell a whole steak, you need a good juicy tender cut of steak so it’s appealing to your customer. But if you’re going to slice that steak up, cook it in a pan real quick and then cover it with sauce, you can use a cheaper less nice cut of meat.

And it also probably has to do with how they cook it. Cooking is very simple and fast. They have all their different meats already prepped. They throw it in a frying pan for a minute because cooking chopping up meat doesn’t take that long, and then they throw the sauce in with it and voila you’re done. And you don’t even need to washing that pan, you can just keep that pan hot all night and keep reusing it for the same dish and then just wash it once at the end.

What other restaurants? Many restaurants serve portion sizes that fill your entire daily caloric intake on one plate.

The meat would probably be the only thing that isn't cheap. Rice is cheap as hell. Vegetables also 

It’s not cheaper meat it’s smarter cooking.

A lot of Asian cuisines are built around rice/noodles + veggies + smaller amounts of meat, cooked in bulk fast… so it *looks* like a huge portion, but it’s actually super efficient and low-cost to make.

The recipes call for less expensive ingredients. Meat is generally not the primary ingredient. It’s used a lot more sparingly. It’s often cheaper cuts of meat, too. Especially in things like pho. The vast majority of calories in most dishes come from plants. Even a meatier meal like sushi has most of the calories coming from rice. Rice is very cheap. Chinese dietary guidelines recommend under 70g of meat per day (just under 3 oz), and most people there do this without really trying. They don’t usually go out and eat a giant slab of flesh like we do with steak. 

The food lasts longer because you follow the SAD: standard American diet. Your diet has probably 10% of the fiber your body craves. Fiber promotes satiety. Meat in the quantity consumed by Americans is just empty calories. The protein and lack of carbs makes it slightly better than olive oil or soda, but the micronutrient profile is similarly deficient.

What really impresses me is, if I tried to make most Asian dishes at home, I’d spend twice as much money and it’d taste half as good at best. How do they do that?! I can make a damn good burrito, but my curry sucks. Well, most of these dishes scale up really well, but it takes a lot of prep work that doesn’t scale down below cooking for a family of four. They buy in bulk from restaurant supplies and the menu items share common components, minimizing waste and cost. That is where their skill really shines IMO.

One last thing: you’ll note many Asian restaurants are optimized for takeout. They save on real estate costs that way. It’s the Trader Joe’s model. The rent is too damn high. If you can use a fraction of the competition’s square footage, you have a strong advantage. Especially in VHCOL areas. Bonus points if you’ve found a grandfathered mixed use building where a family restaurant is allowed to be on the ground floor with living space above. Then you can combine your commercial and residential rent costs. Governments hate that one simple trick. They want R1 zoning to force you to be house poor.

They’re local and don’t have some CEO screaming at them about pennies for the shareholders

Haven't you seen the school kid in the corner doing their homework, and whenever a customer comes in, they take the order, then go back to their homework? That is their parents' store, and they aren't getting paid (except for board and meals). 

The parents work 80 hour weeks so this is the only quality family time they get. Anyone hired is family. 

Also lots of cashies so the tax man is unaware of how many transactions there were and how much tax has been skimmed. 

The places with very low prices usually also have very low operating costs. Often, the workers are family members, and when employees are hired, they may be paid in cash or under the table.

The food is designed to be quick and efficient to prepare, and it often relies on relatively inexpensive ingredients like rice, noodles, flour, and sauces to make dishes more filling, especially in fried American Chinese staples like sesame chicken.

There’s also a general expectation that American Chinese food should be cheap, and owners are aware of that. Many price their menu to match what customers expect rather than trying to position themselves at a higher price point.

In some cases, businesses may also underreport taxes to varying degrees, depending on how the operation is run and how much of the revenue is cash-based.

Overall, the model is simple: keep operating costs low, maintain solid margins, offer low prices, and rely on high volume.

Some people have asked why the same doesn’t seem to apply to Japanese restaurants. In my experience most Japanese restaurants in the U.S. are actually run by Chinese immigrants. Japanese food is generally seen as more premium, which allows owners to charge higher prices, sometimes even when similar ingredients are used and they often have American Chinese dishes on the menu along with Japanese dishes.

My family has three generations of experience in the Chinese restaurant industry, and I grew up around people in the business, so I’ve seen a lot of the positives and negatives, as well as how things work behind the scenes.