This Is the First and Last Time I’ll Review General Tsao’s Chicken
General Tsao’s Chicken is a classic stand-by choice for Chinese food, and this couldn’t be more true about my house. For at least 8 years, it’s been my brother’s favorite food and the only thing he ever orders from Chinese restaurants. Over time, it somehow came to be that both of my brothers, my dad, and I all end up getting General Tsao’s Chicken most of the time.
I think this came to be because we always have a ton of people to feed and my dad is quite impatient. Waiting for everyone to come up with an order off of the gargantuan menu takes forever, and memorizing a complex order, not to mention hoping that it gets prepared correctly, is a pain. When you’ve got several impatient problem-solvers in your family, they’re going to try and make the order as easy as possible.
Thing is, General Tsao’s Chicken is General Tsao’s Chicken. No matter where you get it, you’re getting the same thing. It’s true that different places will have different-tasting ones (as my brother will quickly tell you), but there isn’t such a distinct difference that one could pick them out in a blind taste-test unless they’d eaten a significant amount of each restaurant’s chicken.
I get General Tsao’s Chicken with white rice and I don’t think I’ve ever finished the entire thing. I can almost get through all the chicken most times, but I’ll usually have to save some for later, or even the next day. I take a few bites of rice, but can’t eat it fast enough before it goes stale. While I like the taste of this meal, it’s tiring to try and eat so much of it.
But I will say that out of the things I’ve tried, General Tsao’s Chicken has always been the best thing on the menu at Chinese take-out places. For a while, I tried experimenting with orders, working my way through the menu, but nothing quite matched up to it. (It doesn’t help that Chinese dishes often rely on vegetables, which I don’t eat.)
Right now, though, I’m pretty tired of the stuff. Tonight I wasn’t even going to get it, but before I got that out, my mom had said to just get everyone General Tsao’s, and I didn’t bother fixing it. Yeah, the chicken was good. But it’s boring, and if I’m writing reviews of everything I eat, then I don’t want to review something boring.
