Originally Posted by
Skyman65
Heh, I've got a bit of a different take on the "secret menu" at Chinese restaurants. A couple years back, I took my (Taiwanese) in-laws on a road trip tour of the American West. By the time we reached West Yellowstone, MT, my sister-in-law was dying for Chinese food. She'd already had about ten straight days of American restaurant food, and she was fed up (no pun intended). I was surprised to find there was one Chinese restaurant in town, so we went there.
I have an experience with the Chinese language menu page that starts out vaguely similar to yours but ends quite the opposite of "TL;DR it was a scam".
I'd just hired a man in Beijing to work with our customers in China, and had flown him out to our HQ near San Francisco for two weeks of training. I'll call him Quan. Quan had rarely if every traveled outside of China before and wasn't fond of foreign (to him) food. Even on his day of arrival in the US he was already jonesing for the tastes of home. I picked him up at the airport and told him we could have anything he wanted for lunch. He said "everything is okay" but our widely-traveled colleague from Hong Kong discreetly explained that to me that Quan was terrified of Western food and perhaps we should try American-Chinese to help him.
I drove to a neighborhood where there are many decent Chinese restaurants (Silicon Valleyites: Castro Street in Mt. View) and invited him to choose. He picked the first one he saw. "Do you want to read the menus at a few restaurants then pick?" I asked, quietly thinking to myself that it was only the third-best Chinese restaurant
on the block. No, the first one he saw was the one he wanted. Inside, he was happy to find that the staff spoke Mandarin. He began quizzing them on how various dishes were prepared. I suggested he order for the three of us, which he did. The staff in the otherwise unremarkable, hole-in-the-wall quality restaurant rose to the occasion and put on the atmosphere of a feast for us.
Was it the best food ever? Of course not; remember, it was only third best
on the block IMO. But Quan enjoyed the experience. He offered a gentle critique of the dishes (I appreciated the learning), and the meal was close enough to comfort food to de-stress him at the start of his foreign trip. Plus, it built enough trust that later in the week he was willing to try my recommendations for enchiladas and cheesesteaks.