I forgot to reply to this part.

What I meant about "real Chinese" was not the extremes like chicken feet, more the the preparations that dont include so much sugar and starches. Asians do eat some funky stuff! I've been around myself, and its stunningly different from our American diets...for sure. I'll never forget being in Japan and seeing that instead of potato chips and Doritos, they had rice crackers and dried fish in the snack isle...AND they eat fish for breakfast...something I could never get in to unless fried, but a restaurant napkin can taste good fried!

I have learned so much though, by simply experimenting on the menus (hit and miss) and also both talking to the servers (actual immigrants) and eyeballing what other people are eating.

You know how to tell if a Chinese place is authentic? Actual Chinese people eat there of course! Same with Mexican and any other food genre...

My nickname here comes from how Vietnamese customers used to call and ask for me at place I worked at years ago. It always stuck with me. My name is actually Ken. They would call and say, "may I pee spee tooooo meetow kim!". It just stuck. The office manager used to call me that half the time back then because of this. My wife even calls me Meetow Kim sometimes! (she's not Asian)

I ended up being the designated person to handle our Vietnamese customers because they liked me and I knew how to haggle with them on sales. I used to try so hard to help them learn how to say horse radish...they are so awesome, they would try so hard...I just gave up and started calling it "hos lattice". To this day when I write it on my grocery list, I write "hos lattice". But...I'm weird and really dig humor!