“British Chinese food” trend leaves TikTok confused by bizarre takeout orders

Alice Sjöberg
Americans confused over British Chinese foods

The spotlight has come on the UK in recent weeks on TikTok as a new trend of Brits showing their Chinese food orders is leaving people around the world confused.

Social media trends always come and go, but trends relating to food usually stay for a while. Possibly inspired by muckbangs (people eating food for videos), a trend that’s circulating TikTok is people showing their takeout deliveries.

A subcategory in this new trend is Brits showing what their Chinese takeaway. With dishes such as chips (fries), salt and pepper chicken and curry sauce, it has left people across the world, but particularly those of Chinese descent, confused.

One of these TikTokers is Soogia, a Chinese-American content creator who makes videos about cultural appreciation, who made a video dedicated to the different food cultures.

What does a “British Chinese” usually consist of?

Saying her For You page had been filled with videos of “British people eating Chinese food”, Soogia went on to explain that the videos had left her confused as she didn’t recognize any of the foods.

“One interesting thing is that all their plates look almost exactly the same and is filled with things that I don’t recognize as Chinese food, with the exception of like chow main noodles.”

She went on to explain: “They all have something called chicken balls. I don’t know what chicken balls are. And they all order French fries, or chips, with their food. I have never seen French fries offered at an American Chinese food restaurant, I don’t think, ever. That’s so interesting to me.”

However, Soogia went on to say that the one thing that she found the most interesting was the choice of sauce.

“Curry sauce. And like, lots of curry sauce, like pools and pools of curry sauce all over all of the Chinese food,” she explained

She went on to say that she was in no way trying to judge or criticize Brits for their Chinese food order, but just said she was so shocked at how much it differed to an American Chinese food order.

“Maybe it’s just the algorithm, but I didn’t see any dumplings, any hot pot, no mapo tofu, bao buns, no long beans. No American Chinese foods staples like broccoli beef or kung pao chicken.”

She continued: “If they love it – fine! I just know that there’s such a beautiful world of Chinese food beyond to what they just have on their plates.”

Brits are now defending their takeaway orders

As Soogia’s video racked up 2.7 million views within just a day and had over 29.2k comments at the same time, it made people across the world discuss Brits’ culinary habits.

However, one user by the name of corysworldd decided to stitch Soogia’s video to better explain what a British Chinese takeaway is.

“I never thought I’d have to speak on the behalf of Britain. I literally have half a GCSE and I don’t know anything about anything really. But I am gonna answer your questions as best as I can,” Cory started the video

He continued by saying that people do refer to their foods as “a Chinese” or “an Italian”, which was something that Soogia had also been confused about, he went on to explain the importance of curry sauce.

“Curry sauce is the best thing ever. So it’s the texture of gravy, but it tastes like curry. They even do it in McDonalds over here,” he told the viewers.

Viewers were not on board with the “British Chinese” food

He also explained that he knew that the food that Brits get in Chinese eateries in the UK is not considered authentic Chinese food.

“The owner of my local Chinese shop is from China, but the food they eat is completely different to the food they serve us.”

He continued: “Chicken balls are available in any Chinese shop you go in. It’s basically a boneless chicken, but it’s deep-fried. All the Chinese shops I’ve been to sell ribs, and chips as well. They also do containers, it’s called a half and half, where it’s half rice and half chips with curry sauce poured over the top.”

Having answered most of the questions people had from Soogia’s video, people still weren’t convinced.

One person said: “Why do they drench it in curry sauce??”

Another wrote: “It all looks very ‘poutine-ish'” while a third said: “Hey! Are you joking?”

“I find stuff like this so interesting – I wanna know why or how they decided this was the way to do it,” a fourth user said.

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About The Author

Alice is an Entertainment Writer at Dexerto, whose expertise include social media, internet culture, and Reality TV. She is a NCTJ qualified journalist that previously worked in local news before moving on to entertainment news with OK! Magazine and a wide variety of other publications. You can contact Alice at alice.sjoberg@dexerto.com