黑暗料理

[tooironic]

A friend of mine asked me about this and I had no idea about it, so I thought I'd post on here and see if anyone can help.

 

How do you describe “黑暗料理” this type of food in English? The food is ugly but tasty. The term ”黑暗料理” was named after a Japanese anime《中华小当家》 which literally means “Cuisines of the Dark Regime”.

This type of food is usually folksy, depending on which part of China you are at.

Most of dishes look gooey with a lot of sauces, such as 老干妈 or other chilli sauce.  They are sold as takeaway or dine-in at a dirty stall in the dark corner outside a university (often close to boarding buildings) after 9 or 9:30 pm. Alternatively, you can create your own ones at home.  The stalls are illegal, as you can imagine, and of poor hygiene. You cannot see how many road dusts are in the food. The stall owners usually have no time to wash the dishes or the food properly.  Takeaways are served in disposable polyfoam lunch box that you don’t want to know how toxic they can be.

Some typical 黑暗料理 are fried/roasted chicken wings, meat on a stick (some meat, however, comprehensively, is universally acknowledged from street cats or dogs or rats), fried rice noodles with beef and bean sprouts and fried rice. The homemade ones are usually made with instant noodles and everything else, such as cheese, ice-cream, sausages, you name it.

Okay okay, enough descriptions. I hope that can help...
Thank you very much for your time.

 

[gato]

"Comfort food" maybe.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_food

[michaelS]

Not sure there's any good way to translate that, short of a whole sentence describing what it means.

 

I only heard this word a couple of weeks ago on an episode on 好奇实验室, called 比皮蛋更难接受的黑暗料理, in which they get lots of foreigners to choose what the most unpalatable famous Chinese dish is. There it's used to refer to 皮蛋, 臭豆腐, 辣兔头 and other ugly ugly dishes

 

I think the point is that it looks disgusting, so 'comfort food' wouldn't really work. But maybe the term is spreading to embrace a kind of 'cheap and unhealthy but tasty' kind of meaning

 

[英泰inte]

Would "slop" work? slop can be ugly, but cheap and tasty. 可能？

[Angelina]

 

 

Most of dishes look gooey with a lot of sauces, such as 老干妈 or other chilli sauce.  They are sold as takeaway or dine-in at a dirty stall in the dark corner outside a university (often close to boarding buildings) after 9 or 9:30 pm. Alternatively, you can create your own ones at home.  The stalls are illegal, as you can imagine, and of poor hygiene. You cannot see how many road dusts are in the food. The stall owners usually have no time to wash the dishes or the food properly.  Takeaways are served in disposable polyfoam lunch box that you don’t want to know how toxic they can be.

 

This concept does not exist in the English-speaking world. I don't think there is anything similar either. 

[Angelina]

Do you know any slang terms for ugly food that somehow tastes well? 

 

If not, you can use a transcription (e.g. tofu), or maybe be more creative. 

[陳德聰]

黑暗料理 to me is akin to "street meat" or "street food". I don't get a sense of "ugly but tasty", I almost exclusively get "shady as ...".

[roddy]

In Britain at least you might talk about going for something 'dirty' - there's a Dirty Burger chain I think, and you might say after a night at the pub 'I really fancy a dirty kebab'. You know it's not healthy, it's probably not even clean, but ooooh, it's tasty...

 

Of course, being Britain we then write recipe books about it and set up expensive no-reservation restaurants in gentrifying parts of London to serve these dishes at three times the normal price....

[889]

Maybe call it a mystery meal. From mystery meat, the mystery being just what it's made of. Same with the street foods. It also echoes just a bit 黑暗 in the Chinese term. Another possibility would simply be night stall food/snacks or perhaps street bazaar food.

[Shelley]

I would suggest "junk food" in it truest sense. It looks like junk, probably made of lower quality ingredieants - junk, and it fills that empty feeling with a snack, most "snacks" are junk food.

[Angelina]

My favorite is 'street meat'. It can have a new meaning of its own. It does not necessarily have to be meat. Yet, as we saw in the video (Arturo, bro, how could you eat that?? ew), it usually involves some disgusting form of animal torture or mutilation. 

 

'Dirty food' is more about perversity. Can be used. There must be some strange distorted pleasure derived from eating food that looks like you should not be eating it (ugly and immoral- and I agree). Why would people eat that? 

 

'Mystery meal' is too positive. Reminds of me Magic Mystery Tour. 

 

'Junk food' already means something else. Junk is a fitting work. 'Dirty junk'? 'Street junk'? 

[Lianbu Zhou]

黑暗料理 = Food looks very disgusting

 

 

just like this ........................

[Jon Lee]

In Asia, "street food" is very popular one example is Beijing, and I saw on TV also Korea.  They are very popular for students particularly College students.  I remember I went to Beijing after I graduated from College and I left my hotel room late at night.  I saw lots of students coming home from school eating at food stands however I did not join them since I felt shy.  

 

On a Korean movie, the name is My Sassy Girl, I saw this guy drinking Soju and eating "street food".

 

"Junk Food" as told by my teacher back in nursery is "Potato Chips" or other bunch of chips you can buy in grocery stores... It teached me to eat proper meals during breakfast, lunch and dinner.

 

In Southeast Asia, for poverty-level nations, I can say that their "street food" is 'Dirty Food' 

[Messidor]

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