When friends ask me to recommend a Chinese restaurant, I always ask them: "What is your favorite dish?"

If they answer with sweet-and-sour something, then I know where to send them.

You see, the problem is that there are two types of Chinese food. There is the food that most Americans are familiar with: sweet-and-sour pork or chicken, moo goo gai pan and fried rice. And then there is all the other Chinese food that Chinese people actually eat.

Not that there is anything wrong with sweet-and-sour dishes. At least it really is a dish that is made in China, which is more than I can say about chop suey. (That dish is to Chinese food as the chimichanga is to Mexican — purely an American invention.)

In fact, I love sweet-and-sour pork. As a child, I would order it anytime my family went out to eat Chinese food. My mom wouldn't make it at home because she said it would ruin her cooking pans.

Then one day she made it for my birthday. But instead of the super-sweet red sauce ladled over heavily battered deep-fried chunks of pork, my mother made it the way she was taught by her mother.

My mom's sauce was more amber in color and had a distinct balance of sour brought on by lemon juice and vinegar and the sweetness of sugar cooked in a then-ruined pan. The pork was carefully trimmed medallions that were lightly coated in a batter that provided a crunch but didn't hide the meat under wads of dough.

This illustrates the difference between what I call American Chinese food and Chinese Chinese food.

The reason why there is such disparity in Chinese cooking is that like most ethnic foods, Chinese food was Americanized. Just as Italian food was turned into spaghetti and meatballs and pizza, Chinese food was turned into egg foo young and cabbage-filled egg rolls.

The sad thing is that there is so much more to Chinese food. Chinese, especially Cantonese such as myself, pride ourselves on our ability to turn almost anything into a delectable dish. We can combine the mushrooms found growing on the sides of trees with the sluglike sea cucumber in a light brown-sauced dish that will make your tastebuds sing. The Chinese are the true Iron Chefs.

But what is served in many Chinese restaurants today are the leftovers of a bitter past.

The first Chinese to come to the United States were the poorest caste of Chinese society, the contract laborers who immigrated in the mid-to-late 1800s. They worked the mines and built the railroads in California. Afterward, many established businesses such as the stereotypical laundries. Others opened restaurants, even though few were trained in the kitchen. They produced the food they were used to eating, the peasant food of China. Also, vegetables and spices native to China were scarce in the United States.

So when Americans began to eat Chinese food, this is what they presumed was true Chinese cuisine. Chinese restaurants have dealt with this legacy ever since.

Today, there are still more fried rice and chop suey houses than authentic Chinese places because these are more commercially viable. In fact, there are cooking schools in San Francisco that teach new immigrants how to prepare the dishes to suit American tastes.

Like many other Chinese Americans, I grew up in the restaurant business. But instead of dishing up chow mein and egg rolls, I learned the nuances of preparing cheeseburgers and chicken-fried steak dinners.

My parents felt that American food was much easier to prepare than Chinese food. Considering all the prep work necessary for a simple Chinese dinner, I have to agree. However, I also believe that my parents didn't want to open one of the chop suey houses that were so prevalent in Houston in the 1960s and 1970s.

So instead, they opened a series of places named after my dad — Doug's Drive In, Doug's Restaurant — and my mom learned to fix meatloaf and stuffed shrimp.

Mom would occasionally make Chinese food for select customers. One of my fondest memories is of a customer who was dating one of our waitresses. Because he was a special customer, my mother would make him his favorite Chinese dish, fried rice. He would always say, "Mrs. Wong, you make the best fried rice," and then he would douse it in ketchup. My mother would smile, thank him for the compliment and then mumble in Chinese while walking back to the kitchen.

Now, my mom, who died in 2000, was a great Chinese cook. She would come home after a long day in the restaurant kitchen and make my family a full Chinese dinner. Many nights we would dine on watercress soup, bok choy with beef and bitter squash with pickled tofu, all dishes that you still won't find in most Chinese restaurants. On special occasions, my mom would go all out and make things such as winter melon soup, shrimp with lobster sauce and Cantonese roast duck.

There were a handful of Chinese restaurants in Houston where we would eat. But none could match my mother's cooking.

That began to change in the late 1970s when a new wave of Asian immigrants brought new dishes from the interior regions of China such as the Szechuan and Hunan provinces and a greater demand for authentic Cantonese cuisine.

Restaurants such as Kim Son, Dong Ting and Fung's Kitchen offered Chinese menus that ran on like epicurean novels.

Emboldened by this new wave of Chinese cuisine, my mother tried to serve Chinese food in our last family restaurant, which they closed in 1992. She often said this was the most work she ever did, and sadly, because we were running the former Rice Belt Cafe in downtown Katy, it was hard to get people to eat more than the old Chinese standards.

But for Chinese New Year, my mother put on a banquet. For $20 a person, our customers got a 10-course meal.

Here we introduced the residents of Katy and West Houston to dishes such as tea-smoked chicken, Cantonese steamed fish and bird-nest soup.

When I moved from Houston to Austin three years ago, I thought I was going to have to give up Chinese Chinese food and deal with the buffets and American Chinese places. And though Austin has some really good American Chinese places and even some good buffets, I was delighted to find that Austin also had its share of Chinese Chinese restaurants. Three of the places I go for Chinese food in Austin are Din Ho Chinese Barbecue (8557 Research Blvd., 832-8788), T&S Seafood (10014 N. Lamar Blvd., 339-8434) and Marco Polo Restaurant (2200 S. Interstate 35, 445-5563).

You can find me at Marco Polo on Sundays eating dim sum, the Chinese form of English tea where small meat- and vegetable-filled pastries are served off carts rolled about the dining room. (There are other dim sum houses in Austin, but this one is closest to my apartment and in my opinion is the best in the city.)

If I am getting off work late at night, I also stop by Marco Polo for an order of flat rice noodles with beef and Chinese broccoli, where braised slices of beef are combined with what can be best described as a cross of broccoli and collard greens. Cooked with a brown sauce, it is poured over broad, flat, rice noodles that have been lightly fried, providing a chewy feast.

At T&S, you can get steamed sea bass with black bean sauce and sliced pork and seaweed soup.

The seaweed is the same that is used to wrap sushi. In this simple soup, it adds a delicate flavor that is hard to describe but must be tried.

Steam-cooking is the way my mom made fish most of the time. At T&S, the black bean sauce, which is made of fermented soy beans, is combined with julienned chives and ginger to add an aromatic flavoring that fills both the nose and tongue.

At Din Ho, even though what sets it apart is its fresh Cantonese roast duck, barbecue pork and roast pork, there are several vegetable dishes from which to choose.

One of my favorites is black mushrooms with seasonal vegetables. Most of the time, the vegetable is baby bok choy, which is the Chinese version of mustard greens. Less potent than American greens, these small greens have only the slightest hint of bitterness. Combined with reconstituted dried shiitake mushrooms, they are sautéed in a light soy sauce and then steamed to tenderness.

I like to combine this with a hot pot dish of roast pork and tofu. Hot pots, or clay pot dishes at other Chinese restaurants, are the Chinese equivalent of stews. In this dish you will find tender chunks of roast pork and firm tofu that has been simmered in a broth of aromatic vegetables. A perfect dish to eat with a bowl of rice. (Yes, a bowl of rice. Chinese generally do not put rice on a plate. Instead we eat it out of a soup bowl or cup. The reason is that rice on a plate would soak up the juices of the dishes next to it. You want to keep the flavors separate. Also, it is much easier to eat rice out of a bowl if you are using chopsticks.)

The previously mentioned Cantonese roast duck at Din Ho is one of the best I have eaten. Its flavor is very similar to that of my mother's, with a healthy dose of five-spice powder and star anise for flavor.

But when I want to remember my mom's cooking, the dish I order at Din Ho is sweet-and-sour pork. It is almost identical to the way my mother made it, with a tangy sauce that shows the mastery of its chef.

So next time you go out to eat, still order a sweet-and-sour dish if you want. But do yourself a favor and order something out of the ordinary or ask the waiter what he planned to eat that night and get that.