@GaussZ

I've not been to Brick Lane but there are similar areas in Chicago. Chinatown has endless Chinese restaurants on the south side. Devon Avenue on the north has curry place after curry place.

These exist for a few reasons.

First, immigrants often naturally group together in certain areas of a city. This is very true of Chicago if you study the demographic profiles. It is not surprising that people want to open a business in the community they live in and eat food they are familiar with.

Second, these streets become destinations in and of themselves. "Let's go get some curry up on Devon Ave (Chicago) or Brick Lane (London)." You may not even have a particular restaurant in mind - you just go there and see what you find.

I would guess that those restaurants are able to survive because they exist in a community where there is high demand for their goods.

Those businesses are competing with each other but there is enough demand for their product in one area that they can all stay open.

Going back to the beach analogy it is like everyone on the beach wanting a LOT of ice cream AND people travelling to the beach because it is known for its great ice cream (presumably they know how to make the best ice cream, curry etc).

Back to my earlier comment, restaurants do like being next to one another and they would prefer if the product is different. Why?

Imagine there are two retail spaces available in a town that has no restaurants. You want to open a curry restaurant in one of the spaces and sign a lease with the landlord to do so. Ideally you are the ONLY restaurant in town. If people want to eat out they have to come to you. Now the landlord wants to lease out the other space - what would you like to see there most? Another Curry Restaurant, a pizza place, or an ice cream shop?

I can tell you for a fact that fast casual restaurants in the USA love being next to a Starbucks because people got to Starbucks everyday. That means if you sell sandwiches people know exactly where you are. They see you everyday and you are right next door to one of their favorite establishments etc.

Must be an American thing. I've dined at Chinese restaurants from Halifax to Victoria and never seen General Tso on any menu.

*quality

Excellent breakdown. I love the side-by-side comparisons. Jackie Chan is the awesome.

Reminds me of behind the scenes of Rush Hour. The fight upstairs in the Chinese restaurant there's one gun and the American filmmaker wanted Jackie to toss it aside as if he would prefer to fight mano a mano.

Jackie pointed out the absurdity of that stupid concept altogether and made it so his character's focus in that scene was the exact opposite, to fight to get his hands on the gun, thus shutting the bad guy down.

It's awesome that he's done so many of his own stunts, but I feel bad for him because he's said one thing he loves about making films in America is they do everything they can to prevent him from getting hurt, and that's simply not the case in Hong Kong.

Understanding why so much anecdotal evidence exists is certainly worthwhile! The following link cites many studies on double blind tests for MSG sensitivity.

http://www.businessinsider.com/msg-allergy-doesnt-exist-2013-8

Glutamatic acid (which is what MSG turns into after solubilizing in water, along with a sodium ion) is one of the 20 amino acids that is the basis for all proteins and life, since the beginning of life on earth. It is in relatively high concentration in every cell of your body. Consuming MSG would be akin to consuming 'protein' in your diet, and is commonly labeled as protein in food labeling: http://www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html

Consuming too much protein in your diet can cause problems, but you need to be eating it to a relatively obvious excess (a gallon of milk per day). Weightlifters who protein supplement far too much quickly experience heart problems.

The business insider link suggests that there are some people who could potentially be sensitive to Glutamate, and be activating the vagus nerve in the stomach...though it seems to be speculative in that article.

The idea that another ingredient is causing the problem is far more likely. Americanized chinese restaurants all taste the same, because all of their food comes from the same place. A group in China has monopolized the american chinese restaurant market, and provides food and resources at unbeatably low prices. To remain competitive, almost all american chinese restaurants invariably purchase from this group. Given China's track record of putting all kinds of crazy stuff in their produce, it seems entirely likely that some ingredient other than MSG is a much more likely culprit.

I know a couple of people in particular who have reacted extremely badly to chinese restaurants in america, and even went to the emergency room for it. Given the details of their story (a mystery glob of black sauce that they ate from the black sauce egg tray), I could only imagine what kind of horrible things they could have ingested other than MSG. 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' may indeed be a relatively accurate term for what people are experiencing.

How easy you must find it to criticize and dismiss when you're not the one who has suffered. Do you think people who are sensitive to MSG want to be like that? They want to hate on MSG just for the hell of it? Make stuff up? Revel in their ignorance?

I went to this particular restaurant because it was a family tradition and I had little choice in the matter. I went through years of suffering before I had ever heard of MSG. One day I read somewhere about Chinese restaurants and MSG and from that day on, my suffering was at an end. That may not mean anything to you, but it made a difference in my life. So dismiss it as an anecdote all you want. But you'll never convince me or anyone else who went through this experience. Be thankful you never had to.

Ok, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, but you seem to be serious, so...

You're wrong.

The video debunks exactly what it says it does, the myth that MSG is bad for you, when in fact, it's in all kinds of food.

You got headaches after eating Chinese food from one restaurant; do you know what that means? Absolutely nothing. Your anecdote is completely and utterly irrelevant, unless you've never eaten any other food with MSG in it (like any of the list @Sarzy mentioned).

And yeah, "perfectly safe for the vast majority of people" is a completely acceptable standard. You can pick pretty much any food on the planet and a small number of people will get sick or even die from eating it. But it's "perfectly safe for the vast majority of people". Otherwise, we'd have to ban peanuts, shellfish, gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, garlic, meat... need I go on?

If eating at one Chinese restaurant gives you headaches.... don't eat there.
But don't blame it on some mythical MSG boogie man that was basically drummed up out of xenophobia.

Public quarantine? Is that a chinese restaurant?

I love this movie... I may very well be one of the few (if not the only) person in the world to have a shot of the movie framed and hanging on my living room wall. I'm such a fan of the 5th element, and futuristic cities, that I managed to track down the company responsible for the SFX, and more specifically, the artist who did some of the matte paintings. I sent him an email a few years ago, and said I was a big fan, and he sent me an image of the shot I had asked, in the largest available resolution.
It's that image of the floating chinese restaurant leaving Dallas' apartment window, with future-new york in the back.
Love it.

Ahhh... the Ballad of Hinge Thunder!

Medical device sales man. Starts out trying to pronounce weird eletrostaticdiscombubulator machinery. Ends up almost losing his child because he can't understand anyone.

I always liked that one as it wasn't really fantasy or science fiction just a story about someone with Aphasia told from his perspective.
>> ^spoco2:

I have this episode burned into my brain as it was one of a few 80s Twilight Zone episodes the my dad had taped off the tv, so I watched this, plus the one where the man slowly loses the ability to speak english (to him and us it starts seeming like everyone is using the wrong words for things), and one where a food critic does a bad review of a Chinese Restaurant and is doomed to eternally eat there when he gets a bad fortune cookie.
Yup, that's it for me and the Twilight Zone of the 80s, just those stories, burned in there!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I remember that episode with the morphing words - it made an impression on me too. I've even told my kids about it.

This one wasn't too bad for its time. Interesting that the glitches looked a lot like analog videotape errors. Different visual cues for a different time. There was a whole alternate universe in that guys matrix-stache.

>> ^spoco2:

I have this episode burned into my brain as it was one of a few 80s Twilight Zone episodes the my dad had taped off the tv, so I watched this, plus the one where the man slowly loses the ability to speak english (to him and us it starts seeming like everyone is using the wrong words for things), and one where a food critic does a bad review of a Chinese Restaurant and is doomed to eternally eat there when he gets a bad fortune cookie.
Yup, that's it for me and the Twilight Zone of the 80s, just those stories, burned in there!

I have this episode burned into my brain as it was one of a few 80s Twilight Zone episodes the my dad had taped off the tv, so I watched this, plus the one where the man slowly loses the ability to speak english (to him and us it starts seeming like everyone is using the wrong words for things), and one where a food critic does a bad review of a Chinese Restaurant and is doomed to eternally eat there when he gets a bad fortune cookie.

Yup, that's it for me and the Twilight Zone of the 80s, just those stories, burned in there!

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by calvados.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Brawl-at-Chinese-Restaurant-Montreal

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by Hive13. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082228/YouTube-video-Montreal-Chinese-restaurant-brawl-New-Years-Eve.html