Where can I eat dishes that feature in western countries' Chinese restaurants?

My wife is from Malaysia, and is ethnically Chinese (Hainanese). When she first came to the US to visit, at some point we ended up buying some “Chinese” food at a local supermarket’s deli area, probably something like Kung Pao chicken, but I don’t exactly remember. When we finally got it home to eat a short time later, she had no idea what she was looking at and asked me “what’s this”? When I explained what it was and she tasted it, she considered feeding it to our dogs instead. I think she ate the rice and that was about it.

Fortunately there is a Chinese place in town where the owner makes a few “real” Chinese dishes that she just loves, so I can go have what I consider Chinese, and she can have “real” Chinese at the same restaurant.

When we travel to Malaysia & Singapore, we eat out a lot, but it’s very-very-very rare to find what I think of as “Chinese” food, even though it’s frequently Chinese food. Fortunately I like most of that as well as the Malay and Indian foods everywhere. However, after several weeks over there, I’m pining for some decent western food. However…

If you’re in Malaysia or Singapore and looking for something western-ish, try Ramly-burger if you want a bit of east-west fusion in your burger, or Nando’s if you want some Portuguese style chicken thrown into the mix. They’re both fast food places I’d kill to have here in the Seattle area.

Fried ice cream (焼きアイスクリーム/"yaki aisukuriimu"), sweet-and-sour pork (酢豚/"subuta", lit. "vinegar pork") or chicken (酢鳥/"sudori") are well-known in Japan. If you find yourself in that part of the world, just ask the locals for these things by name.

酢鳥や酢豚など (sudori ya subuta nado) 食べたいんですから, (tabetain’desukara)
この辺には (konohen ni wa) 中国式のレストラン (chuugoku-shiki no resutoran) 有りますか？(arimasuka?)

(I would like to eat something like "sudori" or "subuta", is there a Chinese restaurant around here?)

If you want Chinese food in Japan, you go to a Chinese restaurant. Any larger mall has at least one. Sweet and sour chicken can also be found as prepared food in supermarkets and delis (like the food delis in the basements of larger malls).

For Mongolian food, it helps to find a Mongolian restaurant. In China, there is a good one in Shanghai called "Home in the Grasslands". In this restaurant, they actually have a few tables that are under Mongolian style tents (indoors). Lamb features prominently in the menu.

Lamb is is also used in some Xi An style dishes (Shaan-Xi cuisine). If you see "Xi An" in the sign or the equivalent characters 西安, take a look.

This isn’t a substantial answer, but I would like to point out that while some Westernised “Chinese” foods – such as Mongolian beef – do seem to be pretty nonexistent in Asia, others aren’t.

For instance, I have seen many instances of sweet and sour pork (although the cooking style might be slightly different) in Hong Kong fast food restaurants, and I have definitely heard of fried ice cream (炸雪糕) while living in Asia.

In my experience though (which of course is somewhat idiosyncratic), these types of Chinese foods aren’t really the type seen as epitome of Chinese cuisine, even if they’re probably seen as more “Chinese” than eating pasta dishes or McDonald’s.

In addition to the “Chinese” dishes you find let’s say in Canada not being identical to the original, consider that China is a huge country. Chinese people living in one part of the country don’t cook the same as Chinese people living in another part. The food that you find in Beijing might be very unusual to people in Taiwan. It’s similar to asking for “European” food and not being able to find cannelloni in Athens (apart from the cannelloni you find in Italy not being quite what you expect).

These foods are typically unique to where you eat them For example neither deep fried ice cream or honey chicken are “Chinese food” here in Canada. The Wikipedia article on American Chinese food does a pretty job of identifying which North American “Chinese food” dishes map to food you might eat in China and which do not. I don’t know if you can construct a similar list for Australian “Chinese food”, but look for ingredients like carrots and tomatoes, as well as anything salad-like, to be particular to your home version of Chinese food and less likely to be available in China or other parts of Asia.

Nowhere in China. American Chinese cuisine (and its relatives in Australia, Europe, etc) is heavily adapted for Western tastes:

“Chinese-American cuisine is ‘dumbed-down’ Chinese food. It’s
adapted… to be blander, thicker and sweeter for the American public”

Some dishes are localized versions of actual Chinese dishes (eg. Kung Pao chicken, which completely lacks the málà kick of the Sichuanese original), many were created in America (fortune cookies, “Mongolian beef”, etc). The Wikipedia article above has a good list of both.

Also, I’ve eaten a lot of “real” Fujianese (Hokkien) food in Singapore, where they’re the single largest dialect group, and I can assure you that neither Fujian nor Hakka cuisine bears the slightest resemblance to Panda Express.

Incidentally, this phenomenon is by no means unique. For example, Indian Chinese is what happens when Chinese and Indian cuisines collide, in Japan you can try out heavily Japanized Western dishes (yōshoku) like “omelette rice“, and everybody has bastardized the poor Italians. Of course, things get really interesting when these get re-exported back to the home country, which is why you can now find American Chinese food in Shanghai!