Is Chinese Takeout Fast Food Or Something Else?

Chinese takeout is a great choice for dinner in a pinch. It's affordable, it's quick, and it's widely available. If we were to take those three adjectives and make people guess what kind of restaurant we were talking about, many of us would probably say fast food. And we'd be forgiven for doing so, since fast food is, in fact, all of those things. So, wait: Does that mean Chinese takeout is fast food?  Not really.

For being such a massive culinary genre, fast food as a category can be a bit slippery. Technically, fast food refers to restaurants whose business model is built around mass production; the very antithesis to the four-course, Michelin-starred restaurant with reservations that are booked out months in advance. No, Chinese takeout resides with us hoi polloi, so what's the big deal? Why doesn't it get into the fast food club?

Well, for reasons similar to why Chipotle isn't considered fast food. Chinese takeout restaurants are probably closer to a fast casual establishment. Some of this comes down to how fast food restaurants are able to make food so quickly — namely, that they prepare all of the food in advance in the hopes that someone comes by and purchases it before it goes to waste. We're pretty sure Chinese takeout restaurants aren't doing this. And no, prepping ingredients beforehand doesn't count.

Really, when it comes to fast food, speed is (literally) the name of the game. If you walk into a McDonald's or go through a Taco Bell drive-thru, you can expect your food to be in your hand in just a few minutes. Although Chinese takeout is fast, they aren't that fast when compared to actual fast food. Now, we could go into a whole diatribe about how fast food is different from fast casual (oh, wait, we have), but I think you know deep down in your heart that the label just doesn't quite fit for Chinese takeout.

The closest thing to it would be Panda Express. Now, Panda Express has quite a few differences from traditional Chinese American takeout, but it describes itself as fast casual, and we're willing to concede the point. But if Panda Express doesn't count as fast food, then neither do the unfranchised versions of the genre. 

In the end, though, these are just labels. If an innovative restaurateur takes issue with the label, they are fully free to disagree and pursue something that looks a lot like McDonald's, but with some sort of orange chicken handheld wrap or something similar, which they can toss out a drive-thru window. Who knows? Maybe it's the exact kind of creative twist the fast food world didn't know it needed.