/ck/ - Food & Cooking

I have always thought American style Chinese food is the single.lost overrated cuisine on the planet. I've have tried so many dishes from so many Chinese restaurants here and considering half the dishes are literally deep fat friend meat drowned in caramelized sugar, I have never had anything that made me fall in love with Chinese cooking. I tend to love ethnic foods like Indian, Ethiopian, Japanese, Korean, etc, but Chinese have never been the same.
Obviously as soon as you bring this up anywhere people are instant to point out that this is "American Chinese food" and not "Chinese food" despite it literally being the only Chinese food 99% of these people saying this know.
So my question is, is "actual Chinese food" really that much better than Americanized dishes? Cause unless it's literally an entirely new cuisine than Chinese food is at most a C+ cuisine.