the proper old school take out, large and thick, deep fried blistering full on cabbage/roast pork/celery/shrimp egg rolls? or the new fangled cheap out hard shiny shell "spring roll" egg rolls?
sure, granted, but they've been used as a cheap easy replacement for the old school NY take out egg rolls which I love. they're more like lumpia, aren't as big, don't have the fillings, don't have the nice blistered exterior, and are a far inferior cheap out product being sold as "egg rolls" with no right as the egg roll dough had egg in it, and the tiny disappointing misnamed shiny ones don't
Egg roll dough doesn't have egg in it, though, most times (as in hardly ever). It's just a thick wheat flour wrapper. And yes, "lumpia" are a variety of spring roll (from Fujian, IIRC, where they're called runbing). (They also don't have egg, but they further use rice wrappers, not wheat.)
yes, a variety of spring roll, not egg roll, and they shouldn't be used interchangeably, but since the mom and pop chinese places got tired of making egg rolls, and found that buying the frozen lumpia pre made, and selling them as egg rolls worked out well for them, the true egg roll has become almost extinct. they're are places you can find them, but they are few and far between, and never in a million years would i have thought something so perfect could simply be dissapeared. it's a tragedy.
If they're selling frozen anything it's going to be crap. (You know frozen egg rolls exist, right?)
Any restaurant making from frozen, especially pre-packaged frozen, is going to be shit whether it's an "authentic" egg roll or a spring roll. Stop buying from shit restaurants entirely.