When people dine in restaurants, however elegant or humble, Chinese or other cuisine, they rarely think about the kitchen and the conditions under which the restaurant staff toil to serve the orders from the patrons. It is hot, especially for the cooks, crowded with wait staff and kitchen help rushing around in tight quarters to serve meals in a timely manner.
In Chinese, and probably in other ethnic restaurants, many of the workers are immigrants who find short-term employment through an un... Continue reading ...
Jan Whitaker's fantastic blog, , has looked into the history of the many Ruby Foo restaurants and pondered how much fact and fiction existed about the popular perceptions of Ruby Foo, the person.
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The World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893 helped expand recognition of Chicago as a major city. Many nations, including China, had pavilions to showcase their culture to Chicagoans. One important part of the Chinese Village was its Cafe, which although it did not serve authentic Chinese food, functioned to promote more positive feelings and contact between the growing Chinese population and Chicagoans.
"While no definitive record exists, the Chinese Café is widely believed by scholars of Chin...
As more acceptance of Chinese cuisine developed in the last quarter of the 19th century in large cities, Chinese formed partnerships to raise capital to fund the opening of opulent large banquet hall restaurants decorated with fine furnishings that provided an exoticized oriental ambiance, and extensive menu selections that introduced western diners to more authentic as well as Americanized Chinese dishes.
A prime example of these dining palaces was the King Joy Lo restaurant opened in 1906 i... Continue reading ...
Today, with the popularity and ubiquity of Chinese restaurants of many types, it is hard to realize that America initially was not attracted to eating in Chinese restaurants. The dishes were markedly different from Western foods and Chinatowns were often dangerous places in run down parts of town so it was mainly Chinese who patronized Chinese restaurants. Besides, there were rumors that Chinese ate dogs as well as strange things.
In 1878 Benjamin Taylor was unimpressed with his ... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Sunday, July 16, 2017,
In :
Racism
In 1882, the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and other laws that barred Chinese laborers from immigrating or becoming U.S. citizen.
MIT legal historian Heather Lee discovered an important exception to these laws: Some
Chinese business owners in the U.S. could get special merchant visas that allowed them to travel to China, and bring back employees. Only a few types of businesses qualified for this status. In 1915, a federal court added restaurants to that list, leading to a Chinese rest... Continue reading ...
How do Chinese choose names for restaurants? Although they change over time most of them seem to consist of a limited combination of a few terms. Thus, Golden, Silver, Jade, Imperial, Panda, China, Hong Kong might be combined with terms like Palace, Dragon, House, City, Wok.
One empirical study by Frank Shyong and David Chan based on close to 7,000 restaurant names gathered from several decades confirmed this impression as they found a high repetitiveness of Chinese restaurant names.
Why? Th... Continue reading ...
Although it is rapidly being replaced by boring plain styrofoam or other plasticky rectangular boxes, for many years Chinese restaurants provided a distinctive trapezoidal-shaped paper 'pail' for patrons to take leftover food home.
What were the origins of this iconic object that characterized Chinese restaurants, second only to the fortune cookie? I stumbled upon the following explanation. In 1894 Frederick Weeks Wilcox patented containers he created by folding a single sheet of paper to ... Continue reading ...
There were few Chinese restaurants in the American South until the last half of the past century. Most Chinese in the region operated laundries and small grocery stores. There were not enough Chinese in most cities to support a Chinese restaurant. Moreover, Chinese immigrants did not dine out at restaurants of any type but did their own cooking at home. Finally, Chinese food was initially disparaged by many nonChinese who were unacquainted with Chinese foods, and some feared that Chinese a... Continue reading ...
Mom and pop family-run Chinese restaurants across Canada, as elsewhere, are fast vanishing from the landscape and often replaced by larger and trendier partnered or chain eateries. My friend Connie Tsang, a Chinese Canadian photographer grew up in the Sunshine Restaurant of her immigrant parents in rural Ontario. She became galvanized to record the stories and images of these once ubiquitous eateries when her parents closed their restaurant a few years ago. She gave me permission to include i... Continue reading ...
A Chinese restaurant is not
the easiest way to earn a living.
Patrons enjoy their meals, but know little about the difficult and
demanding work over long hours each day that restaurant owners and workers
endure.
The
Sour Side of Chinese Restaurants is an article I published in Chinese American Forum to provide an overview of these aspects of
this business based on news articles, oral histories, and research studies. Here are several examples of the 'sour side' of runn...
Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Monday, December 1, 2014,
In :
Chinese food
Chop Suey: Its Rise and Fall
In 1898, China Viceroy Li Huang Chang came to the U. S. on a diplomatic mission. In New York and Philadelphia he was feted and large crowds welcomed him like a conquering hero. It was during this trip that the story that one evening the diplomat wanted Chinese food instead of the typical American banquet fare. Legend has it that a Chinese chef had to improvise since he was given short notice so he could only toss together left over vegetable cuttings from the ...
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Posted by John Jung on Wednesday, November 19, 2014,
In :
Chinese food
In the early 20th century when there was a growing popularity of
chop suey and chow mein among Americans, two enterprising University of
Michigan students,Wally Smith and Ilhan New, neither of whom were
Chinese, hit upon the idea of creating and mass marketing a line of
prepackaged Chinese foods. Thus, La Choy, a coined name to generate
the feeling that the foods were ‘oriental’ was born in 1922. Wally
Smith, owner of a grocery store in Detroit wanted to sell fresh bean
sprou...
Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Tuesday, October 7, 2014,
In :
Chinese food
Chinese immigration to Italy has increased dramatically over the past decade or two. As in other places, culture clashes sometimes occur and Chinese and Italians experience similar problems. Award winning journalist Suzanne Ma, a Chinese Canadian, who has a novel "Meet Me in Venice" coming out in February 2015, presents a charming and insightful talk about the negative feelings toward the influx of Chinese, and their food, in Italy. Continue reading ...
I
t has never been an easy job working in a Chinese restaurant. Whether you were a cook, waiter, busboy, the hours were long, the pay was low, and the working conditions poor. The earlier source of this labor was primarily from Guangdong and the cuisine was Cantonese but after President Nixon's ping pong diplomacy in the early 1970s broke through the Bamboo Curtain, a shift toward another impoverished province, Fujian, as the primary source of labor rapidly expanded. And, they introduced a ... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Wednesday, September 3, 2014,
In :
Chinese food
Chop suey was once the rage for diners across the land but has long fallen out of favor. A sandwich 'variant,' however, that was found in parts of New England still seems to be a regional favorite, along with its cousin, the chow mein sandwich.
According to Wikipedia,
"Originating in Fall River, Massachusetts, in the 1930s or 1940s, the chow mein sandwich, which typically consists of a hamburger-style bun with a brown gravy-based chow mein mixture placed between and served hot, is popular o...
Chinese food today, comes in almost as many varieties as the Heinz 57 food products, and isn't the same as it used to be. It is indeed an enviable pastime to try them all, but somebody had to do it, and David Chan, a third generation Chinese American living in Los Angeles has the stomach (claims to have eaten in over 6200 Chinese restaurants so far), and the brains, for finding and reporting on great places for all types of Chinese cuisine. He has several appetizing culinary posts on this fa... Continue reading ...
The early Chinese cafes were quite different from what Chinese restaurants have become today. They served working class Chinese immigrants who, due to exclusionary laws, lived in bachelor societies. They did not cater to the tourist trade, although they did attract and serve non-Chinese as well. A brief glimpse into one New York Chinese eating hole in 1892 shows that the patronage were varied.
The dining area was a large room dimly lit by oil lamps mounted along the walls. Chinese waiters, wit...
Cleveland, Ohio never had a large Chinese immigrant population. The 1920 U. S. Census records show there were about 240 Chinese there, the highest number in the early 20th century. That total includes children, so the number of adults was even smaller. Yet, there were many Chinese restaurants, as shown in the montage above, that operated there from around the 1920s to 1960s for the most part. The 12 restaurants shown above from picture postcards were rather large and nicely decorated. Man... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Wednesday, August 8, 2012,
In :
Chinese food
Chinese families in the restaurant business had their favorite dishes that they didn't dare put on the menu if most of their patrons were not Chinese. Think of it as Chinese 'soul food,' delicious but unassuming dishes that were popular back in the Guangdong villages from where most of the early Chinese immigrants came from.
Ralph Young grew up working in his family restaurant in California and recalls:
My dad liked to cook pig stomachs. He would take out the thick portions first; tho...
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A radio reading about an opening of a new Chinese restaurant , Hung Far Low, in 1902 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This city has done a commendable project in celebrating its history with this and similar recordings by the Grand Rapids Historical Commission.(Note: The link will not automatically play the audiofile. The easiest method is to click one of the STREAMING options such as MP3 via M3U in the column on the far left of the screen under LISTEN TO AUDIO) Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Wednesday, July 18, 2012,
In :
Chinese food
Aficionados of Chinese, or for that matter, any cuisine obsess over the authenticity of a dish, as if this aspect was a guarantee of its gustatory delight. Authenticity is revered as an inherent and immutable property of a dish. Yet.just as any language is not pure or fixed, but forever changing, such is true for food.
The studies of Chinese food in America by historian Haiming Liu provide an excellent illustration of what he calls 'flexible authenticity.' He notes that in the 19... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Wednesday, July 18, 2012,
Chinese left their Guangdong villages for many parts of the world in the late 19th century, but no matter where they went, they were ridiculed as people in their host countries made fun of their speech, clothing, customs, and of course, food. In the article below, mistitled "Chop Suey," perhaps because the name of that dish was stereotypical of Chinese food, the Chinese cook gets the last word in response to the white customer's joke.
(From New Zealand National Library)
...
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Chinese Canadian historian Larry Wong reminisced about favorite Chinatown restaurant dishes he had while growing up in Vancouver in his blog, "Ask Larry."
Cho San
As can be expected, in the 40s and 50s, no matter where you go in Chinatown, the cuisine was Cantonese. And the meals were cheap. My older brother used to tell me lunch was twenty-five cents when he was growing up. Lunch was a bowl of rice, soup and some meat and vegetable.
In a 1950s issue of the Chinatown News, there was an ad...
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Posted by John Jung on Monday, July 2, 2012,
In :
Chinese food
Considered by some to be the Julia Child of Chinese cookbooks, Grace Zia Chu was a pioneer Chinese cooking teacher and cookbook writer with her 1962 "Pleasures of Chinese Cooking" and 1975 "Madame Chu's Chinese Cooking School." She died in 1999 at the ripe age of 99 but not without making a significant impact on the way Americans understood and appreciated the cooking of Chinese food. She will be also remembered for a much less important but nonetheless amusing tidbit. She claime... Continue reading ...
Chinese restaurants grew in popularity over the past century for many reasons ranging from their novelty, exotic appeal, good taste, and presumed positive impact on health. Not to be overlooked is the lower price of meals at most Chinese restaurants, which gave them a competitive edge made possible by low overhead. Located often in low-rent areas and staffed by no-wage family members who worked together over long days to enable the survival of their restaurants, they used low prices to ... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Monday, June 4, 2012,
In :
Chinese food
Historian Charles. W. Hayford published a wonderful article that discussed the place of chop suey in the history of Chinese restaurant fare. Although widely disparaged as not being authentic, Haywood points out it is "authentic" as American-Chinese food.
On the overemphasis on authenticity, he notes that he has on occasion had dreary (but authentic) Peking duck in China while enjoying excellent (but inauthentic) sweet and sour pork in the U. S. He shared an amusing incident on a ... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Friday, May 25, 2012,
In an earlier post, I used Google Books Ngram tool to show that the frequency with which popular Chinese foods were mentioned in printed books corresponded closely with the opposite trends in popularity of chop suey and dim sum over the past half century or so.
As a followup, I checked on how well these iconic Chinese foods compared with 'fortune cookie' and 'fried rice,' two other very popular Chinese restaurant foods. The results below show that by the early 1980s dim sum was mentioned mo... Continue reading ...
The Augusta Chronicle in 1905 proudly announced the impending arrival in Augusta of two "celestials," the popular term for describing Chinese a century ago, who were coming all the way from New York to open a "genuine" Chinese restaurant. It isn't known whether this one, to be on the 800 block of some unmentioned street, was to be the first, or the first genuine, Chinese restaurant in this southern city. Augusta had perhaps the largest Chinese population in the Deep South at the tu... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Wednesday, April 4, 2012,
In :
Chinese food
Helen Wong, of Auckland, New Zealand, has been one of my faithful correspondents for several years. Since she is a dedicated poster of information from all over the world about the Overseas Chinese, about a year ago I asked her whether chop suey was as popular down under as it used to be in North America. She observed:
Up to the 1960s most people ate at
home... In the early 70s, some Chinese men arrived here, and started Hong
Kong Style takeaways. There were some restaur... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Tuesday, April 3, 2012,
In :
Restaurateurs
Excerpt from Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 5, 2011 Obit.
There's a line in an old Chinese poem, the gist of which is that if one wants the best in Chinese cooking, one should eat Cantonese cuisine. That was Ngalan Tam Lee's specialty.Mrs. Lee and her husband, James Soon Lee, came to Georgia from San Francisco in 1975 at the invitation of relatives already here who said there were very few Chinese restaurants in metro Atlanta and saw that as an opportunity to start one.The Lees' first p... Continue reading ...
A recent book published by Lily Cho, a Chinese Canadian professor of English, Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada, examines the impact of Chinese Canadian cafes across the small prairie towns on their communities by analyzing the content of their menus! The fact that her father opened such a cafe in the Yukon despite never having previously worked as a cook led her to analyze the role that these community gathering places played in their communities. Despite decades of ... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Thursday, February 9, 2012,
In :
Chinese food
Young-Kyun Yang, a Korean anthropologist, has studied the place of Chinese food in Korea. In one paper published in the Korea Journal, he noted that "Chinese restaurants opened in Korea from the late 19th century to provide mostly male Chinese-Koreans with very simple food. Chinese foods were cooked, sold, and consumed exclusively by Chinese-Koreans until the 1940's. In the 1950's and 1960's, although the Chinese dominated the business, the food became a representative food for dini...
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Posted by John Jung on Tuesday, July 12, 2011,
Serving dishes like the one I am holding were commonly found in Chinese restaurants of a
generation ago. What they lacked in "oriental" or "Chinese-y"
decoration, these minimalist but clean designs by F. S. Louie Co. of
Berkeley made up for by keeping your food hot over the entire meal.
At a book talk I gave in San Francisco this June to the Culinary
Historians of Northern California at the small but charming Omnivore
Bookstore, I was completely surprised by appearance of my
friends, J...
Aliette de Bodard, a Vietnamese-French award winning sci-fi and fantasy author, made some valid points on the question of what constitutes 'authentic' food on her blog. These excerpts give you the flavor, pun intended, of her observations: "What makes an authentic recipe? What is and is not an acceptable
variant? [1] How should a cuisine as a whole be judged? Because truth
is, like cultures, cuisines merge and adapt, and evolve. Sometimes, they
adapt because they don’t have basic ingredi... Continue reading ...
The issue of 'authenticity' inevitably surfaces when ethnic foods of any type, Chinese or other, are evaluated. I have often wondered to what extent "foodie snobbism" is at work. Food dishes, like language, evolve over time and differ over space. Can there be a single recipe that is the authentic version for a dish? Who 'decides,' and using what yardstick, whether a dish is 'authentic'? And, is authenticity the end all which trumps even 'great taste'? I recently stumbled upon an ... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Tuesday, May 10, 2011,
The story of the Chinese family restaurants outside of North America is remarkably similar in other parts of the world where the Chinese diaspora of the mid to late 19th century spread. Barbara Nichol has written about the history of Chinese restaurants in Melbourne, Australia from 1830-1950. "The restaurant industry was central to the way many in the Chinese
community supported themselves and their families back in China over the
early decades. Return visits home and the opportunity to de... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Wednesday, March 23, 2011,
Chinese not only ran restaurants on the Canadian prairies but also managed small hotels, that they saved from going out of business during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
"The
Pennant Hotel was not, strictly speaking, a family business. Rather, it was run
by several men – relatives or friends – who worked as partners. This was
necessary because, from 1885 until well into the 20th century,
restrictive immigration laws prevented Chinese from bringing their wives and
children to Cana... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Monday, March 7, 2011,
In Yellowknife, NW Territorties, the Wild Cat Cafe, opened in 1937-8, was a gathering place for prospectors, miners and pilots and the hub of Yellowknife's social activity. Prospectors wheeled and dealed, community members held meetings and banquets, while visitors came and went by floatplane. Later, the Wild Cat was used as Yellowknife's first ice cream parlour and Chinese restaurant.
. 
Named using the initials of the last names of its founders, Calvert, Vopni, and Menlove, the CVM ca... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Monday, March 7, 2011,
Thanks to a blog created by an acquaintance, Joan Champ, a Canadian museum exhibit producer and historian in Saskatchewan I just learned about the role of Chinese immigrants operating small hotels during the Great Depression in addition to running small cafes. For example, in Edam,SK., a Chinese who bore the name "Charlie Chan" ran a café, ice cream parlor and hotel. .
After WWII, business declined for Chan's hotel as was true for other hotels, and Chinese moved on to focus on their small ... Continue reading ...
Does the Jewish love of Chinese food in America extend to say, Israel?
Apparently not, according to this writer, Elizabeth Greenberg, for website China Insight. She also quotes a Chinese in Cheuk Kwan's documentary on Chinese restaurants around the world who went to Israel from Vietnam but without any knowledge of how to cook Chinese food and had to learn from Israeli friends, "I told them I didn't know how to cook," Wong said. "They said they will teach me. I asked them, 'You're teaching m...
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Posted by John Jung on Tuesday, February 8, 2011,
In :
Restaurateurs
(Excerpted from Jan. 29, 2011 article by Andrew Meacham, Staff Writer, St. Petersburg Times"Kwok Kwong Mui, who co-founded the restaurant with two cousins in 1965, always regarded the business as a means, not an end.He wanted his children to do better.To make those things possible, Mr. Mui manned a wok as head chef - 12 hours a day, six days a week.
"He would be all hot and sweaty from kitchen work," said Linda Mui Wright, a daughter. "He would say, 'You all don't want to be like this. Make s...
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The long day of hard work in a Charleston, West Virginia Chinese take-out business. Owner Carina Kwok knows the names of many repeat customers when they walk through the door of Main Kwong Restaurant or when they order over the phone. Caller ID helps, of course, but she also remembers their favorites and customary substitutions... 
She typically arrives at Main Kwong at about 9 a.m., and organizes deliveries, supervises food preparation and early deliveries.... The chaotic pace starts alm...
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C hop Suey had a meteoric rise (blue line) in popularity from 1900 to about 1940, after which it drops rapidly and leveled off after 1960. In contrast, during the 1960s dim sum (red line) was 'discovered' and became rapidly trendy and is still increasingly popular. These differences are mirrored in the frequency with which each of them is mentioned in word counts by Google based on their millions of scanned books. If you;d like to play with this tool by entering other year spans or other food... Continue reading ...
There were few Chinese in the Deep South during most of the last century so it is not surprising that there were few Chinese restaurants there, and those that did exist did not serve the same Chinese dishes found in New York or San Francisco Chinese restaurants. Perhaps the Joy Young Restaurant, in Birmingham, Ala. was the best known and largest Chinese restaurant in the South until it closed sometime in the 1970s. Its fried chicken (this was the South) was one of its most popular items alo... Continue reading ...
One of the most unusual success stories among Chinese restaurants is that of the Imperial Dynasty r
estaurant opened by Richard Wing after WW II in a most unlikely place, Hanford, Ca., which is about half way between Los Angeles and Sacramento and not even located on the main north-south highway. It was not your typical chop suey joint; in fact, some would say it wasn't really a Chinese restaurant so much as it was a forerunner of 'Chinoise" cuisine, Chinese food with a French accent. ... Continue reading ...
The original Far East Cafe in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles no longer exists although a restaurant by the same name occupies its premises currently but serves a different fare. It's classic neon sign, which prominently displays the words, "Chop Suey," pays homage to its heritage from when four Chinese laundrymen left Mason City, Iowa to come open this restaurant in L. A. back in the 1930s when chop suey was at its peak of popularity, and "defined" Chinese food in the minds, and stom... Continue reading ...
Red flowers such as peonies are popular among Chinese so it is not surprising that some Chinese used it for their restaurant name, which when transliterated becomes "Hung (red) Far (flower) Low" (building) or HUNG FAR LOW. The Anglo perception, however, is that the name has sexual connotations related to the male sexual anatomy. When the neon sign that proclaimed this restaurant name in Portland for almost a century was removed a few years ago, Portlanders felt a deep sense of loss and camp... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Thursday, January 6, 2011,
A Christmas Story, the classic movie, based on Jean Shepard's story of the same name includes many unforgettable scenes. The family Christmas dinner in the 'Bo Ling" Chop Suey Palace (so named because one of the assistant directors mistook a neon sign for a bowling alley with the letter W burned out to be a sign for a Chinese restaurant because it sounded Chinese-y... BO LING, is definitely one of them even though it mocks the Chinese waiters' inability to pronounce English words correctly...
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Posted by John Jung on Thursday, November 11, 2010,
When most people think about Chinese family restaurants, they think of:- quick preparation,
- poor and sometimes indifferent, if not rude, "service"
- makeshift or mismatched interior decor,
- shabby and often funky exterior appearance,
- located in slummy neighborhoods
Although their comments do not come from a "random" sample, postings on websites such as YELP clearly confirm these views of Chinese restaurant patrons. So why have they been so popular for so many decades? Despite these problem... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Saturday, November 6, 2010,
In :
Book talks
Within walking (well, almost) of my house, the Cerritos Library is not
only convenient but also a dream come true of an attractive and
functional library. It was my second presentation to a lively and supportive
audience.
Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Saturday, November 6, 2010,
In :
Book talks
I have been fortunate to have received the support of large audiences at this lovely charming venue for presentations on three different occasions for my books. Located in the historic Gaslamp district, its staff provides a rich and varied program. Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Saturday, November 6, 2010,
In :
Book talks
What
a wonderful and unique venue for speaking about "Sweet and Sour" in
July! After socializing with a vibrant group of Chinese foodies,
munching on the cornucopia of delicious and attractively presented
dishes prepared by members, and watching some amazing cooking and
watermelon 'carving' demonstrations, I got to talk about my book, with
the aid of a contributor to the book, the noted artist, Flo Oy Wong, who
grew up in her family's restaurant in nearby Oakland Chinatown. We also
ha... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Friday, June 4, 2010,
In :
Book talks
Although the evening event focused on Chinese laundries because the three speakers, Elwin Xie, Judy Fong Bates, and yours truly, all shared experiences of growing up in our family laundries, I also was able to talk about the origins and characteristics of family-run Chinese restaurants, the focus of "Sweet and Sour."
Here is a detailed description of the event and photos of the traditional village dishes served , 
What better setting in which to make a presentation about this iconic C... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Friday, June 4, 2010,
In :
family
During the research process for Sweet and Sour, I suddenly realized that I had relatives on my mother's side living in Saskatchewan that I had never met. As I was learning that virtually every small town across Canada, especially in the prairies, had a small Chinese-run cafe, I wondered if my cousins had also had a Chinese restaurant. After some effort, a bit of luck, and half a dozen phone calls, I was able to locate a second cousin by phone who confirmed that one cousin had in fact run a ... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Friday, March 12, 2010,
Many significant social changes occurred following WW II. Better acceptance of Chinese, reflected by the repeal of the 1882 Chinese exclusion act, opened avenues to professional careers for young educated Chinese who no longer were relegated to taking over their family cafes. The pioneering Cantonese restaurants were losing their novelty and some jaded non-Chinese diners sought new tastes which they found by the 1960s in northern China cuisines such as Hunan, Szechewan, Peking, and Shanghai... Continue reading ...
As the hostility and violence toward Chinese on the west coast escalated during the later part of the 19th century, more Chinese moved toward the middle of the country toward safety. For a while, many of them opened laundry businesses but by the 1920s, they found it more attractive to start family-run restaurants. Although they were run by Chinese, most of these restaurants beyond Chinese communities served mostly American dishes and only a few Chinese-like dishes such as chop suey, egg foo... Continue reading ...
Posted by John Jung on Friday, March 12, 2010,
The earliest Chinese were peasant stock, and their food, considered disgusting by whites, did not make their restaurants or 'fan deem' attractive to non-Chinese. Much ridicule was heaped upon the Chinese and their food preferences which were quite foreign to non-Chinese. It was not until whites became fascinated by news of a dish called "chop suey" that suddenly Chinese restaurants became popular, especially among well-to-do whites who regarded it daring to go 'slumming' and eat in Chinatow... Continue reading ...
For someone who never ate in a Chinese restaurant until he was 15, mainly because he grew up in the 1940s in a place where not a single Chinese restaurant existed for over a 100 miles, it is odd that I would find myself writing about this ubiquitous and widely popular 'institution' for eating all across the world.
Had it not been for the fact that a retired Chinese restaurateur in attendance at a talk I was giving about Mississippi Delta Chinese grocery store families approached me af... Continue reading ...
After retiring from a 40-year career as a psychology professor, I published 4 books about Chinese immigrants that detail the history of their laundries, grocery stores, and family restaurants in the U. S. and Canada.
