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; those would be used for stir frying; the rest, he would braise in a sauce consisting of star anise, dried fruit peels, and soy sauce --- this was not on the menu, but we all loved those dishes.  My mother and sisters loved dried fish, dried shrimp, and also fermented shrimp sauce; they used the dried fish and shrimp sauce to steam minced pork.  The dried shrimps were used to fry rice. I detested both the smell and taste of those items and would not eat them.  Except for our Filipino customers, I'm sure those dishes would appear gross to our American clientele. 

Pig feet, pig tails, ox tails were also our favorites; with the exception of ox tails, I don't think we could have served those items.  As I had mentioned, we also would roast ducks and chickens, but because they were time consuming to prepare and we would have to charge a premium price for those dishes so we never included them on the menu.  Various other types of dishes familiar to our parents' village in China ( i.e., chicken with diced ginger and dried vegetables cooked with rice in a single pot, roasted squab, duck feet, chicken feet, and various steamed seafood) were also prepared for our own dinners; those dishes would have been too foreign to our customers.