To Serve the “Other”: Chinese-American Immigrants in the Restaurant Business

Abstract

We don't serve chop suey. We don't serve egg foo yung, that sort of food, at all. To us, that's not very Chinese. These are foods for American people ... And I think it's not fine food, it's not real gourmet. It's not food that you have a literature behind ... It's just food made up because they like it ... Some people still think they are Chinese food.! Most urban Americans older than thirty can recall the recent metamorphosis of the Chinese restaurant business in this country; the pseudo-Cantonese chop SU~S of their youth gave way to Chinese food that was somehow more ... foreign. Many of the new dishes were spicy, made with exotic ingredients and altogether unlike the bland bean sprout-and-chow mein noodle dishes to which they had become accustomed. Changes in ingredients, preparation, configuration and combination have material and metaphoric import as modified Mandarin and Szechuan fare has become the standard Chinese food for most urban Americans.2 This evolution represents more than a regional shift in Chinese emigration to the United States, although it clearly owes much to this demographic change. In fact, while these culinary styles differ considerably, they represent similarly altered foodways, a representation of Chinese and Chinese-American culture which is both "unauthentic" fabrication and the product of an "authentic" cultural adaptation. The accommodation of Chinese cuisine to the American market and palate are the result of a