There was very little need to tweak the recipes. Related: Asian American chefs are changing the expectations around what 'authentic’ cuisine means - and are seizing the moment to cook their food their way.įor example, Ku explained, “In the 1970s Koreans established these enclaves and the primary customers of their restaurants were always Korean. These later waves of immigrants didn’t have to tweak their recipes or make new dishes to suit white Americans the way Chinese immigrants did, as they were mostly feeding their own. In the early 1900s, the first Japanese and Indian restaurants started opening in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.įueled by a series of events, like the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the doors to many more Asian immigrants and the Vietnam War, which led to waves of refugees from Southeast Asia, the diversity of Asian cultures in America brought with it more types of cuisine. Coincidentally, what we now know as the Chinese takeout container was patented in 1894, just in time for the rise of Chinese cuisine (though the iconic red pagoda graphic and “Thank you” script weren’t added until the 1970s.) Chop suey, essentially a vegetable medley with meat, was the first such dish to become an American sensation, and other stir-fry and gravy-based dishes soon followed. This is what Ku calls “the chop suey tradition” the rise of a distinctly Chinese American cuisine. They had to perform their exoticness, but at the same time, they couldn't serve food that was too unfamiliar,” said Ku, author of “Dubious Gastronomy: Eating Asian in the USA.” “So they basically took American-style food - meat, gravy, starch, some vegetables - and they designed a cuisine that was consistent with the American way of eating.”Īdditionally, Chinese restaurateurs had to adapt recipes for the ingredients that were available to them in America. “The Chinese restaurateurs dressed up their restaurants to look like some sort of theme park that was very Chinese-y, because that's what the audience wanted. Consider the fact that people of Chinese descent currently make up about 1.6% of the American population, yet there are more than 40,000 Chinese restaurants and most people across demographics in the country have eaten or are familiar with Chinese food, particularly takeout. No story can be told about Asian food in America without acknowledging the influence that Chinese immigrants and their descendants had, not just on Chinese American food, but on American food. “It’s hard to generalize about Asian Americans and how different cuisines become mainstream because they really all had different processes and different developments.” “Asian American food is as complicated and diverse as Asian American people because the category itself, Asian American, is very broad,” said Robert Ji-Song Ku, associate professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University. Kung pao chicken, General Tso’s chicken, pad thai, sushi, banh mi, chicken tikka masala - dishes that are rooted in Asia and the Asian diaspora are now firmly a part of America’s multicultural cuisine.
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