Chinese restaurants outside of China

[heidih]

Referring back to the original poster, I have to also extend my thanks to the almost crazy attempts to entice Americans into the restaurant. My mother worked in downtown Los Angeles in the fifties and they would go to Chinatown and eat chop suey, etc and talk about being hungry an hour later. BUT it made me want to try something different and I started making my own version and eating it with the plastic souvenir chopsticks sold at a tourist place nearby (Ports O' Call). Then in the 70's there was a slightly more adventurous place nearby but we did not understand the concept of dish sharing and would each order a dish (way too much food). It has been a process, but when I remember those CANS of bean sprouts from LaChoy and now have the ability to get bright crisp white bean sprouts at many markets I applaud the early prompts.

[sheetz]

I don't think one should draw a line and put Chinese cuisine on one side of the line and Chinese-American cuisine on the other side. I think it's more a question of there being many types of Chinese cuisine: Shanghai, Sichuan, Hunan, Bombay Chinese, Chinese-American, etc.

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Regardless, in the end it doesn't really matter as long as people are on the same wave length and understand what is being discussed. But i guess that's primarily because most people actually know very little about Chinese food in general. Hopefully that will change in the future.

[jo-mel]

To go back to Dejah's words: <<<< We can rave about how wonderfully authentic a certain cuisine is today, but we shouldn't bash what it was in the past. Everything evolves.>>>>> I just want to add what happened to me when I first read her post.

As soon as I read the words "chop suey", I could immediately smell the scents from Boston's Chinatown when my family went there when I was a kid. Now that was waaaay before the 60s and 70s. I was born in the 30s, so this is in the 30s and 40s of my youth. The odor of bean sprouts and celery is strong in this 'aroma memory' and it happens every time a discussion on chop suey comes up. I can't remember just what we ate, but I'm sure it was a combo of chop suey, chow mein (canned noodle type), fu yong and egg drop soup. The visual memory is of slanted narrow sidewalks and garbage cans ( trash cans? refuse containers?) and the scent of those stir/fried vegetables over it all. It is a pleasant memory and I cherish it.

There are times when I've put my nose up at the thought of chop suey, especially as Chinese food became a big part of my life. I have to say tho, that chop suey began to gather respect as I read about all the various stories on its beginning -- both here and in Southern China. The fact that it was 'tossed together' to appeal to the American taste doesn't bother me. The fact that it was done by the Chinese themselves is what is important to me. It just shows the wonderful way a chef can adapt. I smiled when I read of a sign outside a restaurant in ?Singapore? that said "Authentic American Chop Suey served here"!! LOL! So, it might be quasi Chinese food, but Chinese it is.

If an Eastern and Western person opens the refrigerator door and finds chicken, onions, carrots, and celery there, you will probably find the Western making a chicken fricasee. But the Eastern will take those same ingredients and turn out a completely different tasting dish. East meets West ---- and that is what I think of when I think of chop suey. The slice and the method of cooking makes the difference -- as well as a little soy sauce!

I am not a novice when it comes to Chinese food. Those who know me know my involvement. My cabinets and refrigerator make people who don't know me gasp. My breakfast this morning was leftover Sichuan shredded potatoes and Hui Guo Rou made with pork belly. (thanks to Chengdu 1 -- a great NJ restaurant). I love the depth and differences in the regional foods and am always willing to try the new. But I will always have a warm feeling when it comes to chop suey.

[Ben Hong]

There can be no denigration of "chop suey" by Chinese people of a certain age. That was the "currency" that brought so many Chinese immigrants to these shores, re-united untold numbers of families and put countless bright Chinese kids through university. It is sad that the biggest naysayers and deniers about chop suey are of the ensuing generations who have, somehow, forgotten how they came to enjoy the good life that has been bestowed on them by some parents who slaved over a hot wok cooking chop suey 18 hours a day.

I am speaking of the older types of immigrants, say pre-1970, and mostly Toysaanese, not the latter day "johnny-come-latelys" who come from who knows where?

[jo-mel]

There can be no denigration of "chop suey" by Chinese people of a certain age. That was the "currency" that brought so many Chinese immigrants to these shores, re-united untold numbers of families and put countless bright Chinese kids through university. It is sad that the biggest naysayers and deniers about chop suey are of the ensuing generations who have, somehow, forgotten how they came to enjoy the good life that has been bestowed on them by some parents who slaved over a hot wok cooking chop suey 18 hours a day.

Well said, Xiao Ben. Your words place chop suey at the top of the "To be respected" list.

[Dejah]

There can be no denigration of "chop suey" by Chinese people of a certain age. That was the "currency" that brought so many Chinese immigrants to these shores, re-united untold numbers of families and put countless bright Chinese kids through university. It is sad that the biggest naysayers and deniers about chop suey are of the ensuing generations who have, somehow, forgotten how they came to enjoy the good life that has been bestowed on them by some parents who slaved over a hot wok cooking chop suey 18 hours a day.

Well said, Xiao Ben. Your words place chop suey at the top of the "To be respected" list.

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Thanks, Jo-mel and Ben. I see it took people of my era to understand what I was trying to express in my original post.

[Adam Balic]

More importantly, so what if a cuisine is adapted to please local palates? It's still either good or not good. Well-made Chinese-American food is delicious, as is well-made American pizza. The question of authenticity is a red herring that distracts from real discussion of quality.

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If you look back at my earlier posts, my concern has never been about authenticity. It's been about clarity. My contention is that Chinese and Chinese American cuisines should be considered separate cuisines, much the way that Mexican and Tex-Mex are considered different styles of cuisine.

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I don't think one should draw a line and put Chinese cuisine on one side of the line and Chinese-American cuisine on the other side. I think it's more a question of there being many types of Chinese cuisine: Shanghai, Sichuan, Hunan, Bombay Chinese, Chinese-American, etc.

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Isn't that a bit of a strange definition of a regional ethnic cuisine, something that was specifically developed to be eaten by people outwith the parent culture? Might have to think about this.

[Fat Guy]

specifically developed to be eaten by people outwith the parent culture?

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You mean like the Mongols? Many cultures adopted their cuisines to Mongol/Moghul tastes. Today, we consider those cuisines (e.g., what's served in most of the world's Indian restaurants) to be "authentic" regional cuisines. In addition, cultures spread. Wherever they spread, they produce hybrids with what was there before -- that's true of just about everything, not just food. Take for example the Peranakan cuisine of Malaysia and Singapore. Chinese migrants settled in those areas, many of them intermarried, and a cuisine was born that adapted to Malay tastes and ingredients. Cuban-Chinese cuisine and a dozen other hyphenated -Chinese cuisines have developed all over the world. Most such cuisines, to the extent they developed in the modern era, were at least in part influenced by what would appeal to local restaurant customers. It seems to me it makes little difference whether you're adapting cuisine to please conquerors, subjects, intermarried spouses or local restaurant consumer demand. It's all part of culinary evolution.

[Adam Balic]

specifically developed to be eaten by people outwith the parent culture?

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You mean like the Mongols? Many cultures adopted their cuisines to Mongol/Moghul tastes. Today, we consider those cuisines (e.g., what's served in most of the world's Indian restaurants) to be "authentic" regional cuisines. In addition, cultures spread. Wherever they spread, they produce hybrids with what was there before -- that's true of just about everything, not just food. Take for example the Peranakan cuisine of Malaysia and Singapore. Chinese migrants settled in those areas, many of them intermarried, and a cuisine was born that adapted to Malay tastes and ingredients. Cuban-Chinese cuisine and a dozen other hyphenated -Chinese cuisines have developed all over the world. Most such cuisines, to the extent they developed in the modern era, were at least in part influenced by what would appeal to local restaurant customers. It seems to me it makes little difference whether you're adapting cuisine to please conquerors, subjects, intermarried spouses or local restaurant consumer demand. It's all part of culinary evolution.

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Mongols and Mughuls are not quite the same thing, but in any case the worlds Indian restuarants are not based on entirely on this regional Indian cuisine.

But to get back to Chinese-American cuisine. Rhetoric is fine but I don't think that speaking in such a vague way actually progresses the discussion. Just because there are numerous places where Chinese settled over hundreds of years, doesn't mean that they can all be compared meaningfully in terms of cuisine development.

Dejah introduced the topic to discuss Early Chinese restaurants, which I not sure is the same thing at all as "Chinese-American cuisine". In fact Dejah talks about the families early Chinese Restaurant in Canada, not "America". I guess you could define "American" as "North America", not just the USA but I wonder if that is what people would generally recognise as the definition of "Chinese-American"?

To my mind "Chinese-American cuisine" means either what Chinese-Americans eat, a distinctly recognisable cuisine not nessarily eaten by Chinese-Americans or a combination of the two.

What ever the case, I assume that "Chinese American Cuisine" is dynamic and as such the food is significantly different to what was served in the 50's-70's? I guess one difficulty now is defining what is "Chinese-American Cuisine" and how it differs, if at all to "Chinese food eaten in America".

The food eaten in early Chinese restaurants is obviously not dynamic, it is a fixed definition. I think that if you were to compare the food in early Chinese restaurants in the USA, Canada and Australia (A little bit of information on Chinese restaurants in Australia) then the food served probably has more similarities then differences. I think that these foods that develop when two different cultures interact are absolutely fancinating. I would be very in knowing when recognisable "Chinese-American" dishes developed and how the original dishes differ from what they have become now.

As an example I link to the Australian Dim Sim. What is really interesting about this item is how dynamic it is. By the 70's it was such a staple of mainstream Anglo-Australia fast-food that most people would not even have thought about it as a "Chinese" food and the largest producer of mainstream "Dim sims" was a Greek background business, "Marathon Food Industries".

Edited October 30, 2007 by Adam Balic (log)

[Fat Guy]

Adam, you seem to disagree with my "rhetoric," but aside from marginal details it's hard for me to discern what central aspect of it you think is wrong. Let me try to frame the question as precisely as I can, and also reply to a few of your assertions.

This particular tangent of the discussion started, I believe, in response to a distinction that was being drawn by a couple of people (yourself included). As I understand it, that distinction was between "a cuisine when adapted by and for the members of the parent culture" and "a cuisine when adapted by members of the parent culture in response to the tastes of an alien culture." I believe this is a distinction without a difference, at least insofar as questions of authenticity and legitimacy are concerned.

For most of history, cuisines did not evolve as purely intellectual exercises. They evolved in response to various forms of necessity: what crops were available, economic reality, etc. In other words, all factors other than what we might sit down and say, academically, would make food taste the best. My position is that necessity is necessity: that it doesn't matter if you adapted your cuisine because all the crops died and you needed to use another crop, or because you had to cook to satisfy invaders, or because you were so poor you had to innovate, or because you moved to some other country and found yourself with a whole new basket of ingredients, or because you opened a restaurant and the American, Canadian, British, Australian, etc., customers didn't like your food so you had to adapt. If you adapt by making cheeseburgers, then sure, that's not a form of the parent cuisine. But if you use the basic stylistic elements of the parent cuisine and apply them to new circumstances, that's culinary evolution plain and simple.

Again adaptation to necessity is basically the history of cuisine (with a few, mostly modern, exceptions). So somebody needs to explain to me why adaptation to ingredient availability is authentic while adaptation to local tastes is not.

In terms of some of your specific points:

While I understand that there's a distinction between Mongols and Moghuls, it is typical to refer to them the way I did -- in both the popular and academic literature. See, e.g., "Religious Communication in India," By John V. Vilanilam: "the Mongol (Moghul) adventurer, Babur, established a new dynasty . . ." More importantly, Babur was a descendant of both Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

As for the provenance of Indian restaurant cuisine in the West, the historian Joel Denker, in the 2003 book "The World on a Plate," explains that the dominant Indian export cuisine (he quotes one source estimating the number at 95%) is the Bangladeshi interpretation of North Indian Moghul-derived cuisine. He talks about both the UK and the US, narrating how US Indian cuisine derives from the UK version ("As English immigration laws grew more restrictive, Bangladeshis set their sights on America . . . The inexpensive Indian restaurant in New York City would soon resemble its London relative."). Denker describes the cuisine served at these restaurants (again, the overwhelming majority of Indian restaurants in the US and UK, and probably Canada and the rest of the West too) as:

Indian cooking in America bears the distinctive imprint of the Islamic conquerors of North India. It was the royal cuisine that the Moghuls, the most important of these colonizers, brought from their Central Asian homeland. . . . The culinary style became the standard that the regions cooks and restaurateurs strove to emulate. When Indian cooking was exported to America, it was this grand Muslim tradition that held sway in North Indian restaurant dining rooms."

I think Chinese-American cuisine, with respect to Canada as a separate nation, nonetheless covers the US and Canada. I'm not aware of major differences between Chinese-American and Chinese-Canadian cuisines (which I've also seen referred to as Can/Chinese), either in the in-home or restaurant-adapted forms. If you list out the 20 or so most popular dishes, the lists mostly overlap for China and the US, with just a couple of items that seem to have emerged in Canada but not the US. Whereas, I don't think one could say the same overlap exists for all hyphenated Chinese cuisines (Cuban-Chinese, Bombay-Chinese, etc.). Even the adapted Chinese cuisine in the UK is rather different from Chinese-American cuisine.

There was an article in the New York Times a couple of years ago (21 September 2005) by Julia Moskin titled "Craving Hyphenated Chinese." It mentions Chinese-Venezuelan, Chinese-Norwegian, Chinese-Mexican, Chinese-Malagasy (from Madagascar), Chinese-West Indian and Chinese-Cuban cuisines. Moskin sets up the argument thus:

The roots of these hybrid Chinese cuisines around the world are the same as those of Chinese food in America. Millions of Chinese men, most of them from the province Guangdong (formerly known in English as Canton), left China in the late 19th and early 20th century. Only men were allowed to leave the country, often by becoming indentured workers to companies in need of cheap labor in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and South America.

Professional cooks were usually not among the emigrants, so the earliest Chinese restaurants outside China were started by men with little knowledge of cooking and a desperate need to improvise with local ingredients. The dishes they came up with, like chop suey, have long since been dismissed as "not Chinese" by scholars of the culture.

She then goes on to poke some holes in that dismissiveness. She quotes documentary filmmaker Cheuk Kwan as saying that "The term Chinese food represents an area four times larger than Western Europe and the eating habits of more than a billion people . . . . You could say that there is really no such thing as Chinese food." Another of her sources, a professor of anthropology named Eugene Anderson (who has written a book on the subject) says that in general "Chinese food is defined by a flavor principle of soy sauce, ginger, garlic and green onions" and methods including stir-frying and steaming. Another points out that Chinese food is always in flux.

[Jensen]

This has evolved into a really fascinating discussion. Thank you to all the contributors so far for giving my brain something to chew on.

This particular tangent of the discussion started, I believe, in response to a distinction that was being drawn by a couple of people (yourself included). As I understand it, that distinction was between "a cuisine when adapted by and for the members of the parent culture" and "a cuisine when adapted by members of the parent culture in response to the tastes of an alien culture." I believe this is a distinction without a difference, at least insofar as questions of authenticity and legitimacy are concerned.

I can't agree more with this. While the cuisines resulting from those two different paths of culinary evolution may differ (maybe even significantly), they are both equally "authentic" and "legitimate".

I think Chinese-American cuisine, with respect to Canada as a separate nation, nonetheless covers the US and Canada. I'm not aware of major differences between Chinese-American and Chinese-Canadian cuisines (which I've also seen referred to as Can/Chinese), either in the in-home or restaurant-adapted forms. If you list out the 20 or so most popular dishes, the lists mostly overlap for China and the US, with just a couple of items that seem to have emerged in Canada but not the US.

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Without disputing anything further (or necessarily this quote), I will say that, after moving from Canada to the States, I found a number of American Chinese restaurant foods that I'd never heard of. I don't know whether this is because of where I moved from or where I moved to but, aside from some common types of dishes (e.g., chop suey, chow mein), there are a fair number of differences.

Off the top of my head: foil-wrapped chicken, General Whoever's Chicken, Orange Chicken, (can you tell I mostly eat chicken when I'm out? LOL), crystal shrimp (or whatever it's called). Things I can't get here that are readily available at any level of Chinese restaurant: twice-fried green beans, congee (hell, I can get that on BC Ferries!), breaded almond chicken, Singapore noodles, spicy squid (sometimes I can get that here as "salt and pepper" shrimp, with squid substituted).

Again, this is a fascinating topic and I thank all who have participated.

[Fat Guy]

Jensen, I'm not 100% sure of which dishes you're saying you can't get in which country, but just to pick two examples: 1- congee is not a hyphenated dish; it's part of traditional Chinese cuisine, and 2- Singapore noodles are neither Can/Chinese nor Chinese-American; they're from Hong Kong by way of Southeast Asia, brought over by Chinese and Malaysian restaurateurs -- they're now widely available in the US, but they're also a recent innovation not particularly related to early Chinese-American (and -Canadian) cuisine (I hesitate to say Chinese-North-American because Mexico is a whole 'nother thing).

[Adam Balic]

FG - The point that I was making was that is that I don't think that Chinese-American cuisine can be considered a part of the main regional Chinese cuisines, such as Shanghai, Sichuan, Hunan etc. It isn't a question of authenticity and legitimacy, it is more a question of classification.

My thoughts are this:

1) There are a number of distinct cuisines present in China.

2) There is a huge Chinese diaspora, which have resulted in:

- the developement of distinctive new cuisines

-changes in the development of non-Chinese cuisines

-changes in the parent Chinese cuisines.

For me I guess the central question is "How distinctive is American-Chinese cuisine, and what is it?".

I have not doubt that there is a legitimate and authentic "Chinese American" cuisine, but how distinctive is it? There seems to be some minor differences between Canada and the USA, but essentially you mention that they are the same. Is it distictively different from Australian-Chinese food? Or Anglo-Chinese food? Should American-Chinese, Australian-Chinese, Anglo-Chinese be considered to be same cuisine group in that they are distinct from Chinese-Venezuelan, Chinese-Norwegian, Chinese-Mexican, Chinese-Malagasy etc? Is American-Chinese (et al.) actually distinctive or is is a variation on Guandong cuisine or even Toi Shan cuisine?

Until I can see how "Chinese-American" cuisine is actually defined in this way, I can't see how it can be grouped as part of the with main regional Chinese cuisines. It is too much of an unknown for me.

n.b. Chop Suey: As far as I know we don't have chop suey as a common item in Australian Chinese food, but I note that in my 1948 edition of the "YMCA International Cookery Book of Malaya", a recipe is given in the Chinese section. I wonder if this came to Malaysia via the USA or through another route.

[haresfur]

Maybe I'm too sensitive, but I wonder if we should be so adamantly critical about the kind of Chinese food served in the 60s, 70s and even today. We can rave about how wonderfully authentic a certain cuisine is today, but we shouldn't bash what it was in the past. Everything evolves.

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On a historical note, doesn't Chinese-Canadian and Chinese-American restaurant food go back at least as far as the construction of the railroads? I recall seeing some turn-of the century pictures of Chinese restaurants in Prairie towns. The railroads workers included cooks and effectively spread their influence across North America (I speculate that that may have been at least in part to get away from the conditions in the work camps).

I'm not sure what this means for the home vs. restaurant N. American Chinese cooking, but I'm not sure that distinction is that important. Don't many regions with strong restaurant cultures have quite different cooking styles at home?

I, too, think there are regional differences in Chinese restaurant food across the U.S. as well as with Canada although there are perhaps more overlaps. I haven't seen "Duck Sauce" in my western home town.

I do miss the local Thai, Chinese, Mexican restaurant that had been run by a Thai woman who emigrated to El Salvador then to the U.S.

[sheetz]

I'm not sure what this means for the home vs. restaurant N. American Chinese cooking, but I'm not sure that distinction is that important.  Don't many regions with strong restaurant cultures have quite different cooking styles at home?

But I do think the situation is a bit different here, in that it became widespread practice for many restaurants to offer separate menus to their Chinese patrons. The dishes offered on those menus weren't strictly "authentic" in that the cooks would often resort to using nontraditional ingredients out of necessity. But at the same time they were prepared under the Chinese guiding philosophy of cooking. What should we call the cuisine served on the Chinese menu in those restaurants?

[Fat Guy]

I think Chinese-American cuisine, like most cuisines, contains several elements. I'd point to three main ones, historically: first, traditional Chinese regional dishes prepared pretty much the same way as back home with perhaps very minor variations; second, dishes modeled after traditional Chinese regional dishes but adapted on account of ingredient availability and economic circumstances; and third, dishes adapted to Western palates.

I think -- based on what I've read and on eating Chinese food in nine provinces of Canada -- that Chinese-American and Can/Chinese cuisines are nearly identical, with the variations being not sufficient to justify a distinction (no greater than the variations among US states). I do think there are commonalities among the hyphenated Chinese cuisines of all the English-speaking countries but I think there are enough differences to say that Chinese-American is not the same as Chinese-Australian. I haven't done historical menu comparisons on that point, however. Certainly, though, most of the other hyphenated Chinese cuisines -- like Cuban-Chinese or Bombay Chinese -- are distinct in significant part from Chinese-American cuisine.

I also think a lot of this depends on when you date it. Chinese-American cuisine dates back to the 1840s. All three of the components I mentioned above would have seemed quite different -- perhaps unrecognizable -- back then. What arose much later, post-Immigration Act, is basically a different Chinese-American cuisine in every respect. Indeed, we speak of chop suey but today it's difficult to find it in a restaurant. Meanwhile, all this stuff like General Tso's chicken was popularized in the 1970s. Nor were the Chinese people who came in the 19th Century necessarily from the same parts of China as the ones who came in the 20th.

[Dejah]

. Indeed, we speak of chop suey but today it's difficult to find it in a restaurant.

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Really? I've seen it on menus in Louisville, KY, Chicago, Ill, Tarzana, Calif, and Winnipeg, Canada.

[Fat Guy]

Okay, difficult was an overstatement. What I should have said is that chop suey is not nearly as prevalent these days as dishes like General Tso's chicken, which probably didn't exist until the 1970s. It's also not nearly as popular. The trade journal Chinese Restaurant News tracks the popularity of Chinese-restaurant dishes and according to editor-in-chief Betty Xie today the most popular Chinese restaurant dishes in North America are:

Egg rolls

Pot stickers (dumplings)

Wonton soup

BBQ pork

Hot and sour soup

Sweet and sour pork

Beef with broccoli

Kung pao chicken

Moo shu pork

Mongolian beef

Chicken with cashews

Orange beef

General Tso’s chicken

Lemon chicken

Sesame Chicken

Fried rice

And the dishes that have been trending upwards in popularity most vigorously in the past decade:

Peking duck

Siu mai

Har gao

Char siu bao

Lettuce wrap with shredded chicken

Ma Po tofu

Summer rolls

Many of the dishes, on both lists, weren't really available here until the 1970s.

[Adam Balic]

I think Chinese-American cuisine, like most cuisines, contains several elements. I'd point to three main ones, historically: first, traditional Chinese regional dishes prepared pretty much the same way as back home with perhaps very minor variations; second, dishes modeled after traditional Chinese regional dishes but adapted on account of ingredient availability and economic circumstances; and third, dishes adapted to Western palates.

I think -- based on what I've read and on eating Chinese food in nine provinces of Canada -- that Chinese-American and Can/Chinese cuisines are nearly identical, with the variations being not sufficient to justify a distinction (no greater than the variations among US states). I do think there are commonalities among the hyphenated Chinese cuisines of all the English-speaking countries but I think there are enough differences to say that Chinese-American is not the same as Chinese-Australian. I haven't done historical menu comparisons on that point, however. Certainly, though, most of the other hyphenated Chinese cuisines -- like Cuban-Chinese or Bombay Chinese -- are distinct in significant part from Chinese-American cuisine.

I also think a lot of this depends on when you date it. Chinese-American cuisine dates back to the 1840s. All three of the components I mentioned above would have seemed quite different -- perhaps unrecognizable -- back then. What arose much later, post-Immigration Act, is basically a different Chinese-American cuisine in every respect. Indeed, we speak of chop suey but today it's difficult to find it in a restaurant. Meanwhile, all this stuff like General Tso's chicken was popularized in the 1970s. Nor were the Chinese people who came in the 19th Century necessarily from the same parts of China as the ones who came in the 20th.

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I think this is a very good summary. From what I have read, in the 19th-early 20th century there was a lot of movement of Chinese men between the USA and Australia, this link is an interesting interview with a Melbourne based Chinese restaurateur. From this I would say that the American style Chinese restuarants were hugely influencial in Australia, yet I don't recognise many (even most) of the popular dishes on your list.

Obviously the cuisine is changing all the time, but I wonder when the modern "American-Chinese" restaurant developed? 1900? 1920? 1950? 1970?

Another question I have is if there are distinct differences between West Coast and East Coast American-Chinese restaurants?

[Fat Guy]

As I understand it, the general Chinese-American menu of today is heavily influenced by the 1970s. There was very little Asian immigration to the US for much of the 20th Century, with the exception of Korean War brides and such, but the 1965 Immigration Act really opened up the borders and further relaxation in the 1970s accelerated the process still. The 1970s were sort of a golden age for Chinese-American restaurants.

This is a fun article from the Washington Post titled "Who Was General Tso And Why Are We Eating His Chicken?." If you take General Tso's chicken as emblematic of the Chinese-American cuisine of the 1970s then this story (which is one of a few possible explanations in the story) probably has a lot of analogs with respect to other dishes:

"Around 1974, Hunan and Szechuan food were introduced to the city, and General Tso's Chicken was an exemplar of the new style. Peng's, on East 44th Street, was the first restaurant in NYC to serve it, and since the dish (and cuisine) were new, Chef Peng was able to make it a House Specialty, in spite of its commonplace ingredients."

There are regional differences in the standard menu, as well as regional differences in the way standard dishes are prepared, though some of the menu differences are just nomenclature differences (same dish, different name) and there's a substantial core of dishes that remains pretty solid from coast to coast. This also from Betty Xie, explaining how the menu gets propagated:

The “standard menu” scenario is an interesting phenomenon to even Chinese people themselves. Mostly, chefs or staff would open a new restaurant of their own after working a few years at a Chinese restaurant, and keep the same menu. Other guess is that Chinese restaurant people would not want to risk investment by changing the menu and selling dishes that Americans would not eat. The safe way to go is to copy some one else’s menu. 

The menus are similar, but the dishes by no means get to a standard.  It could read the same “Chow Mein” on the menus, but the noodles can vary from thin to thick to crispy ones from restaurants to restaurants. The color of shrimp fried rice in the east coast can be dark, while in SF, it can be white.

[Adam Balic]

The similarity of East v West coast is interesting. One might expect that as the West Coast is obviously much closer to China then the local American-Chinese cuisine would be more heavily influenced by migration in the last few decades. That fact that this isn't the case, suggests to me that American-Chinese cuisine is a pretty solid entity in its own right.

Regarding "General Tso's chicken" Fuchsia Dunlop gives some background into the dish in her "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook" and she interviews Peng Chang-kuei. He indicates that he developed the dish sometime in the 50's in Taiwan, but it's fame really developed after he opened the 44th Street restaurant in NYC.

[Jensen]

The similarity of East v West coast is interesting. One might expect that as the West Coast is obviously much closer to China then the local American-Chinese cuisine would be more heavily influenced by migration in the last few decades. That fact that this isn't the case, suggests to me that American-Chinese cuisine is a pretty solid entity in its own right.

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Well, that's true until you consider the reversion of Hong Kong to China in the 90s and the related immigration to western Canada. I don't think you can say that it is fact that the "local American-Chinese cuisine [is not] more heavily influenced by migration." Assuming of course that we are considering "American" as "North American" and thus including Canada. If not, ignore this.

I'll confess that the 70s are a remote memory for me (I was born in 1964)...I recall some typically "westernised Chinese" dishes from restaurants (mostly chop suey and chow mein) but also the butcher in Victoria's Chinatown that sold barbecued pork and duck and all sorts of other meats. My dad would buy strips of char sui at the butcher and bring it home to the 'burbs. That same butcher is still in business today (smoke pit in the courtyard and all); one of my sisters buys her barbecue duck there for her Christmas Eve dinner. My dad was not an epicure by any stretch of the imagination...he worked in the shipyard!

As Vancouver had a similar influence in immigration, I can only surmise that the influx of people to Canada's west coast from Hong Kong in the 90s affected a food scene that was initially established in the late 19th century.

Oddly enough, before we left Vancouver, the "exotic" Chinese food was found in one of two restaurants...both were "Shanghai" style places and very different from the Cantonese food we were used to.

Hmmm. Could it be that "Chinese-American" food is more complex than what we'd initially thought?

[Fat Guy]

I'm not sure the Hong Kong-style restaurants in Vancouver have anything to do with Chinese-American/Canadian cuisine at all. They're Chinese restaurants, just like you'd find in Hong Kong. It's very different from the old days, when such a thing was impossible -- when the most you could hope to do was include a few replica dishes, based on a very small ingredient basket, on a menu that was dominated by adapted dishes (either ingredient adaptations or palate adaptations), when the locally grown population (the people with the money) wouldn't eat the replica dishes anyway. Today you can get the same ingredients and make the same dishes for the same customers as back home, who have plenty of money to support expensive restaurants with little need for other customers, plus there are a lot of local customers who will support the effort anyway. Where Hong Kong immigration and money (which, by the way, have very much affected the food scenes in New York and other cities as well) have had an affect on Chinese-American cuisine is, I think, in the up-and-coming dishes category. If you look at the dishes on the list I gave above, you'll see that a bunch of them derive from the Hong Kong food culture. The fact that Chinese buffets in Texas are now serving siu mai and har gow -- that's how the Hong Kong wave has affected Chinese-American cuisine.