You were either rich, in which case you had a cook or dined in elegant hotspots, or you weren’t, and had no option but to eat at home.Ĭhinese immigrants, barred from most jobs by virulent discrimination, found work in the cities primarily by working as servants, in laundries, or by opening restaurants that offered delivery and take-out food.Īmericans began embracing their neighborhood Chinese restaurants as special places where they could be treated to a meal they didn’t have to cook. And home cooking on old-fashioned stoves was an exhausting experience. In those days, there was no “take-out” culture, no McDonald’s, no Burger King. It was an exotic taste and very different from European food.”Īs wages rose in the early 20th century, Chen found, the middle class wanted the same perks as the wealthy – including the privilege of eating food cooked by others. It is the oldest cuisine and very complex. “That’s not to say that Chinese food doesn’t have gastronomical merit. “The primary reason was not culinary,” said Chen, a dedicated foodie. ![]() And some diners did compare Chinese cooking to French – the highest praise in an era when French was considered the epitome of fine cuisine.īut Chen’s book describes economic and social factors that were as important as taste in driving the new American interest in “eating Chinese.” Those without money looked on enviously, and wanted their own experience of China.Īmong the Chinese, there was a widespread belief that their cuisine became popular because it was the most delicious in the world. So how did Chinese food become so popular?Ĭhen found that the rise of Chinese restaurants, around the turn of the 20th century, came despite rampant discrimination against people of Chinese origin.Īt the end of the 19th century, affluent Americans began to visit Chinatowns in large cities for exotic entertainment. ![]() “Even when Chinese were hired to cook for Americans, they were cooking American food, not their own,” Chen said. The Saturday Evening Post “reported” in 1860, that the “Chinese ate dogs and cats,” adding that “the rat is also an animal which occupies a large place in the food of the Chinese.” That fiction continued throughout the years, Chen said – a myth he’d never heard before he left China.Īs Chinese immigrant laborers moved into new roles as domestic servants, some began to be prized as excellent cooks. How had Chinese become the most popular ethnic food in America, considering that, when the Chinese started arriving here more than a century ago, their cooking was despised as “smelly” and prepared with questionable ingredients?
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