American Chinese cuisine

American Chinese cuisine is a unique style of cooking served by Chinese restaurants in the United States. This new type of cooking was created for Western tastes, but Westerners exposed only to this variety may not realize that it differs from the cuisine of China. Some restaurants advertise their status by writing "Western food" on their signs in Chinese. It deters those who seek more traditional dishes, while still attracting those who are either unable to read Chinese or are looking for westernized fare. Canadian Chinese cuisine is quite similar to American Chinese cuisine.

History

In the 19th century, Chinese restaurateurs invented American Chinese cuisine when they modified their food for American tastes. First catering to railroad workers, they opened restaurants in towns where Chinese food was completely unknown.

The influx of immigrants in the late 20th century disdained the Americanized dishes, preferring more traditional Chinese food. Classical Chinese cuisine now dominates major cities like San Francisco and New York.

But American Chinese cuisine remains, especially in places with few Chinese Americans. One finds Americanized cuisine in "mom and pop" restaurants, "tourist trap" diners, and small town restaurants. Panda Express and Manchu WOK are popular franchise restaurants that offer Westernized dishes in shopping malls.

American vs. Traditional menus

American Chinese food treats vegetables as garnish while authentic styles emphasize vegetables. Authentic Chinese cuisine makes frequent use of Asian leafy vegetables like bok choy and gai-lan, and puts a greater emphasis on seafood. American Chinese food is usually less pungent than authentic cuisine.

A Chinese buffet restaurant in the U.S.

American Chinese food tends to be cooked very quickly with lots of oil and salt. Many dishes are quickly and easily prepared, and require inexpensive ingredients. Stir-frying, pan-frying, and deep-frying tend to be the most common cooking techniques which are all easily done using a wok. The food also has a reputation for high levels of MSG to enhance the flavor; the symptoms of MSG sensitivity have been dubbed "Chinese restaurant syndrome" or "Chinese food syndrome". While there is heated scientific debate over whether or not MSG is harmful, market forces and customer demand have enouraged many restaurants to offer "MSG Free" or "No MSG" menus.

Most American Chinese establishments cater to non-Chinese customers, and their menus are written in English. Those that do have Chinese menus, have ones that are different from the English version. Americanized menus might exclude some foods which the Chinese consider delicacies, like liver, and chicken feet. Americanized menus often include:

• Batter-fried meat — Meat that has been deep fried in bread or flour, such as sesame chicken, lemon chicken, orange chicken, sweet and sour pork, and General Tso's chicken is often overemphasized in American-style Chinese dishes. Battered meat occasionally appears in Hunanese dishes, but it generally uses lighter sauces with less sugar and corn syrup.
  • The chicken ball uses a large amount of leavening and flour in its preparation and battering process which causes them to be more similar to doughy "hush puppies" than actual batter-fried meat.
• Chinese chicken salad — Salad is not a Chinese dish. This is a 100% western dish. It is served in Chinese restaurants, because it contains crispy noodle (fried wonton skin) and sesame dressing. Some restaurants serve the salad with Mandarin Orange.
• Chop suey — Connotes "leftovers" in Chinese. It is usually a mix of vegetables and meat in a brown sauce.
• Chow mein — literally means 'stir-fried noodles'. Chow mein consists of fried noodles with bits of meat and vegetables.
• Crab rangoon — Fried wonton skins stuffed with artificial crab meat and cream cheese, originally served at Trader Vic's restaurant in the 1950s.
• Egg foo young also egg foo yung
• Egg roll — While Chinese spring rolls have a thin crispy skin with mushrooms, bamboo, and other vegetables inside, the New York version uses a thick, fried skin stuffed with cabbage. In other areas, bean sprouts form the basis of most of the filling. Other American versions remain closer in similarity to their spring roll style authentic counterparts.
• Fortune cookie — Invented at the Japanese Tea Garden restaurant in San Francisco, fortune cookies became sweetened and found their way to American Chinese restaurants. Fortune cookies have become so popular in the U.S., that even some authentic Chinese restaurants serve them at the end of the meal. Some are even produced with Chinese-language translations of the English-language fortunes.
• Fried rice — Fried rice dishes are popular offerings in American Chinese food due to the speed and ease of preparation and their appeal to western tastes. Fried rice is generally prepared with rice cooled overnight, so this allows restaurants to put unserved leftover rice to good use.
• Lo mein — This is a New York-style Chinese food oddity. "Lo mein" in New York is closer to "chow mein" in the rest of the country. Strictly the term means "mixed noodles", that is one made with eggs, as opposed to most noodles which are made without egg.
• Moo shu pork — The Chinese version uses more authentic ingredients (including wood ear fungi and daylily buds) and thin flour pancakes while the American version uses more Western vegetables and thicker pancakes.
• Shrimp toast — Triangles of bread, coated with egg, shrimp, and water chestnuts, and then deep-fried or baked.
• Wonton soup — The soup noodle does not exist in American Chinese cuisine, while it is ubiquitous in many authentic styles. The closest popular example would be ramen. The true Cantonese Wonton Soup is a full meal in itself consisting of thin egg noodles and a few wontons in a pork soup broth.

Regional Variations on American Chinese cuisine

San Francisco

Since the early 1990s, many American Chinese restaurants influenced by the Cuisine of California have opened in San Francisco and the Bay Area. The trademark dishes of American Chinese cuisine remain on the menu, but there is more emphasis on fresh vegetables, and the selection is vegetarian-friendly.

The new cuisine has exotic ingredients like mangoes and portobello mushrooms. Other cuisines influence the menu: some restaurants substitute grilled flour tortillas for the rice pancakes in mu shu dishes; brown rice is often offered as an optional alternative to white rice.

Chop suey is not widely available in San Francisco, and the city's chow mein is different from Midwestern chow mein.

Authentic restaurants with Chinese-language menus may offer 黃毛鶏 (Yale Cantonese: wòhng mouh gāai [Pinyin huang mao ji], literally yellow-hair chicken), essentially a free-range chicken, as opposed to typical American mass-farmed chicken. Yellow-hair chicken is valued for its flavor, but needs to be cooked properly to be tender due to its lower fat and higher muscle content. This dish usually does not appear on the English-language menu.

Dauh Miu (Pinyin: Dou Meo), literally Bean Grass but actually snow pea vines, is a Chinese vegetable that has become popular since the early 1990s, and now not only appears on English-language menus, usually as "pea shoots", but is often served by upscale non-Asian restaurants as well. Originally it was only available during a few months of the year, but it is now grown in greenhouses and is available year-round.

Hawaii

Owing to the different history of the Chinese in Hawaii, Hawaiian Chinese food developed a bit differently from the continental United States. Owing to the diversity of ethnicities in Hawaii, Chinese cuisine forms a component of the cuisine of Hawaii, which is a fusion of different culinary traditions. Some Chinese dishes are typically served as part of plate lunches in Hawaii. Some names of foods are different like manapua from Hawaiian meaning chewed up pork for the dim sum bao, not just the pork variety. As is typical in Hawaii, Chinese food in Hawaii is also noted for its use of SPAM, much to the puzzlement of outsiders.

Springfield, Missouri

Springfield, Missouri has numerous Chinese restaurants with a specialized dish: cashew chicken. It was invented at Leong's Tea House in Springfield and is responsible for the large numbers of Chinese restaurants in the city. The dish has spread to several other cities, where it is sometimes known as "Springfield-style cashew chicken".

American Chinese fast food chains

• Asian Chao
• Leeann Chin — Locations in Minnesota.
• Mark Pi's Express — Located in Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, and Ohio.
• Mr. Chau's Chinese Fast Food — Locations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley.
• Panda Express — Nationwide in the USA.
• Pei Wei — Southwest USA — From the creators of P.F. Chang's.
• P.F. Chang's China Bistro Nationwide, highly Westernized food
• Pick Up Stix — Located throughout California, Arizona, and Nevada.
• Tasty Goody — Locations in Southern California.

Museum exhibits

• Museum of Chinese in the Americas — "Have You Eaten Yet?: The Chinese Restaurant in America" running from Sept 2004 to June 2005

See also

• Chinese cuisine
• American cuisine
• Canadian Chinese cuisine
• List of Chinese dishes
• Oyster pail

External links

• Chinese Restaurant Project — Indigo Som's project to document Chinese-American restaurants
• The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters - Jim McCawley, a linguistics professor at the University of Chicago, wrote a field guide for Westerners who want authentic Chinese cuisine.
• Chopstix — From the UK but covers the USA
• About.com — From the USA
• Chinese Restaurants Chinese Restaurants in the U.S.