6,944km, 17 restaurants, many stories

December 26, 2016 9:11 PM

Chop Suey Nation (Globe & Mail) - Ann Hui
I became determined to find Huang, to understand how she ended up running a Chinese restaurant on Fogo Island. I wanted to know how she wound up there alone. So I set out a plan: to drive across the country, visiting as many small-town Chinese restaurants as possible. I’d start on the West Coast, where the earliest wave of Chinese settlers began arriving in 1858. From there, I would make my way east across a 2 ½ -week period, roughly tracing the path of the railway.

Part 1: Searching for Huang Feng Zhu

Part 2: Traditional cuisine in a new land

posted by CrystalDave (32 comments total)

Great, and timely given how many people ate Chinese yesterday. Always loved that Chinese restaurants are reliably present in every small Canadian town.
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:39 PM on December 26, 2016

I myself have visions of just picking up shop and moving to Newfie. I'm from a place where a Chop Suey Sandwich is on the menu along side burgers and fries for people finding themselves in a restaurant when they didn't want to be in one. I will instead bring with me my apizza and oyster po'boy and stuffie expertise. Hopefully, the fallout from World War Trump kills us last.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:43 PM on December 26, 2016

Enthralling article, love to see something similar done for Australia.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 9:50 PM on December 26, 2016

There's a really great and absolutely fascinating documentary series aptly named Chinese Restaurants by Canadian film maker Cheuk Kwan being broadcast by Link TV in my part of the US at the moment that covers Chinese restaurants around the world and other aspects of the Chinese diaspora. (No Australia episode, but: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, India, Israel, Madagascar, Mauritius, Norway, Peru, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkey.)
posted by XMLicious at 12:19 AM on December 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

See also The Search for General Tso for a history of Chinese food in the USA.

This documentary includes the story of the first Chinese restaurant in a certain town in the Deep South. The klan burnt it down, the owners rebuilt, and the klan eventually decided that Chinese food was tasty enough to tolerate the Chinese restaurant. Such small steps helped reduce racism.
posted by monotreme at 12:29 AM on December 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States by Andrew Coe is also a great book. It doesn't only track the titular dish, it's also a history of Chinese American restaurants.
posted by sukeban at 1:19 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Always loved that Chinese restaurants are reliably present in every small Canadian town.

In my experience, Chinese restaurants are reliably present in every small Canadian town almost everywhere in the world, and that ubiquity is so often a welcome sight to a hungry traveler.
posted by fairmettle at 1:32 AM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Seconding the recommendation for The Search For General Tso, great film and then even have a great recipe on their web site. It's probably the only "searching for X" documentary I've ever seen that isn't full of filler and fabrications, too...quite refreshing.
posted by trackofalljades at 4:31 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

One of the sources for the General Tso film is the book Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8 Lee - an entertaining and informative read.
posted by Miko at 5:20 AM on December 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Interested readers may find the discussion of the Chinese diaspora to Sonora, Mexico in Imperial, by William T Vollmann, of value. It's a chapter in southwestern history that I have found gets little coverage.
posted by mrdaneri at 7:17 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Great morning read! If you're interested in MSG, there is a sidebar with two good links in defense of the stuff. Although I have opinions on MSG, as do you, most likely, we don't need to derail this interesting thread, as it has already been discussed on Metafilter in 2013 (276 comments!) and in 2005.
posted by kozad at 7:41 AM on December 27, 2016

If you've seen The Search for General Tso, you'll probably remember Harley J. Spiller, the guy with the massive collection of Chinese restaurant menus dating back to the 19th century.

That collection now resides at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

According to the Harley J Spiller Collection FAQ, they're in the process of digitizing the archive.

Extent and medium:

2.9 m of textual records.
29 photographs : b&w and col.
5 vinyl enclosures.
1 fan.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:49 AM on December 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

In my experience, Chinese restaurants are reliably present in every small town almost everywhere in the world, and that ubiquity is so often a welcome sight to a hungry traveler.

one of the big differences I noticed between UK and Canada is that British small towns DON'T have Chinese restaurants - they have Indian restaurants instead. (I actually prefer South Asian food to Chinese, no matter how poorly made; I wish we had the same ubiquitous curry houses in Canada).
posted by jb at 7:59 AM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Chinese food was a hot modern trend in the small rural Guatemalan town I did my dissertation fieldwork in. A lot of middle-class families had a chop-suey-ish thing in their cooking repertoire for low-key special occasions, and they had a Chinese restaurant down by the highway that was, for complicated reasons, called the Hotel Alaska. Apparently egg rolls in Spanish are tacos chinos.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:03 AM on December 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I wish I knew more about the history of how Chinese food got to that town in Guatemala, though — whether it had come via the US, or whether it just resembled North American Chinese food so much because that's what happens when you try to make Chinese food without using any special local ingredients.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:11 AM on December 27, 2016

In my experience, Chinese restaurants are reliably present in every small Canadian town almost everywhere in the world…

That reminds of someone I knew years ago who swore the best Chinese food he ever had was in Italy.

I'm pretty sure a similar story could be written about Mexican restaurants in the US. When I was growing up in the 70s they were few and far between outside of large cities, at least in the southern and eastern parts of the country. But now even the smallest towns have at least one and maybe two; they may be even more common than barbecue joints now. Looking forward to seeing what immigrants will overwhelm us with food next! (Ethiopian would be cool, or Moroccan, among others)
posted by TedW at 8:55 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

one of the big differences I noticed between UK and Canada is that British small towns DON'T have Chinese restaurants

Hmmm... I can't recall visiting a small town here in the UK that doesn't have at least one Chinese takeaway, which is often the local chippy as well.

Ledbury, in Herefordshire, didn't have one for a while. Much local excitement, and quite the biggest event in the town for years.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 9:09 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

In the 1970s and 80s in my part of semi-rural Pennsylvania, Chinese food came out of a La Choy can and Mexican food was from Taco Bell. There was only one Chinese restaurant in the county of a quarter-million residents, and it was dozens of miles from home, the far-away side of the nearby city. Japanese and Indian foods were, at best, only recognizable as setups for racist jokes on TV about the scary things foreigners eat. It wasn't until I'd graduated from college (in another semi-rural part of the Rust Belt) and moved to a big city on the coast that I had my first nominally-authentic Asian meals.

Chinese-American type restaurants didn't propagate across the county there until some time in the mid-90s. There's even some decent family restaurant-style Mexican there now, but still only one Indian place and it gets frequently shut down by the health inspectors.

So when I hear about how Chinese cuisine was easily found across North America by the height of the post-war boom, I wonder what kind of crazy time warped place I grew up in.
posted by ardgedee at 9:18 AM on December 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

That book I mentioned above talks about how Chinese restaurants end up in remote small towns - they are started and managed by networks of investors and often, new immigrants are packed off to run them as soon as they reach the US. It can be somewhat shady and exploitive. This NYer piece goes into it a bit.
posted by Miko at 10:00 AM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I would have never thought of pairing a Chinese restaurant with a curling rink and now I can think of little else. Why doesn't my city have one?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:04 AM on December 27, 2016

In a pleasant change, the last words in this article are really happy.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 10:05 AM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

one of the big differences I noticed between UK and Canada is that British small towns DON'T have Chinese restaurants - they have Indian restaurants instead

In Ireland, Chinese restaurants are definitely a lot more common. There was Cantonese speaking immigration in the 70's/80's (including my Malaysian Chinese friend's family, who still run a couple of restaurants in the southeast) of people that run the usual westernised Cantonese restaurants, but in the last 15 years there have been substantial numbers from elsewhere in mainland China, who have opened places mostly geared around serving their fellow countrymen, so for example I can get really good Sichuan food within walking distance of my house.

But in some ways that's less interesting than the old takeaways, who are at the forefront of the pursuit of pure affordable moreish flavour, with no concession given to healthiness or authenticity. The most interesting part of the menu isn't the usual sweet and sour/kung po/black bean and green pepper, but individual chef's inventions that are rapidly adopted nationwide, like the 3-in-one (thick cut potato fries, fried rice, curry sauce) which can be upgraded to a 4-in-1 with the addition of fried chicken balls, and most recently and famously, the spice bag - salt and chilli chicken with salt and pepper chips (the same thick cut fries with red/green bell peppers, chillis, onions, and a powder with some salt, pepper, garlic, and a metric ton of MSG). The Spice Bag Appreciation Society has comprehensive reviews and is well enough known that the last time I got a spice bag, the restaurant owner asked if I'd consider doing a review.
posted by kersplunk at 11:07 AM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Back in '09 I did a road trip up to West Quoddy Head, Maine, the easternmost point of the continental US. On the way back, we stopped at the first Chinese restaurant we saw for dinner, Giant Panda, near Machias, ME. I'm convinced it was the easternmost Chinese restaurant in the continental US; here's a photo I took. When I googled it just now it seems to have been permanently closed, and the nearest Chinese Restaurant to West Quoddy Head is Hing Garden, down the road from Giant Panda. But now that I actually looked it up, the easternmost Chinese Restaurant is actually King China all the way up in Calais, ME.

Giant Panda was actually ran by Filipinos. They were super excited to see my friend and I, a couple of Vietnamese people, in their basically almost all white town's only Chinese restaurant. The food was actually pretty salty though and neither of us finished our portions.
posted by numaner at 11:45 AM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The food was actually pretty salty though and neither of us finished our portions.

Even when the food is great, "finishing portions" isn't something I have often done in a Chinese restaurant.
posted by elizilla at 2:20 PM on December 27, 2016

We don't have a single Chinese restaurant here. We do have two Thai places, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:26 PM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have a bit of a complicated relationship to this; I think that it's important to distinguish between Chinese-Canadian versus Chinese(Sichuanese or Shanghainese or HongKongnese, etc.)/Vietnamese/Burmese/etc. restaurants.

At first I was really curious when I kept finding Chinese-Canadian restaurants in small towns while roadtripping and kept checking them out - this period coincided with the demise of Chinese-Canadian restaurants in Vancouver, generally being replaced with more authentic fare.

I've not found one yet that I couldn't out-cook. Sure, maybe not on that budget, but to a HKer growing up in Vancouver in the late 80s the Chinese-Canadian fare was always disappointing.

I'd love to hear suggestions if there are any standout Chinese-Canadian places.

That said, my cafe of convenience down the street is arguably Chinese-Canadian but maybe more Canadian-Chinese where the food is all day breakfast/burgers but they also serve Westernised Chinese fare (most of which is actually decent, but not up to par with a HK cafe in Chinatown in quality and authenticity).

Oddly enough, I find it amusing to juxtapose Canadian/Chinese adaptations by Chinese for the Western palate with the Chinese adaptations of Western fare for the Chinese palate.
posted by porpoise at 4:37 PM on December 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ultimate Vancouver diaspora food: Chinese food cooked by Asians who grew up in India, then moved to one of the largest Indian communities in Vancouver.

In other words, Indian-spiced Chinese food. Their story and menu.
posted by wenat at 9:25 PM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm Chinese-Canadian. When I was in India for work, my hosts were eager to bring me to their favourite Chinese restaurant so I could tell them how good and authentic the cooking was. I had to confess that many of the dishes were strange to me. The Cantonese food I grew up with in Vancouver doesn't contain nearly as much spice as used by the Indians and I had never heard of a dish called 'Mongolian Beef' (which I see is listed on the menu above in wenat's post).

I had my honeymoon in South America. While in a small town in Ecuador, my wife and I wanted to try some local cuisine for lunch. We went up to a random stranger on the sidewalk and my wife, who speaks Spanish, asked him for a restaurant suggestion. He looked at me and immediately replied to her in Spanish: go to the Chifa restaurant down the block.

We found the restaurant with the big Chifa sign and Mrs. praiseb walked straight in. I lingered at the door to have a look at the menu and to my shock it was a Chinese restaurant. I went in to tell her I didn't want to eat Chinese food in Ecuador and the restaurant manager came out to try to change my mind but we made our way to an Ecuadorian restaurant instead.

We later learned that the word 'chifa' is latino slang for Chinese food. Chifa wasn't the name of the restaurant as we had expected. Now we want to go back to South America some day and try as much chifa as we can.
posted by praiseb at 11:56 PM on December 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Canadian documentary series I mentioned above goes into the various specialties and local versions of dishes, and completely unique dishes, in each of the places he goes to around the world and it all looks mouth-watering.
posted by XMLicious at 12:45 AM on December 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

XMLicious, that series is addictive. The only reason I have seen all the episodes already is that I am full and exhausted after a great holiday, and I fall asleep all the time.
Recently, I have been studying Chinese cuisine, after the most of a lifetime of avoiding it because of the greasy, bland stuff one gets at [insert random country]-Chinese restaurants. I still haven't visited China, but the new wave of better Chinese restaurants and the amazing home cooking of some Chinese friends has convinced me that there is a lot to learn.

BTW, the strangest and maybe worst Chinese restaurants I have experienced have been in former East-block countries and in Italy. There must be something completely incompatible in the palates of those countries with Chinese flavors.
posted by mumimor at 5:36 AM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

wenet: Masala Chicken Fried Rice FTW!

Weirdly I have eaten at 3 of the restaurants from the piece, all in Alberta.
posted by Cosine at 8:38 AM on December 28, 2016

Praisb, I've eaten Ecuadorian Chinese food. Like all travelers* (she said, projecting), I was disappointed it was neither like Chinese-Chinese (or rather the supposedly authentic Chinese food available in Canada) food nor like Canadian-Chinese food. The signature dish is a fried rice which they call chau-la-fan (sp?). I saw a documentary about the invention of chau-la-fan. Basically one Chinese guy in some little mountain town in Ecuador opened a restaurant and for some reason a mistake of pronunciation or some such resulted in this name. The dish and name spread throughout the country.

Anyway, it was fine. There were fortune cookies. No chopsticks. But not something I'd go out of my way to eat as much of as possible.

* When I lived in Boston, my aunt who had lived in Puerto Rico for many years visited me. She was disapppointed that the Chinese restaurants in Boston didn't serve Puerto Rican style Chinese food. I'm not sure what that would be, exactly.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:28 PM on December 29, 2016 [1 favorite]