Reddit reviews The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
We found 4 Reddit comments about The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
We found 4 Reddit comments about The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Lord, the assumptions/priviledge that is in your post/responses...
The cuisine you're describing isn't an "old food fad" or "old food phenomenon." It's a multi-generation adaptation of a people's (the immigrant Chinese) cuisine in response to the to conditions, available ingredients, and demands of the people around them; in North America. To say that it isn't authentic, or calling it "fake crap," is condescending (and shows a lack of understanding) to the thousands of Chinese immigrants who have lived/worked/adapted/died in the U.S. and Canada for the past 200 hundred years. To think that this cuisine doesn't exist anymore (outside of of old menus) shows how sheltered/closed off you truly are. It is no greater/worse, nor is it less "authentic," than all the [regional] Chinese cuisine from China/Taiwan. It is a food style unto it's own; with it's own influences, responses, techniques and made by people who [usually] identify as Chinese.
If you want to try and know what you're talk about:
Books:
Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States by Andrew Coe
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee
Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants by John Jung
Wu: Globalization of Chinese Food by David Y.H. Wu and Sidney C.H. Cheung
China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West by J.A.G. Roberts
Ethnic Regional Foodways United States: Performance Of Group Identity by Linda Keller Brown
The Chinese Takeout Cookbook: Quick and Easy Dishes to Prepare at Home by Diana Kuan
American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods by Bonnie Tsui
Documentary:
Chinese Restaurants directed by Cheuk Kwan (IMDB Overview)
In regards to the Chinese Restaurant question. (I didn’t know the best way to make sure everyone who asked about it saw it, so I’m posting a link to this comment in response to everyone who asked me to elaborate.) Please note that there are always exceptions, and that I’m talking specifically about the China roll / wok / star / 88 / dragon strip-mall type places.
Part of it comes from this – note that I have not read the whole thing. Most of it comes from observation and logic: I’ve eaten in Chinese take out places all over Florida, as well as some in Georgia and Texas, and noticed that there are several key similarities; I’ve taken long, hard looks at what it takes to open a business (including specifically restaurant concepts); and as you’ll see, I am familiar and have done business with similarly arranged groups. Please consider these in aggregate:
I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT THERE IS A SECRET HUMAN TRAFFICING CHINESE MAFAIA MSG THING GOING ON but I am suggesting that while there may be some well off Chinese families who can afford to pack up, move over, and open a restaurant in a big city, there’s no way that there are so many families with the resources, training, and connections to just pack up and move to every county, suburb, and podunk town in America (and then, in addition to magically procuring all the money, paperwork, and etc needed to open a restaurant, somehow magically knowing that they’re supposed to order their menus from Company X and their supplies from Company Y). China has a huge population which is almost entirely mind-numbingly poor – step outside your western context and try to imagine how the average Chinese family could pull this off with nothing more than word-of-mouth.
The same applies to nail salons – does anyone think that Asian women are just born with both the ability and the resources to perform French manicures (which, by the way, require cosmetology licenses in most American jurisdictions), so they just jump on their invisible jets, fly over, wave their magical “instant storefront and housing needs wand”, charm the inspectors and landlords and suppliers with their magical “expense and bureaucratic red tape elimination rays” with the end result of opening a nail salons in an almost perfect “one every five miles” grid across the entire country? How would a random Asian woman (remember, all these people are 1st generation – if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been in one of these places) even know that Americans want their nails did? (“Oh, but they already have family over here that tells them and helps them come over and do the research and get the training and secure the finances and…” Excatly.)
Someone mentioned Occam’s razor. Let’s look at the two possible scenarios:
1) Random Chinese family (in a communist country, no less) packs up their family of 5-10 people, moves to some random little town or suburb in America, and with their best broken English (or lack thereof) manages to find a place to live and open a restaurant (presumably using money from their Chinese money tree). Using their inborn research and networking skills, they contact one of two print shops and suppliers in America and have them send over everything needed to open a restaurant. And since all Chinese immigrants are geniuses, they manage to have no issues with all the local legal and regulatory paperwork and all the tax requirements. Also using their inborn abilities and despite the fact that China is a huge country that comprises some dozen distinct cuisines none of which come close to resembling the Americanized stuff served in American Chinese take out places, they manage to create a menu that is 100% identical to every other Chinese take out menu. It’s the American dream!
2) There are one or two groups which specialize in helping Chinese families move to America and open restaurants, including all the setup and training, legal intricacies, financial and credit requirements, taxes and accounting, location research, equipment provision, housing, etc.
When you take all of these things into consideration, and then remember the history of how the Chinese first came to the west (railroad workers and the like intentionally brought over for a specific purpose – that’s why there is such thing as Chinese Cubans, the most amazing people on the planet, and why the Cuban paella pan looks more like a wok than the flat-bottomed, shallow Spanish version), #2 is much more in line with Occam’s razor than the alternative.
this book goes into it in depth. Great read.
Fantastic read on the topic: Fortune Cookie Chronicles