Asif Rahman

Review of Starr Restaurants - Buddakan N...

As the of second-generation Chinese immigrants, I ...

As the of second-generation Chinese immigrants, I used to take pride in pooh-poohing Americanized versions of Chinese dishes. Turning my nose up at cardboard cartons of chow mein and holding up a plate of slimy sea cucumbers, I would tell myself that I knew what real Chinese food was, and it was better.

That s not to say I didn t enjoy eating the crispy fried chicken cubes drenched in sticky sweet orange sauce from time to time. But I never acknowledged it as Chinese food, and certainly not of the authentic variety.

It wasn t until recently that I stopped and asked myself what exactly it was that I took so much pride in. What does authentic Chinese food really mean?

Many Americans perceive ethnic food to be an inferior cuisine, based on the expectation that it should be cheap. This kind of thinking often arises out of ignorance a misunderstanding that Chinese dishes are simple, consisting of inexpensive ingredients and prepared in a rudimentary style. Things are slowly changing these days, with more and more foodies becoming interested in regional Chinese specialties, even prompting the Wall Street Journal to declare that, when it comes to fine dining in America, Chinese is the new French. And yet, foodies are still unwilling to shell out the same amount of money for Chinese soup dumplings as they would for a French duck.

The widely-held belief that Chinese food is just plain bad for you is yet another false expectation of what authentic Chinese food should be. Recent restaurant reviews confirm that the words greasy and unhealthy are unfortunately still very much synonymous with Chinese cooking, and the xenophobic myth that MSG causes illness remains prevalent among many white Americans.

But what many Americans believe to be authentic isn t really authentic at all. Indeed, the birth of Chinese food in America resulted from years of racist attitudes towards the wave of Chinese immigrants arriving during the 1800s. Opening up restaurants was one of the few ways the Chinese were allowed to stay in America, and soon Chinese chefs began to tailor their recipes towards the prevailing sweet American taste buds. And so the Chinese food Americans are familiar with is actually either just a miniscule fraction of what makes up Chinese food culture, or would not even be found anywhere near mainland China.

Growing up in America, I often felt caught between the Chinese food my parents served at the dinner table, and the Chinese food being sold in restaurants all over the country, as if those were the only two options available to me. When I started to reclaim my Chinese identity and cultural heritage as an adult, I realized that I needed to discover what authenticity meant for myself.

For a long time, I adhered to this vague notion that authenticity referred to purity that true Chinese cuisine could not be tainted by foreign influence. Down with the beef and broccoli myth of America!

But I quickly realized that this definition was much too simplistic. Take General Tso s chicken, for instance. It s one of the most popular items on any Chinese takeout menu in America: crispy, fried chicken in sticky brown sauce surrounded by broccoli. Completely irresistible, and not remotely authentic, right? But trace its history far back enough, and you find that the dish was invented by Peng Chang-Kuei, a chef born and raised in Hunan, China. He conceived of the dish in Taiwan in 1949, naming it after a Hunan general and highlighting traditional Hunanese flavors. When Peng Chang-Kuei later opened a restaurant in New York in the 1970s, he made the dish sweeter and less spicy, and Americans flocked to his restaurant in droves.

Does the fact that a Chinese chef created General Tso s chicken excuse the dish from its American influences? Can t this adaptation be seen as a subset of Chinese cuisine made by Chinese, for both Chinese and Americans?