Back a dozen years ago, Clarissa Wei first wrote about me and the thousands of Chinese restaurants I had eaten at and launched me on my journey to telling the tale of Chinese food in America in the context of the history, demographics and culture of Chinese Americans, and somehow ending up getting my own Wikipedia entry. In the interview, she asked me the innocuous question, which of all the Chinese restaurants I had yet to eat at would I most want to eat at. I'm sure the expected response would be some iconic Chinese restaurant in a distant Chinese community. However, I gave the unexpected response of a unique version of cashew chicken served only in Springfield, Missouri, albeit found in dozens of restaurants in that city. I recounted how Springfield cashew chicken had been on my radar for at least a couple of decades, but really had no opportunity to go there. But thanks to that article, just a few weeks later I was in Springfield, sampling various renditions of their cashew chicken.
So it's a dozen years later, and if you asked me the same question, what would be the answer now? Well, it most certainly would be the newly opened Black Dragon Takeout in Philadelphia. Why? Because it has the most intriguing lineup of dishes I've ever seen in a Chinese restaurant. General Roscoe's Chicken. Collard green fried rice. Egg Wu Young. Oxtail Rangoon. Gumbo fried rice. Pecan shrimp. And the list goes on.
Collard green fried rice
Of course there's a backstory to all this. Black Dragon Takeout is a Black American take on Chinese food. Not to say that there hasn't been an intersection of the communities in the past. For many years the black owned Howard's Cafe operated near downtown Los Angeles serving food to a mixed (actually largely Hispanic) clientele. It would not be surprising to find other examples like this.
Then there's the story of Yakamein which a century ago could be found in Chinese restaurants all over the United States. The Chinese name of the dish was yat gaw mein, which really meant one order of boiled noodles. Strangely, the dish was not uniform throughout the United States, but rather mutated into regional variations, sometimes stir fried, sometimes in soup, and under different names depending how "yat gaw mein" was Romanized. In New Orleans, not only did yat gaw mein evolve into its own unique style under the Yakamein moniker, but it has also become primarily associated with the African American community. Indeed so much so that currently the label "Yak-A-Mein Lady" refers to Linda Green, a soul food caterer who has specialized in advancing the popularity of Yakamein.
Meanwhile many Chinese restaurants were operating in neighborhoods throughout the United States, even where there was no existing Chinese population. In Washington D.C.'s African American neighborhoods, many Chinese restaurants extended the Chinese menu to include subs, chicken and seafood, filling the void created by national chains declining to operate in those neighborhoods. And also in Washington DC, where mumbo sauce is associated with the city's African American community, it is also closely identified with the city's Chinese-subs-seafood restaurants.
More recently there has been a growing succession issue for the 40,000 or 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States. For neighborhood Chinese restaurants, often operated by uneducated immigrants from China, succession of the business to their educated, American born children is not an option. To some extent, the succession issue has been ameliorated by the arrival of new immigrants, but in other situations, neighborhood Chinese restaurants have been closing down. And this is where Black Dragon Takeout comes in to fill the void in West Philadelphia, thanks to award winning Black American restauranteur-chef Kurt Evans. Going down the menu, reading every item I think to myself "I gotta try this." Before my retirement when I was regularly flying to the East Coast, I would have already figured out a way to get to Philadelphia to eat at Black Dragon Takeout. These days I'll just have to dream about it.
