If you visit any of today's modern Chinese American communities, such as the San Gabriel Valley outside of Los Angeles, Flushing in New York, or numerous areas around San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and even Houston, you will find an interesting array of wonderful and delicious Chinese food. Yet when you compare that to what most 20th century Americans believed to be Chinese food, (and what still passes as Chinese food in many parts of the country to this day), there's absolutely no comparison. So what happened?
Of course, this is a complicated question with many factors at play. But the leading cause is the little known history of the immigration patterns from China to the United States. The Chinese first came to the United States during the Gold Rush, went on to build the railroads, then developed the agricultural industry. But few people realize that virtually all these Chinese came from one small part of China: the rural districts of Toishan outside of the city formerly known as Canton. The Toishanese came to America because of a combination of dire circumstances at home and easy access to the seaport of Canton.
Now everything else being equal, people from other parts of China would have eventually started coming to America. However, due to the racial enmity that built among the American populace, the United States passed a series of laws that made it illegal for most residents of China to come to the United States between 1882 and 1943. In 1943, China was given an annual quota of 105 legal immigrants. This is not to say that all of the Chinese who were in the U.S. were the descendents of pre-1882 immigrants. Rather, as the only nationality barred from coming to the United States, the Chinese resorted to various forms of illegal entry to come here anyway. But those who came surreptitiously were exclusively relatives or neighbors of Chinese already here, keeping the population homogenously Toishanese. Indeed, despite the Chinese exclusion laws, it was said that in many Toishanese villages, virtually all of the adult males were in the United States.
Suddenly, the difference between what Americans believed to be Chinese food, such as chop suey, chow mein, moo goo gai pan, won ton soup, and egg foo yung and what we know today as authentic Chinese food, becomes easy to explain. The Chinese who were resident in America until changes in American immigration policy in the 1960s were not geographically representative of the people of China, and furthermore, were rural, not urban, in origin. I like to make the analog that it's the same as if all of the Americans living in China came from someplace like Victorville, California. From this starting point, factor in the lack of availability of popular Chinese ingredients here in the United States, and on top of that throw in the need to adapt the food to make it palatable to Americans. Mix these all together and core 20th century Chinese food becomes understandable as a combination of authentic and modified food prepared by immigrants who came from a single small area of China.
Of course, not all Americanized Chinese food is traceable to Toishanese food and mutations thereof. A new wave of dishes destined to become Americanized Chinese standards arrived on the scene in the late 1960s with dishes such as kung pao chicken, mushu pork, General Tso's chicken, and hot and sour soup joining the pantheon. Once again, immigration was the key to these dishes, as America's doors opened up to more categories of Chinese immigrants beginning in 1965. The first wave of new Chinese immigrants came primarily from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as immigration from mainland China would be years away, not until after President Nixon's historic China visit in 1972. But many of the Taiwanese newcomers were Nationalists who fled from the mainland, bringing with them their penchant for a spicier Chinese cuisine than that of the Toishanese or the Hong Kong peoples. Branding this new, spicy regime as Hunan or Szechwan style, and significantly tweaking the food to suit the locals, Taiwanese chefs took New York by storm and captured the imagination of Manhattan. But this was faux Hunan- and faux Szechwan-style food adapted to New York tastes, as true Hunan and Szechwan food from immigrants from those regions bringing their native foods to America would not arrive on our shores for decades. So once again, even these new style Chinese dishes were not particularly representative of the food actually found in China, but that didn't stop it from sweeping across the entire United States.
So really, what America has come to know as Chinese food for 150 years is really a combination of historical accidents and adaptation to American tastes. In contrast, today's authentic Chinese food in the United States represents not only advances in culinary sophistication, but more importantly, reflects that Chinese and their food from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and all regions of mainland China are now represented in the United States. And that's quite a difference.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Californians Are Special
As a proud Californian, I like to think we're ahead of the curve on a lot of things. This is the land of innovation where many national and international trends get started, so indeed we here in California are special. But not everything about being special is good. Last week I was in Las Vegas, where I paid about $3.60 for a gallon of gasoline. Then I come back to Los Angeles to find gasoline priced a dollar higher at $4.60 per gallon. Besides hearing rightfully outraged consumers being interviewed on the radio and television, the airwaves have also been full of politicians expressing their outrage and promising to get to the bottom of the mess, implying collusion, profiteering, and other dastardly behavior could be to blame.
However, there is no conspiracy theory to be proved. This is just a matter of California being special. Specifically, the problem is California special blend gasoline. California has mandated that only special blends of gasoline may be sold within the state to minimize air pollution. Indeed, there are two special blends, one for winter and one for summer use. Gasoline sold in most of the rest of the United States is unfit for use in California. What this means is that California gasoline is a specialty product, which is only manufactured by a small number of refiners. So if the regular source of gasoline sold in Nevada is knocked off line, it can be easily replaced by other gasoline on the market, with little disruption in supply or price. But when one California gasoline refinery goes off line, like the Chevron refinery in Richmond which has been closed for months by a fire, there is a measurable effect on supply and price. And when there is a second disruption like the Exxon plant power failure last week, the effect is magnified. So it's no mystery what caused the price spike in California gasoline--it's the mandatory special California gasoline requirements imposed by the state of California. The politicians all know this is what is going on, and they are just pandering to the public who is unaware of the economics involved.
Now given the precarious supply situation in California, the conspiracy theorists strongly suggest that California gasoline refinery problems are actually orchestrated to restrict supply and jack up prices. However, the fallacy in this assertion can be easily demonstrated by the fact that the producer whose facility goes off line does not benefit from the higher prices, since the producer doesn't have any gasoline to sell at the higher price. Does anybody really think Chevron is happy that their refinery is going to be closed for several months before reopening while everybody else's refinery is in full operation? [Update: Chevron's quarterly earnings were down 33 percent.} But everybody loves a conspiracy so this point is never raised.
However, there is no conspiracy theory to be proved. This is just a matter of California being special. Specifically, the problem is California special blend gasoline. California has mandated that only special blends of gasoline may be sold within the state to minimize air pollution. Indeed, there are two special blends, one for winter and one for summer use. Gasoline sold in most of the rest of the United States is unfit for use in California. What this means is that California gasoline is a specialty product, which is only manufactured by a small number of refiners. So if the regular source of gasoline sold in Nevada is knocked off line, it can be easily replaced by other gasoline on the market, with little disruption in supply or price. But when one California gasoline refinery goes off line, like the Chevron refinery in Richmond which has been closed for months by a fire, there is a measurable effect on supply and price. And when there is a second disruption like the Exxon plant power failure last week, the effect is magnified. So it's no mystery what caused the price spike in California gasoline--it's the mandatory special California gasoline requirements imposed by the state of California. The politicians all know this is what is going on, and they are just pandering to the public who is unaware of the economics involved.
Now given the precarious supply situation in California, the conspiracy theorists strongly suggest that California gasoline refinery problems are actually orchestrated to restrict supply and jack up prices. However, the fallacy in this assertion can be easily demonstrated by the fact that the producer whose facility goes off line does not benefit from the higher prices, since the producer doesn't have any gasoline to sell at the higher price. Does anybody really think Chevron is happy that their refinery is going to be closed for several months before reopening while everybody else's refinery is in full operation? [Update: Chevron's quarterly earnings were down 33 percent.} But everybody loves a conspiracy so this point is never raised.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
The Road To 6,000 Chinese Restaurants
The original L.A. Weekly/Huffington Post/People.com item on my visits to over 6,000 Chinese restaurants has generated all sorts of comments. One common reaction has been disbelief, with a number of commenters actually trying to do the math. How could I possibly have eaten at 6,000 different Chinese restaurants, since that would require trying a new Chinese restaurant every day for over 16 years? And even if you did one a day, wouldn't you run out of new Chinese restaurants to try?
Well the question is a valid one, but there really is an explanation. First of all, I've been doing this for more than 16 years, more like 35 years, though in the older days there weren't that many places worth trying. But more importantly, a good chunk of those 6,000 restaurants are located outside of my Los Angeles home base. When I'm home, I probably average at most maybe just two or three new Chinese restaurants a week, a pace which would indeed take forever to reach 6,000. However when I'm out of town I literally eat four or even five meals a day, each at a different restaurant. Consequently a four day trip to New York or San Francisco can easily add 20 restaurants to the listing, with most of my non-work hours devoted to scouting for food. I've perfected the breakfast and lunchtime subway dash between Midtown Manhattan and Chinatown (take the B or D train from under the Sheraton Hotel to Grand Ave.). And San Francisco is an especially fruitful destination, since besides the large quantity of good Chinese restaurants there, if I order a bad dish somewhere I don't have to finish it, but rather I can pack it up and give it to one of the homeless people that are ubiquitous around San Francisco Chinatown at night (where I always stay, though do not necessarily eat). That's what I call a win-win situation--leftovers for the homeless and I don't have to fill myself up on something that's not very good.
Once in a while I get even more ambitious, like the dim sum crawl through the suburbs of Toronto that I previously blogged about two years ago, where I hit up six dim sum restaurants one Sunday between 9 am and 3 pm. Or similarly the eight hour drive I took from Miami to Boca Raton (a straight line distance of less than 50 miles) as I zig zagged across South Florida to the scattered Chinese restaurants I had located in the Miami area Chinese newspaper.
Sometimes I'll drive, rather than fly to meetings in places like San Francisco, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Phoenix to sample Chinese restaurants on the way to my destination. (When else would I get a chance to try the dim sum in Palm Springs, Fresno or Bakersfield?) And when I do fly into the Bay Area for a meeting in San Francisco, I often fly into San Jose instead, so I may eat at restaurants in Silicon Valley or somewhere else between San Jose and San Francisco before making my way into the City. Attending a meeting in Washington D.C.? A couple of times I flew to New York and then rented a car, so I could sample some of the eateries between New York and D.C. Another out of town strategy is that I often make it a point to stay in a hotel closer to the focal point of Chinese food than my business site to maximize my access to Chinese restaurants. Also, that makes me feel more like a local as I drive 20 miles to my work destination, rather than staying on premises. Things like that are a necessary part of getting to 6,000.
A corollary to these rules is that when scheduled for a trip to one city, if that city doesn't have a large representation of Chinese restaurants, I'll look for relatively nearby (by my standards) localities that expand the pool. For example, after attending numerous meetings in Orlando and pretty much trying all of the worthwhile Chinese food there, I've driven at dinnertime to Tampa, St. Petersburg and even Gainesville and Cocoa Beach. A trip to San Antonio meant arriving in town two days early to enable side trips to Austin and Houston. And of course there were my driving marathons mentioned in previous blog posts, such as from Dallas to Houston and back the same day after taking the early morning flight from Los Angeles to Dallas. Or Monterey to Silicon Valley, twice--in the same day.
A corollary to the corollary is that aside from the Chinese food, my side excursions also provide an opportunity to see sights that I wouldn't otherwise get to visit, and which I have found to be quite enjoyable. Yes, that was a circuitous trip around South Florida, but I got to drive along the other Hollywood Blvd., and rode the entire length of Hypoluxo Road asking myself why would they name a major street after a chemical process? (Hypoluxo turned out to be a Native American chieftain.) And I saw how the urban area abruptly ended at the Everglades, and how they built way too many new houses in that metro area. I learned that most businesses in the Chinese suburbs of Toronto were not located in storefronts on the streets, but in giant shopping malls, often largely obscured from street view. So while the food was the immediate goal, there are definitely major non-culinary benefits.
And don't forget the phone books. Each year when the new Los Angeles Yellow Pages come out I check the restaurant listings to see if there are any new neighborhood restaurants I may have missed.
So yes, the road to 6,000 was real, but you just have to work extra hard to make it happen.
Well the question is a valid one, but there really is an explanation. First of all, I've been doing this for more than 16 years, more like 35 years, though in the older days there weren't that many places worth trying. But more importantly, a good chunk of those 6,000 restaurants are located outside of my Los Angeles home base. When I'm home, I probably average at most maybe just two or three new Chinese restaurants a week, a pace which would indeed take forever to reach 6,000. However when I'm out of town I literally eat four or even five meals a day, each at a different restaurant. Consequently a four day trip to New York or San Francisco can easily add 20 restaurants to the listing, with most of my non-work hours devoted to scouting for food. I've perfected the breakfast and lunchtime subway dash between Midtown Manhattan and Chinatown (take the B or D train from under the Sheraton Hotel to Grand Ave.). And San Francisco is an especially fruitful destination, since besides the large quantity of good Chinese restaurants there, if I order a bad dish somewhere I don't have to finish it, but rather I can pack it up and give it to one of the homeless people that are ubiquitous around San Francisco Chinatown at night (where I always stay, though do not necessarily eat). That's what I call a win-win situation--leftovers for the homeless and I don't have to fill myself up on something that's not very good.
Once in a while I get even more ambitious, like the dim sum crawl through the suburbs of Toronto that I previously blogged about two years ago, where I hit up six dim sum restaurants one Sunday between 9 am and 3 pm. Or similarly the eight hour drive I took from Miami to Boca Raton (a straight line distance of less than 50 miles) as I zig zagged across South Florida to the scattered Chinese restaurants I had located in the Miami area Chinese newspaper.
Sometimes I'll drive, rather than fly to meetings in places like San Francisco, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Phoenix to sample Chinese restaurants on the way to my destination. (When else would I get a chance to try the dim sum in Palm Springs, Fresno or Bakersfield?) And when I do fly into the Bay Area for a meeting in San Francisco, I often fly into San Jose instead, so I may eat at restaurants in Silicon Valley or somewhere else between San Jose and San Francisco before making my way into the City. Attending a meeting in Washington D.C.? A couple of times I flew to New York and then rented a car, so I could sample some of the eateries between New York and D.C. Another out of town strategy is that I often make it a point to stay in a hotel closer to the focal point of Chinese food than my business site to maximize my access to Chinese restaurants. Also, that makes me feel more like a local as I drive 20 miles to my work destination, rather than staying on premises. Things like that are a necessary part of getting to 6,000.
A corollary to these rules is that when scheduled for a trip to one city, if that city doesn't have a large representation of Chinese restaurants, I'll look for relatively nearby (by my standards) localities that expand the pool. For example, after attending numerous meetings in Orlando and pretty much trying all of the worthwhile Chinese food there, I've driven at dinnertime to Tampa, St. Petersburg and even Gainesville and Cocoa Beach. A trip to San Antonio meant arriving in town two days early to enable side trips to Austin and Houston. And of course there were my driving marathons mentioned in previous blog posts, such as from Dallas to Houston and back the same day after taking the early morning flight from Los Angeles to Dallas. Or Monterey to Silicon Valley, twice--in the same day.
A corollary to the corollary is that aside from the Chinese food, my side excursions also provide an opportunity to see sights that I wouldn't otherwise get to visit, and which I have found to be quite enjoyable. Yes, that was a circuitous trip around South Florida, but I got to drive along the other Hollywood Blvd., and rode the entire length of Hypoluxo Road asking myself why would they name a major street after a chemical process? (Hypoluxo turned out to be a Native American chieftain.) And I saw how the urban area abruptly ended at the Everglades, and how they built way too many new houses in that metro area. I learned that most businesses in the Chinese suburbs of Toronto were not located in storefronts on the streets, but in giant shopping malls, often largely obscured from street view. So while the food was the immediate goal, there are definitely major non-culinary benefits.
And don't forget the phone books. Each year when the new Los Angeles Yellow Pages come out I check the restaurant listings to see if there are any new neighborhood restaurants I may have missed.
So yes, the road to 6,000 was real, but you just have to work extra hard to make it happen.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
The Election Is Over
Yes, I know the calendar says it's September and there are still seven weeks to go until election day. But the election is over and the Republicans will be taking a pounding. A year ago, Intrade futures pegged President Obama's chances of re-election at no more than 50 percent, and the prospects for a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate were riding at 80 percent. The first to turn was the presidential race, when this past spring some good economic numbers shot Obama's odds up to 60 percent. They receded two or three points this summer as the economy seemed to stall. However as it became clear that even though national polls showed a neck and neck race, the electoral numbers didn't add up for Mitt Romney, Obama's odds surged past 60 percent. Add to this Romney's remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax, and Obama's odds are now 70 percent.
Now unseating an incumbent president is always a difficult proposition so an upcoming Obama re-election would be far from shocking under any circumstances. However what is shocking is the evaporation of the prospect that the Republicans will control the Senate. Even last month the odds favored a Republican senate, but almost overnight the odds on Republican Senatorial control have plummeted to 20 percent. I'm not sure what triggered such a rapid reversal of fortune. Certainly, the pigheadedness of Rep. Akin in turning a certain victory in Missouri into a certain loss didn't help. More likely, Romney's comments about the 47 percent, while probably not that significant since he wasn't going to win the election anyway, possibly sets up an Obama landslide that will submerge a number of Republican Senatorial candidates in its wake.
Of course futures tradings in political events is highly volatile and it is possible that things may turn again. Indeed during election day of 2004, the odds on a Kerry victory shot up to over 60 percent, thanks to the release of exit polling numbers that eventually turned out to be inaccurate. But unless President Obama is photographed kicking kittens or punching first graders, such a reversal of fortune appears to be unlikely.
Now unseating an incumbent president is always a difficult proposition so an upcoming Obama re-election would be far from shocking under any circumstances. However what is shocking is the evaporation of the prospect that the Republicans will control the Senate. Even last month the odds favored a Republican senate, but almost overnight the odds on Republican Senatorial control have plummeted to 20 percent. I'm not sure what triggered such a rapid reversal of fortune. Certainly, the pigheadedness of Rep. Akin in turning a certain victory in Missouri into a certain loss didn't help. More likely, Romney's comments about the 47 percent, while probably not that significant since he wasn't going to win the election anyway, possibly sets up an Obama landslide that will submerge a number of Republican Senatorial candidates in its wake.
Of course futures tradings in political events is highly volatile and it is possible that things may turn again. Indeed during election day of 2004, the odds on a Kerry victory shot up to over 60 percent, thanks to the release of exit polling numbers that eventually turned out to be inaccurate. But unless President Obama is photographed kicking kittens or punching first graders, such a reversal of fortune appears to be unlikely.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Adventures in Springfield Cashew Chicken
Sometime probably in the early 1980s I first heard of Springfield cashew chicken. This was one of a handful of regional Chinese American specialties that had developed over the years, including the St. Paul sandwich in St. Louis, MO; the chow mein sandwich of Fall River, MA and Woonsocket, RI; chicken fingers in Boston and adjoining areas of New England; and honey chicken in South Florida and other parts of the south. Over the years I had tried to think of ways to incorporate Springfield, MO into my travel itinerary, but had never been able to do so, and been resigned to the reality that I'd never make it to Springfield.
So when Clarissa Wei first interviewed me for her L. A.Weekly Squid Ink article, and she asked me what Chinese restaurant I hadn't been to that I would most like to go to, it didn't take deep thought on my part to reply it would be someplace in Springfield, Missouri to try their cashew chicken which was deep fried and served with gravy, rather than the typical pan fried version. Little did I realize that weeks later I would be in Springfield sampling five varieties of that dish, as the guest of Susan Wade and the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau. To my surprise, I learned that there were direct flights between Los Angeles and Springfield, albeit only three days a week, on Allegiant Airlines. Also when I discovered that the airport in Springfield was called Springfield-Branson airport, that helped explain the existence of that direct route.
While the reason for the trip was the Springfield cashew chicken, the city of Springfield itself turned out to be most interesting, and in some regards, contradictory. In all of my post civil rights era travels, I have never seen an urban area so homogenous as Springfield. The entire time in Springfield I saw only three African Americans, and they were all hotel guests. All of the hotel maids were white. I saw no Latinos, and the only Asians I saw were inside of the Chinese restaurants. Yet, in this city of under 200,000 residents there are almost 100 Chinese restaurants. Springfield has the highest per capital density of Chinese restaurants of any city in the United States. The reason, in part, if not exclusively, is cashew chicken. Most every Chinese restaurant in town notes the availability of cashew chicken on their exterior signage. Vietnamese restaurants serve cashew chicken. I presume Korean and Japanese restaurants also serve cashew chicken. And non-Asian restaurants serve cashew chicken. Springfield cashew chicken is truly a phenonmenon in this city, where the other regional Chinese American dishes are merely oddities or varieties.
And this is not the only contradiction about Springfield. We were fortunate that among the 100 Chinese restaurants in town, we were taken immediately on arrival at Springfield Airport to Creasian Restaurant, which based on the name, I wasn't even sure served Chinese food. Consequently, when we went inside and the owner asked whether we would like to order off of the Chinese menu, as opposed to the regular menu, I was absolutely floored. Who would expect a Chinese menu in a town whose only Chinese population appeared to be a small number of Chinese restaurant workers? But there on the Chinese menu were Guilin rice noodles, cumin beef, marinated beef Chiu Chow style, braised whole fish, and a couple dozen other traditional dishes. The reason for the separate menu was that the restaurant was close to the Missouri State University campus, which unbeknownst to me has a sizable enrollment of overseas Chinese students. This just reinforced a corollary rule which I had discovered over the years that cities without a significant resident Chinese population can still support authentic Chinese restaurants if there is a large college campus with Chinese students nearby.
While we did have a taste of Springfield cashew chicken at Creasian, the marquee event (literally, since they put my name on the marquee outside the restaurant) was lunch at Leong's Asian Diner, owned by Wing Leong, the son of David Leong, who invented Springfield cashew chicken almost 50 years ago back in 1963. It may have seemed disconcerting to have to eat lunch with cameras from the local NBC television outlet rolling, and still cameras flashing away. But hey, we're from Hollywood, and Brad Pitt (who happens to come from Springfield) lives in our neighborhood near the Hollywood sign, so we're used to the attention. Besides the delicious cashew chicken, we also were treated to a tasty and inventive dish of lop cheung lo mein, Japanese udon soup with fish cake and pork belly, and siu mai with an interesting twist of a small shrimp on top.
Yet, the highlight of the trip for me turned out not to be the cashew chicken. It was meeting with 92 year old David Leong, the Godfather of Springfield cashew chicken whose proteges prepare the dish throughout the city of Springfield. Though he spoke a slightly different dialect than ours (and I only include myself in "ours" because I do speak a little bit of pidgin Toishanese), Mrs. Chandavkl and I shared a number of wonderful conversations with him during our four meals together. Mr. Leong came to the United States in 1940 as a 19 year old, survived as part of the fourth wave that landed on Normandy beach, and learned the restaurant business in New Orleans, Philadelphia and Pensacola before setting up shop in Springfield. He ignored the advice of his Chinese friends in San Francisco who said it was silly to try to operate his business in Springfield. He overcame the adversity of applying for a loan to open his first restaurant in Springfield and being met with racial epithets by the bank officer who turned him down. He was resourceful in getting his Caucasian businessman friend to co-sign on the loan that enabled him to set up shop. And it was his genius to create a Chinese dish that reflected local tastes and has become the signature dish for the entire city.
As to the cashew chicken itself, it definitely is unlike anything I've ever eaten in a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, or anywhere else. You might think of it as a deep fried chicken nugget in a brown oyster sauce influenced gravy topped with cashew slices. Or perhaps like orange chicken but with a salty, not sweet sauce. But really, we had the dish at five different restaurants, including Canton Inn, Chinese Chef and Mr. Yen's, and each was different in its own way, and it's not surprising that the dish has become so popular throughout the Springfield area.
As for the possibility of the dish being served in Los Angeles, which I've been asked by both Springfield ex-pats in Los Angeles and people in Springfield alike, I have to say I doubt it. Heck, we don't even have Manhattan food cart style Halal chicken rice in Los Angeles and you have to really scramble to find New England style lobster rolls, so the chances of this kind of regional dish making it here in Los Angeles are remote. But the t-shirt I received in Springfield says it all. Springfield Bucket List - Cashew chicken with an "x" in the box. That's certainly the truth for me.
So when Clarissa Wei first interviewed me for her L. A.Weekly Squid Ink article, and she asked me what Chinese restaurant I hadn't been to that I would most like to go to, it didn't take deep thought on my part to reply it would be someplace in Springfield, Missouri to try their cashew chicken which was deep fried and served with gravy, rather than the typical pan fried version. Little did I realize that weeks later I would be in Springfield sampling five varieties of that dish, as the guest of Susan Wade and the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau. To my surprise, I learned that there were direct flights between Los Angeles and Springfield, albeit only three days a week, on Allegiant Airlines. Also when I discovered that the airport in Springfield was called Springfield-Branson airport, that helped explain the existence of that direct route.
While the reason for the trip was the Springfield cashew chicken, the city of Springfield itself turned out to be most interesting, and in some regards, contradictory. In all of my post civil rights era travels, I have never seen an urban area so homogenous as Springfield. The entire time in Springfield I saw only three African Americans, and they were all hotel guests. All of the hotel maids were white. I saw no Latinos, and the only Asians I saw were inside of the Chinese restaurants. Yet, in this city of under 200,000 residents there are almost 100 Chinese restaurants. Springfield has the highest per capital density of Chinese restaurants of any city in the United States. The reason, in part, if not exclusively, is cashew chicken. Most every Chinese restaurant in town notes the availability of cashew chicken on their exterior signage. Vietnamese restaurants serve cashew chicken. I presume Korean and Japanese restaurants also serve cashew chicken. And non-Asian restaurants serve cashew chicken. Springfield cashew chicken is truly a phenonmenon in this city, where the other regional Chinese American dishes are merely oddities or varieties.
And this is not the only contradiction about Springfield. We were fortunate that among the 100 Chinese restaurants in town, we were taken immediately on arrival at Springfield Airport to Creasian Restaurant, which based on the name, I wasn't even sure served Chinese food. Consequently, when we went inside and the owner asked whether we would like to order off of the Chinese menu, as opposed to the regular menu, I was absolutely floored. Who would expect a Chinese menu in a town whose only Chinese population appeared to be a small number of Chinese restaurant workers? But there on the Chinese menu were Guilin rice noodles, cumin beef, marinated beef Chiu Chow style, braised whole fish, and a couple dozen other traditional dishes. The reason for the separate menu was that the restaurant was close to the Missouri State University campus, which unbeknownst to me has a sizable enrollment of overseas Chinese students. This just reinforced a corollary rule which I had discovered over the years that cities without a significant resident Chinese population can still support authentic Chinese restaurants if there is a large college campus with Chinese students nearby.
While we did have a taste of Springfield cashew chicken at Creasian, the marquee event (literally, since they put my name on the marquee outside the restaurant) was lunch at Leong's Asian Diner, owned by Wing Leong, the son of David Leong, who invented Springfield cashew chicken almost 50 years ago back in 1963. It may have seemed disconcerting to have to eat lunch with cameras from the local NBC television outlet rolling, and still cameras flashing away. But hey, we're from Hollywood, and Brad Pitt (who happens to come from Springfield) lives in our neighborhood near the Hollywood sign, so we're used to the attention. Besides the delicious cashew chicken, we also were treated to a tasty and inventive dish of lop cheung lo mein, Japanese udon soup with fish cake and pork belly, and siu mai with an interesting twist of a small shrimp on top.
Yet, the highlight of the trip for me turned out not to be the cashew chicken. It was meeting with 92 year old David Leong, the Godfather of Springfield cashew chicken whose proteges prepare the dish throughout the city of Springfield. Though he spoke a slightly different dialect than ours (and I only include myself in "ours" because I do speak a little bit of pidgin Toishanese), Mrs. Chandavkl and I shared a number of wonderful conversations with him during our four meals together. Mr. Leong came to the United States in 1940 as a 19 year old, survived as part of the fourth wave that landed on Normandy beach, and learned the restaurant business in New Orleans, Philadelphia and Pensacola before setting up shop in Springfield. He ignored the advice of his Chinese friends in San Francisco who said it was silly to try to operate his business in Springfield. He overcame the adversity of applying for a loan to open his first restaurant in Springfield and being met with racial epithets by the bank officer who turned him down. He was resourceful in getting his Caucasian businessman friend to co-sign on the loan that enabled him to set up shop. And it was his genius to create a Chinese dish that reflected local tastes and has become the signature dish for the entire city.
As to the cashew chicken itself, it definitely is unlike anything I've ever eaten in a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, or anywhere else. You might think of it as a deep fried chicken nugget in a brown oyster sauce influenced gravy topped with cashew slices. Or perhaps like orange chicken but with a salty, not sweet sauce. But really, we had the dish at five different restaurants, including Canton Inn, Chinese Chef and Mr. Yen's, and each was different in its own way, and it's not surprising that the dish has become so popular throughout the Springfield area.
As for the possibility of the dish being served in Los Angeles, which I've been asked by both Springfield ex-pats in Los Angeles and people in Springfield alike, I have to say I doubt it. Heck, we don't even have Manhattan food cart style Halal chicken rice in Los Angeles and you have to really scramble to find New England style lobster rolls, so the chances of this kind of regional dish making it here in Los Angeles are remote. But the t-shirt I received in Springfield says it all. Springfield Bucket List - Cashew chicken with an "x" in the box. That's certainly the truth for me.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Roots of Authentic Chinese Food in the San Gabriel Valley
Today the San Gabriel Valley is synonymous with its large Asian communities and the many hundreds of authentic Chinese restaurants representing multiple regional cuisines spanning from Monterey Park to San Gabriel to Rowland Heights. But it wasn't always that way. For over a century, due to the U.S. immigration laws barring most persons of Chinese descent from immigrating to America, the vast majority of Chinese Americans were us Toishanese with our roots in the rural villages outside of Canton. Our food was kind of boring and generally unrepresentative of Chinese food, though that's what America knew as Chinese food. And housing discrimination kept us largely bottled in various enclaves throughout the Los Angeles area, such as South Central Los Angeles and El Sereno on the eastside, with Asians (then called Orientals) not often seen in many suburban and outlying communities. While there was a significant Asian presence in the semi-rural agricultural San Gabriel Valley of the earlier 20th century, when that area urbanized in the mid-20th century there was no particular significant Chinese presence. Indeed, little or no Asian presence in a particular community was often the norm in mid-century Los Angeles. I remember cities such as Inglewood, Glendale and South Pasadena all being unabashedly 100 percent lily white even into the mid-1960s.
So how did the San Gabriel Valley and its wealth of authentic Chinese food come to be such an Asian food mecca? The obvious trigger was the mid-1960s change in immigration laws which began to allow large numbers of people to immigrate to the United States from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and eventually mainland China. And the literature credits visionary Chinese immigrant real estate developers in the 1970s and 1980s with founding the Asian community by selling Monterey Park as the "Chinese Beverly Hills" and using similar marketing slogans in campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan. But before these watershed events there was an important initial step in the Asianization of the San Gabriel Valley.
Growing up Chinese in Los Angeles in the early 1960s was a far cry from from today's world, something my children and their generation would not recognize. For one thing there weren't that many of us--we were well under one percent of the population. There was still residual racial discrimination against Asian Americans. I remember going with my parents while they were looking to buy a house in the Viewpark area of central Los Angeles (affectionately referred to by some as "Pill Hill" because of the concentration of Jewish and other Caucasian physicians living in the neighborhood), and hearing my dad being advised by the real estate broker to not even think about making an offer on a particular house, because all of the residents on the block had made a pact to keep their street white only. And there was workplace discrimination in many industries. For example, as my dad found out, certified public accounting firms would did not hire minorities or women. There was also employment discrimination against people who didn't speak unaccented English. That's one reason why I don't speak Chinese, as my parents were afraid that sending me to Chinese school to learn Chinese would affect my ability to speak perfect English and get a job.
Even in the early 1960s most of the Chinese population in Los Angeles was Toishanese in origin and significantly American born, as the initial post-World War II loosening of restrictions on Chinese immigration to America had yet to alter the demographics, with the real change in the mix of the Chinese populace being still a few years off. But it was 1962 and some things were changing on the civil rights front, so my family was able to move into one part of Viewpark. But more importantly, something was happening on the eastside. All of a sudden starting around 1964, a number of our eastside Toishanese family friends moved to Monterey Park, and specifically to the newly built Monterey Highlands community. (Apparently numerous Japanese Americans also moved into the neighborhood from places like Boyle Heights and El Sereno.) We drove up to visit our family friends and saw new houses in a lovely hillside community, not too far from their familiar east L.A. haunts. Based on my vague recollections of the real estate markets at that time, those houses probably were priced in the $20,000 range. This was the perfect place for a Chinese American community to hatch.
However it took a while for real Chinese food to come to the Monterey Park area. Yes, the Los Angeles Chinese population swelled in the late 1960s with an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong, thanks to the 1965 changes to the immigration law, but it's not like these new immigrants immediately made their way to Monterey Park. In the late 1960s and early 1970s you could sample the more modern style of Cantonese food brought by these new immigrants in L.A. Chinatown at places like Phoenix Inn, and find more progressive types of dim sum at Grandview Gardens. Heck, we'd drive to San Francisco to visit the iconic Nam Yuen in Chinatown, which also caught the new wave. But even into the mid-1970s, the primary option for Chinese food in Monterey Park was probably the old style Lum's Cantonese on Atlantic Blvd. Even Paul's Kitchen wouldn't open up its Monterey Park outpost for another few years. Eventually though, the new wave of immigrant Chinese did follow the steps of the Toishanese vanguard and found their way to Monterey Park.
To the best of my recollection, it wasn't until 1976 when Kin Kwok opened up at 500 W. Garvey in Monterey Park, with its thin Chinese egg noodles and other modern Hong Kong style dishes, that the tide of immigration that began a decade earlier would make its culinary mark on the San Gabriel Valley. And it would be almost another decade before the San Gabriel Valley would fully wrest the Chinese food mantel away from Los Angeles Chinatown.
So how did the San Gabriel Valley and its wealth of authentic Chinese food come to be such an Asian food mecca? The obvious trigger was the mid-1960s change in immigration laws which began to allow large numbers of people to immigrate to the United States from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and eventually mainland China. And the literature credits visionary Chinese immigrant real estate developers in the 1970s and 1980s with founding the Asian community by selling Monterey Park as the "Chinese Beverly Hills" and using similar marketing slogans in campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan. But before these watershed events there was an important initial step in the Asianization of the San Gabriel Valley.
Growing up Chinese in Los Angeles in the early 1960s was a far cry from from today's world, something my children and their generation would not recognize. For one thing there weren't that many of us--we were well under one percent of the population. There was still residual racial discrimination against Asian Americans. I remember going with my parents while they were looking to buy a house in the Viewpark area of central Los Angeles (affectionately referred to by some as "Pill Hill" because of the concentration of Jewish and other Caucasian physicians living in the neighborhood), and hearing my dad being advised by the real estate broker to not even think about making an offer on a particular house, because all of the residents on the block had made a pact to keep their street white only. And there was workplace discrimination in many industries. For example, as my dad found out, certified public accounting firms would did not hire minorities or women. There was also employment discrimination against people who didn't speak unaccented English. That's one reason why I don't speak Chinese, as my parents were afraid that sending me to Chinese school to learn Chinese would affect my ability to speak perfect English and get a job.
Even in the early 1960s most of the Chinese population in Los Angeles was Toishanese in origin and significantly American born, as the initial post-World War II loosening of restrictions on Chinese immigration to America had yet to alter the demographics, with the real change in the mix of the Chinese populace being still a few years off. But it was 1962 and some things were changing on the civil rights front, so my family was able to move into one part of Viewpark. But more importantly, something was happening on the eastside. All of a sudden starting around 1964, a number of our eastside Toishanese family friends moved to Monterey Park, and specifically to the newly built Monterey Highlands community. (Apparently numerous Japanese Americans also moved into the neighborhood from places like Boyle Heights and El Sereno.) We drove up to visit our family friends and saw new houses in a lovely hillside community, not too far from their familiar east L.A. haunts. Based on my vague recollections of the real estate markets at that time, those houses probably were priced in the $20,000 range. This was the perfect place for a Chinese American community to hatch.
However it took a while for real Chinese food to come to the Monterey Park area. Yes, the Los Angeles Chinese population swelled in the late 1960s with an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong, thanks to the 1965 changes to the immigration law, but it's not like these new immigrants immediately made their way to Monterey Park. In the late 1960s and early 1970s you could sample the more modern style of Cantonese food brought by these new immigrants in L.A. Chinatown at places like Phoenix Inn, and find more progressive types of dim sum at Grandview Gardens. Heck, we'd drive to San Francisco to visit the iconic Nam Yuen in Chinatown, which also caught the new wave. But even into the mid-1970s, the primary option for Chinese food in Monterey Park was probably the old style Lum's Cantonese on Atlantic Blvd. Even Paul's Kitchen wouldn't open up its Monterey Park outpost for another few years. Eventually though, the new wave of immigrant Chinese did follow the steps of the Toishanese vanguard and found their way to Monterey Park.
To the best of my recollection, it wasn't until 1976 when Kin Kwok opened up at 500 W. Garvey in Monterey Park, with its thin Chinese egg noodles and other modern Hong Kong style dishes, that the tide of immigration that began a decade earlier would make its culinary mark on the San Gabriel Valley. And it would be almost another decade before the San Gabriel Valley would fully wrest the Chinese food mantel away from Los Angeles Chinatown.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
So How Far Would You Drive For A Meal?
I have a friend who lives in Monterey Park, in the heart of the Chinese food empire, and who is a big fan of Chinese food. She also won't drive more than a mile away from home for food. While that still gives her a decent array of Chinese restaurants to choose from, it also eliminates probably 95 percent of the Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley, and correspondingly most of the best restaurants there.
On the other hand, there are virtually no limits on where I travel in search of food, which led me to wonder how exactly what was the furthest I've driven for food and how far other people might be willing to drive. Now I don't mean vacations that are devoted to or inspired by food, such as travelling to New Orleans or New York to sample various examples of the cuisine there.. Rather how far would you drive from a fixed point in search of a single meal? In my case it was 150 miles one way, 300 miles round trip.
As far as a single meal is considered, the furthest I travelled was 150 miles from Naples, Florida to St. Petersburg, Florida, plus the 150 miles back. And this doesn't count the 110 miles I drove from Miami to Naples earlier the same day. Here's what happened. A few years ago we had a firm meeting in Naples, FL, but the closest airport I could fly to was Miami. After landing in Miami I headed to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, where I grabbed a copy of the local Chinese newspaper which apparently covered all of Florida. Even though I don't read Chinese, I find that Chinese language newspapers are a great source for finding authentic Chinese restaurants in strange cities, and the ads always include the English name and street address. Anyway as I went through the Miami newspaper an advertisement for a Hong Kong style Chinese restaurant in St. Petersburg caught my eye. I had previously visited the adjoining city of Tampa where at the time I had great difficulty locating any Chinese restaurants at all, let alone anything good or authentic, so I was totally intrigued by the prospect of something authentic in St. Pete. So the next morning I drove from Miami to my hotel in Naples, checked in, and then immediately dashed out to drive to St. Petersburg and back. By California standards, the food at Lucky Star Hong Kong wasn't particularly good, but it was surely much better than anything I ate while I was in Naples.
Honorable mention for my longest drive goes to the time when I was attending a meeting in Monterey, California. Having a long lunch break I decided to drive to Silicon Valley for lunch. Yeah, that was only 75 miles one way and a 150 mile round trip. But I enjoyed the lunch adventure so much that I also drove back from Monterey to Silicon Valley that same night for dinner, which matches the same 300 daily mileage on the Florida trip. And not quite as ambitious was the 90 miles drive from Chicago to West Allis, Wisconsin, to eat at Fortune Chinese Restaurant (which incidentally was quite good). This was a perplexing one in that I had assumed some kind of suburban Chinese community must have developed in this Milwaukee suburb, akin to Monterey Park in California, to be able to support an authentic Chinese restaurant. However, when I got there and chatted up the owner, I asked how many Chinese lived in the Milwaukee area. He said about a hundred. Is that enough to justify an authentic Chinese restaurant?
Now if you count same day driving trips for multiple meals, my driving range is further. For example, a few weeks before 9/11, I flew from Los Angeles to Washington D.C., landing after 4pm eastern time. I immediately hopped in my rental car and headed to Philadelphia, where I hit up Philadelphia Chinatown. (You have to do things like that to reach 6,000 Chinese restaurants.) I finally got to my D.C. hotel a little before midnight. But my longest driving adventure was flying from Los Angeles to Dallas, landing around noontime, getting my rental car and driving to Houston, a one way drive of over 250 miles. I then headed to Houston's "Chinatown" on Bellaire Blvd., made the rounds, and drove back to Dallas, arriving back sometime after midnight. This time I almost bit off more than I could chew because I didn't account for arriving in Houston at the start of rush hour. For those of you not familiar with that city, they have traffic congestion which can hold its own with Los Angeles, so arriving there at the beginning of rush hour and leaving before rush hour ended led to an unplanned and frustrating encounter with traffic on top of a 500 mile plus round trip after a three hour airplane flight.
On the other hand, there are virtually no limits on where I travel in search of food, which led me to wonder how exactly what was the furthest I've driven for food and how far other people might be willing to drive. Now I don't mean vacations that are devoted to or inspired by food, such as travelling to New Orleans or New York to sample various examples of the cuisine there.. Rather how far would you drive from a fixed point in search of a single meal? In my case it was 150 miles one way, 300 miles round trip.
As far as a single meal is considered, the furthest I travelled was 150 miles from Naples, Florida to St. Petersburg, Florida, plus the 150 miles back. And this doesn't count the 110 miles I drove from Miami to Naples earlier the same day. Here's what happened. A few years ago we had a firm meeting in Naples, FL, but the closest airport I could fly to was Miami. After landing in Miami I headed to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, where I grabbed a copy of the local Chinese newspaper which apparently covered all of Florida. Even though I don't read Chinese, I find that Chinese language newspapers are a great source for finding authentic Chinese restaurants in strange cities, and the ads always include the English name and street address. Anyway as I went through the Miami newspaper an advertisement for a Hong Kong style Chinese restaurant in St. Petersburg caught my eye. I had previously visited the adjoining city of Tampa where at the time I had great difficulty locating any Chinese restaurants at all, let alone anything good or authentic, so I was totally intrigued by the prospect of something authentic in St. Pete. So the next morning I drove from Miami to my hotel in Naples, checked in, and then immediately dashed out to drive to St. Petersburg and back. By California standards, the food at Lucky Star Hong Kong wasn't particularly good, but it was surely much better than anything I ate while I was in Naples.
Honorable mention for my longest drive goes to the time when I was attending a meeting in Monterey, California. Having a long lunch break I decided to drive to Silicon Valley for lunch. Yeah, that was only 75 miles one way and a 150 mile round trip. But I enjoyed the lunch adventure so much that I also drove back from Monterey to Silicon Valley that same night for dinner, which matches the same 300 daily mileage on the Florida trip. And not quite as ambitious was the 90 miles drive from Chicago to West Allis, Wisconsin, to eat at Fortune Chinese Restaurant (which incidentally was quite good). This was a perplexing one in that I had assumed some kind of suburban Chinese community must have developed in this Milwaukee suburb, akin to Monterey Park in California, to be able to support an authentic Chinese restaurant. However, when I got there and chatted up the owner, I asked how many Chinese lived in the Milwaukee area. He said about a hundred. Is that enough to justify an authentic Chinese restaurant?
Now if you count same day driving trips for multiple meals, my driving range is further. For example, a few weeks before 9/11, I flew from Los Angeles to Washington D.C., landing after 4pm eastern time. I immediately hopped in my rental car and headed to Philadelphia, where I hit up Philadelphia Chinatown. (You have to do things like that to reach 6,000 Chinese restaurants.) I finally got to my D.C. hotel a little before midnight. But my longest driving adventure was flying from Los Angeles to Dallas, landing around noontime, getting my rental car and driving to Houston, a one way drive of over 250 miles. I then headed to Houston's "Chinatown" on Bellaire Blvd., made the rounds, and drove back to Dallas, arriving back sometime after midnight. This time I almost bit off more than I could chew because I didn't account for arriving in Houston at the start of rush hour. For those of you not familiar with that city, they have traffic congestion which can hold its own with Los Angeles, so arriving there at the beginning of rush hour and leaving before rush hour ended led to an unplanned and frustrating encounter with traffic on top of a 500 mile plus round trip after a three hour airplane flight.
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