American Chinese cuisine refers to the style of food served by many
Chinese restaurants in the
United States. This type of cooking typically caters to
Western tastes, and differs significantly from the
traditional Chinese cuisine.
In the 19th century, Chinese in San Francisco operated sophisticated and
sometimes luxurious restaurants patronized mainly by Chinese, while
restaurants in smaller towns served what their customers requested,
ranging from pork chop sandwiches and apple pie to beans and eggs. They
developed American Chinese cuisine when they modified their food to suit
a more Western palate. First catering to miners and railroad
workers,they established eateries in towns where Chinese food was
completely unknown. These adapted local ingredients and catered to their
customers' tastes.
[1] In the process, cooks adapted southern Chinese dishes such as
chop suey,
and developed a style of Chinese food not found in China. Restaurants
(along with Chinese laundries) provided an ethnic niche for small
businesses at a time when the Chinese people were excluded from most
jobs in the wage economy by racial discrimination or lack of language
fluency.
Differences from native Chinese cuisines
American Chinese food typically treats
vegetables as a side dish or
garnish while cuisines of China emphasize vegetables. This can be seen in the use of
carrots and
tomatoes. Native Chinese cuisine makes frequent use of Asian
leaf vegetables like
bok choy and
kai-lan and puts a greater emphasis on fresh
meat and
seafood.
Stir frying,
pan frying, and
deep frying tend to be the most common
Chinese cooking techniques used in this cuisine, which are all easily done using a
wok. The food also has a reputation for high levels of
MSG to enhance the flavor. The symptoms of a so-called
Chinese restaurant syndrome
or "Chinese food syndrome" have been attributed to a glutamate
sensitivity, but carefully controlled scientific studies have not
demonstrated such negative effects of glutamate.
Market forces and customer demand have encouraged many restaurants to offer "MSG Free" or "No MSG" menus.
Carryout Chinese food is typically served in a
paper carton with a wire bail.
American Chinese cuisine often uses ingredients not native and very
rarely used in China. One such example is the common use of western
broccoli (xīlán, 西蘭) instead of Chinese broccoli (
jie lan, 芥蘭 jièlán) in American Chinese cuisine. Occasionally western broccoli is also referred to as
sai lan fa (in Cantonese) in order not to confuse the two styles of broccoli.
[citation needed]
Among Chinese speakers, however, it is typically understood that one is
referring to the leafy vegetable unless otherwise specified. This is
also the case with the words for
carrot (
luo buo or lo bac) or (
hong luo buo hong meaning red) and
onion (
cong).
Lo bac, in Cantonese, refers to the
daikon,
a large, pungent white radish. The orange western carrot is known in
some areas of China as "foreign Daikon" (or more properly
hung lo bac in Cantonese,
hung meaning "red"). When the word for onion,
chung, is used, it is understood that one is referring to "green onions" (otherwise known to English-speakers as
scallions or
spring onions,
green onions). The many-layered onion common in the United States is called
yang cong.
This translates as "western onion". These names make it evident that
the American broccoli, carrot, and onion are not indigenous to China and
therefore are less common in the cuisines of China. Since
tomatoes are
New World
plants, they are also fairly new to China and Chinese cuisine.
Tomato-based sauces can be found in some American Chinese dishes such as
the "beef and tomato". Hence, if a dish contains significant amounts of
any of these ingredients, it has most likely been Westernized. Even
more divergent are American stir-fry dishes inspired by Chinese food,
that may contain brown rice instead of white, or those with grated
cheese; milk products are almost always absent from traditional Chinese
food.
Ming Tsai, the owner of the Blue Ginger restaurant in
Wellesley, Massachusetts, said that American Chinese restaurants typically try to have food representing 3-5 regions of China at one time, have
chop suey,
or have "fried vegetables and some protein in a thick sauce," "eight
different sweet and sour dishes," or "a whole page of 20 different chow
meins or fried rice dishes." Tsai said "Chinese-American cuisine is
“dumbed-down” Chinese food. It’s adapted... to be blander, thicker and
sweeter for the American public."
Most American Chinese establishments cater to non-Chinese customers
with menus written in English or containing pictures. If separate
Chinese-language menus are available, they typically feature delicacies
like
liver, chicken feet or other meat dishes that might deter Western customers. In New York's Chinatown, the restaurants were known
for having a "phantom" menu with food preferred by ethnic Chinese, but believed to be disliked by non-Chinese Americans.
