Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us. But that's okay because we
Speaker 2: can keep all the Chinese food to ourselves. I'll have
Speaker 2: to share with Jerry. And this is stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: That's right. A lot of caveats on this, can I
Speaker 1: list off a few?
Speaker 2: Sure? All right?
Speaker 1: First of all, this is going to be a very
Speaker 1: broad overview of a cuisine that we could probably do
Speaker 1: like a ten part at least episode series on.
Speaker 2: I would say eleven, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe eleven. So just you know, have your expectations set
Speaker 1: going into this one. When you talk about Chinese food,
Speaker 1: there's a lot there. We are going to do our
Speaker 1: best to pronounce things correctly. I looked up a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff and I'm doing my best. But some of
Speaker 1: this stuff is hard for my dumb American mouth, and
Speaker 1: a lot of this is going to be I mean,
Speaker 1: it's mainly about sort of you know, Chinese food, although
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about origins and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: origin stories. It's mainly like what Chinese food has become
Speaker 1: here in the States. Although we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about other countries later, but it's through our lens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. That was great Vat City right.
Speaker 1: There, Caaveat City, David Bowie, great song.
Speaker 2: So you said something that we were going to largely
Speaker 2: focus on American Chinese cuisine, and Laura helped us with this,
Speaker 2: and she makes a really good point that Chinese food
Speaker 2: is not just one thing. Yeah. And the reason why
Speaker 2: it's not just one thing, or one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why is because it's been exported all over the globe.
Speaker 2: Anywhere that Chinese people traveled, usually for work to immigrate,
Speaker 2: they brought their food with them and introduced it to
Speaker 2: wherever they were, and then over time, the local flavors
Speaker 2: and tastes and ingredients from that place melded with the
Speaker 2: Chinese food, and a new type of chines Use food
Speaker 2: was born. And America is no exception to that. So
Speaker 2: we have American Chinese food. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And do you know what I love about that? This
Speaker 1: whole story is like everywhere Chinese people went, they were like,
Speaker 1: get a load of this, yeah, and everyone was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, and it took yeah
Speaker 1: big time. I mean, I I have no examples of
Speaker 1: places where Chinese immigrants had brought their food and people
Speaker 1: are like, nah, no, thanks right.
Speaker 2: The only one I could find was Belize.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know you're kidding. I'm not going to fall
Speaker 1: for it. And the reason why is because, I mean,
Speaker 1: I can live on many, many, many cuisines from Asia.
Speaker 1: I love Japanese food, I love Thai, I love Vietnamese,
Speaker 1: I loved Filipino, like Korean food. I love it all.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, good old fashioned
Speaker 1: like Chinese takeout is just one of my favorite all
Speaker 1: time things since I was a kid.
Speaker 2: Very nice. Yeah, that's what I grew up on too.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until I was an adult that I was like,
Speaker 2: there's other kinds of Asian food out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's kind of what you and if you
Speaker 1: grew up in the seventies and eighties, that was sort
Speaker 1: of the first, you know, probably one of the first,
Speaker 1: you know, cuisines from another country you ever ate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you know.
Speaker 1: Maybe Mexican food wasn't that big back then. That's only
Speaker 1: become more popular, I think in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: Even even still as a kid, the Mexican food I
Speaker 2: was exposed to is chi cheese for God's Sake.
Speaker 1: Or Del Taco.
Speaker 2: We didn't even have that. That was really But I
Speaker 2: think maybe even before Chinese food, I was exposed to
Speaker 2: Japanese hibachi because there was this nice restaurant in Toledo
Speaker 2: called in Japanese. Yeah, and we would go to that,
Speaker 2: and I think I might have had that before Chinese food.
Speaker 2: But regardless, I love Chinese food too. I would say
Speaker 2: my top two are Japanese followed by Indian, but Chinese
Speaker 2: is definitely up there in top five or so.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I'm a simple guy, like pork, fried
Speaker 1: rice and an egg roll. And I'm just now realizing
Speaker 1: we're not even going to talk about egg rolls in
Speaker 1: this and I'm panicking all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that didn't strike me until you just said that too,
Speaker 2: And although my voice doesn't betray that, I'm definitely scared
Speaker 2: right now as well.
Speaker 1: All Right, you know, hey, let's do let's do a
Speaker 1: shorty on eggrolls. Maybe we'll pair it.
Speaker 2: With this good idea. All right, So we said that
Speaker 2: Chinese food is not just one thing because it's been
Speaker 2: exported globally, but even in China, Chinese food is not
Speaker 2: just one thing. And they divide Chinese cuisine into eight
Speaker 2: different regions. Why did you tell them what the regions are, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I'm just realizing I didn't look up a couple of these,
Speaker 1: so maybe you did. But the regions as agreed upon
Speaker 1: right now are and they have different names for each one.
Speaker 1: So the first grouping is Sichuan, sa Chuan or I
Speaker 1: didn't look up c h U a n.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're braver than me. I was just gonna
Speaker 2: say the first ones that are they're mostly known by
Speaker 2: in the US.
Speaker 1: Oh, we can do that, then that's much easier. So
Speaker 1: let's go with Sechuan, Cantonese, Hunan, which is also Jong.
Speaker 1: Let me see here, we have Shangdong, we have jung Su,
Speaker 1: we have oh, I did look that one up Jong.
Speaker 2: Very nice. Fujian I've always heard as Fujian, but that
Speaker 2: sounds kind of like an American version.
Speaker 1: Well I heard it pronounces if it had a y,
Speaker 1: And they're almost like few okay, uh few Fujian okay.
Speaker 1: And then what's the last one there on? Wi?
Speaker 2: Yes, And some people added at least a ninth one
Speaker 2: with sean Ji, and they're all a little different there.
Speaker 2: They bear a lot of similarities. A lot of them
Speaker 2: love sweet and sour, A lot of them are heavy
Speaker 2: on the salt or umami, some like sauces. But one
Speaker 2: of the big differences, or some of the big differences
Speaker 2: is like where this area is located. Some of them
Speaker 2: are coastal, so they incorporate a lot of seafood. Some
Speaker 2: of them are colder, so there's like a lot of
Speaker 2: soups and heavy noodles and like really really heavy flavors.
Speaker 2: And then others are like, hey, we love panting around
Speaker 2: the wilderness and catching deer, so they incorporate like local
Speaker 2: wildlife into it. And usually what I've seen is when
Speaker 2: when there's a lot of wildlife involved or game involved
Speaker 2: in the recipes, they tend to let that flavor stand
Speaker 2: on its own. It's not like heavy with sauces. That
Speaker 2: kind of cuisine isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they how they achieve spices kind of different
Speaker 1: depending where you are too. Sometimes it's those numbing Chinese peppercorns.
Speaker 1: You can't do those, No. Yeah, I've learned to eat
Speaker 1: a lot of spicy food over the last like five
Speaker 1: or six years and increase my spice level, but there's
Speaker 1: something about the numbing peppercorn that's I have a hard
Speaker 1: time with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's natural.
Speaker 1: It's tough, but I can. You know, it depends on
Speaker 1: the cuisine other sort, like the chilies that they use,
Speaker 1: I can. I can handle that pretty well. Well. It's hot,
Speaker 1: but I like it. And sometimes it's just the chili flakes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the little red chilis they'll sometimes serve hole with
Speaker 2: the disc Yes, I can handle those two for sure. Cornible, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's tough. Yeah. And what I mean by handling those
Speaker 2: little red chili peppers is that I eat around them.
Speaker 1: Same here.
Speaker 2: So the cuisine that most people in the United States
Speaker 2: are familiar with is Cantonese. That's definitely like the first
Speaker 2: kind of Chinese food that Americans adopted, and that has
Speaker 2: a lot to do with the first wave of migrants
Speaker 2: that came over to the United States. A lot of
Speaker 2: them were from Canton. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: the first Chinese restaurant to open in all of North America,
Speaker 2: I'm including Canada and Mexico here was called Canton and
Speaker 2: it was in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, if you've ever had dim sum,
Speaker 1: that's Cantonese. If you've never had dim sum. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. It's I hate to say like because it
Speaker 1: used to annoy me when a certain person I knew
Speaker 1: used to say like tortillas or like American bread, and
Speaker 1: I was like, no, they're just tortillas. Who said that,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you. I'll tell you offline. But
Speaker 1: I was going to say, like, if you've ever had tapas,
Speaker 1: dim sum is kind of like the Chinese version of tapas,
Speaker 1: but it really is just dim sum. But it's like
Speaker 1: shared small plates, a lot of steam stuff, but also
Speaker 1: fried stuff, baked stuff, a lot of dumplings, right, a
Speaker 1: lot of dumplings. You know. Just go to New York,
Speaker 1: go to hopkey, get some dim sum and thank me later.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's amazing, I will thank you later. I've never
Speaker 2: really had dim sum actually, and I think about it.
Speaker 1: Oh boy. I mean, I like all kinds of food
Speaker 1: in Chinatown and New York, but dim sum is definitely
Speaker 1: one of them. But I'll also go to just the
Speaker 1: you know, because if you're staying in a hotel, you
Speaker 1: can't get these huge orders and just like take tons
Speaker 1: and tons of food with you, right, So my move
Speaker 1: now is generally just to pop down there. By myself
Speaker 1: and get a couple of gigantic egg rolls.
Speaker 2: You and the egg rolls. Huh wait, wait, we can't
Speaker 2: talk about that. We have to save it for short stuff.
Speaker 2: We forget I even said.
Speaker 1: That, but you did mention. San Francisco in eighteen forty
Speaker 1: nine was the first operating restaurant in North America, and
Speaker 1: by eighteen fifty one, when the population of San Francisco
Speaker 1: was but thirty four thousand and change, there were seven
Speaker 1: full time Chinese restaurants open, which you know, for that
Speaker 1: few people is pretty good for that time period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not bad.
Speaker 1: Like people liked it clearly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's a book that is going to come
Speaker 2: up or we're going to draw from a lot in
Speaker 2: this episode is called from Canton Restaurant to Panda Express
Speaker 2: A History of Chinese Food in the United States by
Speaker 2: Hi Ming Lao and Leo makes this this point that
Speaker 2: a lot of like we tend to equate Chinese migrants
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, especially to California, with like railroad workers,
Speaker 2: maybe miners. We have like a certain idea of what
Speaker 2: the Chinese migrants were at the time, and that is
Speaker 2: a I mean, it's pretty stereotypical. It's also pretty narrow.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of Chinese migrants who made their
Speaker 2: way over just to feed the people in the Gold
Speaker 2: Rush of eighteen forty nine in California. They were like,
Speaker 2: people are going to need food, and we're going to
Speaker 2: knock their socks off with Chinese food. And so they
Speaker 2: started to go and open Chinese restaurants. And apparently you
Speaker 2: could pick out a Chinese restaurant pretty easily because they
Speaker 2: hung yellow flags outside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is also sort of the kind of
Speaker 1: right away when racist feelings toward Chinese immigrants started, racist
Speaker 1: feelings toward their food even started arising out of the gate.
Speaker 1: In Lao's book, there were some a couple of examples
Speaker 1: that she cited. One was a criminal lawyer defending a
Speaker 1: white client following their race riot in eighteen sixty five
Speaker 1: and told the judge why, sir, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say the racist Chinese name, but they live on rice,
Speaker 1: and sir, they eat it with sticks. And then there
Speaker 1: was a pamphlet from American Federation of Labor President Samuel
Speaker 1: Gompers in nineteen oh two titled Some Reasons for Chinese
Speaker 1: Exclusion colon Meat versus Rice, American manhood versus Asiatic coolism,
Speaker 1: and apparently COOLi is a pejorita term for a low
Speaker 1: age worker. Right, So it's all happening early on.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And it's interesting because and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about immigration and racism, but those two things definitely shaped
Speaker 2: Chinese food in America in some surprising ways as a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, Yeah, for sure. So it turns out
Speaker 2: that the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the United
Speaker 2: States is Pekin without a g noodle parlor and where
Speaker 2: else but Montana, right, And it started out as a
Speaker 2: general store back in nineteen oh nine, but within two
Speaker 2: years they added a noodle parlor, the very same noodle
Speaker 2: parlor that's still opened today. And I guess at some
Speaker 2: point they ran an illegal gambling parlor out of the basement,
Speaker 2: but that has since been turned into an old navy.
Speaker 1: Is that true, because that I could believe. Actually, if
Speaker 1: you you know, I looked at that place to see
Speaker 1: what it looked like, and it looks like a you know,
Speaker 1: a Chinese restaurant and a building of an old West
Speaker 1: Town man exactly what you might think. And there's a
Speaker 1: big neon sign this is chop suey, And I realized
Speaker 1: that chop suey is not a dish I've ever had,
Speaker 1: But chop suey is sort of the beginning of Chinese
Speaker 1: food in America. That's the dish that first sort of
Speaker 1: captured young America's attention. And there's some debates on whether
Speaker 1: or not it's even American in origin. And we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about chop suey right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if I've ever had it either,
Speaker 2: but I think anytime you've ever made like a vague
Speaker 2: Chinese surfry with chicken and vegeta and maybe like some
Speaker 2: sort of thickish sauce, you basically made chop suey. Some
Speaker 2: people say that you can make it with egg, but
Speaker 2: those people are wrong. For the most part, is the
Speaker 2: mixture of meat, vegetables of thick sauce, usually with rice.
Speaker 2: And the name itself not only where it originated, but
Speaker 2: the name itself is debatable what it means. I remember,
Speaker 2: I think I might have learned this from Uncle John's
Speaker 2: bathroom reader, that it meant leftovers in Chinese, so that
Speaker 2: people from China coming to America would see chop suey house,
Speaker 2: and they would think it would say like Leftover's house
Speaker 2: to them. That's not exactly true, but it's not that
Speaker 2: far off.
Speaker 1: No, that's pretty close actually. Because some people say the
Speaker 1: name came from Cantonese t sap top suey sui instead
Speaker 1: of suey. That seems to be an American ice spelling
Speaker 1: which is mixed bits or odds and ends aka probably leftovers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Leau, the author of the book, said that it
Speaker 2: probably comes from chow chop suey or chow chop suey,
Speaker 2: which some people call. It probably comes from the Cantonese
Speaker 2: pronouncing a Mandarin chow's zuei chow meaning stir fry and
Speaker 2: z azui meaning animal intestines. I tend to go with
Speaker 2: the sap sue.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just my take and it's almost meaningless,
Speaker 2: but that's where I'm gonna go with. Since it's up
Speaker 2: for debate.
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I'll be in your camp.
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks.
Speaker 1: At least we can hang out and play cards.
Speaker 2: What do you want to play?
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot of card games. I like
Speaker 1: Jin Rummy.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say gin Rummy too.
Speaker 1: I do love spades. But we need Emily and U
Speaker 1: me to come along.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's fair enough. They probably will anyway if we
Speaker 2: end up in a camp together.
Speaker 1: Because that means zombie apocalypse has happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or else the Russians have invaded all a red
Speaker 2: dawn and you and I are alone in a men's camp,
Speaker 2: which is really just a fenced off drive in Yeah.
Speaker 1: Soon to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's a weird sidetrack a quote that and we're
Speaker 1: going to explain the origins of this quote. But you
Speaker 1: may have heard that Chop Suey is an American is
Speaker 1: as American as pork and beans, and that actually comes
Speaker 1: from a lawsuit from the early nineteen hundreds. In nineteen
Speaker 1: oh four, a guy named lem Sen said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I invented Chop Suey. I made it for a Chinese
Speaker 1: diplomat who visited in eighteen eighty six. And everybody making
Speaker 1: this dishos me money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a bold law suit. Sure, I
Speaker 2: don't even know who he sued.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it everybody, I guess, so.
Speaker 2: Lem Sen versus all Chop Suey chefs, Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 2: he ended up dropping the suit. But The suit left
Speaker 2: a huge mark on America. I mean like it was
Speaker 2: reported on. It made the news for sure, and people
Speaker 2: knew about it. And one reason why it became such
Speaker 2: a big deal is because at the time, as we saw,
Speaker 2: there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. So lem Suenn brought
Speaker 2: his lawsuit in nineteen oh four. The Chinese Exclusion Act
Speaker 2: was passed in eighteen eighty two. It was the first
Speaker 2: time the United States had ever passed an immigration law
Speaker 2: specifically targeted at one nationality. And it also basically laid
Speaker 2: the foundation for exclusionary immigration laws and much tighter immigration
Speaker 2: laws than we'd had before that we still have today.
Speaker 2: But this was super tight. I read when they loosened
Speaker 2: it up. The quota for Chinese immigrants was one hundred
Speaker 2: and four Chinese immigrants per year.
Speaker 1: Really wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And everybody was racist and against Chinese at the time, right, So,
Speaker 2: but people also love Chop Suey by then, I mean
Speaker 2: love Chop Suey. So lem Sen's lawsuit said, hey, you
Speaker 2: can keep loving Chop Suey. I invented this in America.
Speaker 2: It's really an American dish. So you can continue being
Speaker 2: racist against Chinese immigrants while still loving Chop Suey, You're
Speaker 2: welcome America, and America said thank you, get out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he's the one who had the quote it's
Speaker 1: as an American as pork and beans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the lawsuit. I think you said it too.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find that quote. I couldn't find the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: But even if it's not specifically in the lawsuit, it
Speaker 2: definitely seems to have developed out of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But it's possible that it was Chinese in origin initially,
Speaker 1: because apparently there are some dishes from the Pearl River
Speaker 1: Delta that are pretty similar, and some of the earliest
Speaker 1: Chinese migrants to the US were from that area. I
Speaker 1: can't parse out what's so different from Chop suey than
Speaker 1: any stirfry.
Speaker 2: I don't know either. There's a lot of overlap between
Speaker 2: Chinese dishes and including authentic cuisine, Yeah, but especially American Chinese.
Speaker 2: I think it was. It was one of the first.
Speaker 2: It was almost like an umbrella term for all Chinese
Speaker 2: dishes in America at the turn of the last century,
Speaker 2: kind of like smurf but with Chinese food essentially. And
Speaker 2: I think because it was the first, a lot of
Speaker 2: dishes that we recognize as like American Chinese developed out
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. I do know that when I
Speaker 1: was a kid going camping growing up in Georgia, I
Speaker 1: loved nothing more than taking a can of Lachoi. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like veggies and sauce, basically.
Speaker 2: Just sipping on it the whole weekend, a lot of water.
Speaker 1: Justice, Yeah, put it my canteen and you know, making
Speaker 1: some campfire rice and dumping that stuff on top, you know,
Speaker 1: heating it up and dumping it on top. I thought
Speaker 1: it was like the peak of you know, fine cuisine
Speaker 1: in the woods.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I mean that's definitely better than you know,
Speaker 2: a human finger that you found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they were. Lachoi was around since the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties doing that, you know, canned vegetable sauce. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say trick, but you know it's a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I mean that's a great explanation of just
Speaker 2: how crazy people were in America for chop suey. Lachoi
Speaker 2: could pack it and sell for decades this stuff, and
Speaker 2: people were nuts for it. Another sign, apparently, was that
Speaker 2: by the turn of the last century, chop suey houses
Speaker 2: were so popular they'd started to migrate out of Chinatown. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which was a huge deal, and I should say in
Speaker 2: Manhattan specifically. That was a big deal because I think
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people who are like, I'd
Speaker 2: love chop suey, but I don't want to go to Chinatown,
Speaker 2: and these Chinese entrepreneurs said, hey, you don't need to anymore.
Speaker 2: Here we are at I don't know, so ho right.
Speaker 1: Another like pretty startling factoid is that it was in
Speaker 1: well this part isn't. It was in the nineteen forty
Speaker 1: two edition of the US Army Cookbook. But as a result,
Speaker 1: when US troops were stationed overseas in China and Japan
Speaker 1: and World War Two, restaurants would put chop suey on
Speaker 1: the menu to cater to those American soldiers because they
Speaker 1: came in were like, where's the chop suey?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we want a hot hamburger and chopsuit exactly. You
Speaker 2: want to take a break, We're like twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and put it in
Speaker 1: my order for pork fread rice and a girl.
Speaker 2: I'm definitely getting Chinese food for dinner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shot.
Speaker 2: Shot, all right, chuck, So we're back, and we talked
Speaker 2: about how immigration laws and racism against Chinese migrants helped
Speaker 2: shape Chinese food in America. And one of the first
Speaker 2: ways that it did was that eighteen eighty two Chinese
Speaker 2: Exclusion Act actually led to a plethora of much more
Speaker 2: upscale these restaurants. And the reason why is because part
Speaker 2: of that Exclusion Act is that certain kinds of businesses
Speaker 2: could achieve merchant status, or the owners of certain kind
Speaker 2: of businesses they had to be legitimate businesses that were
Speaker 2: considered kind of higher end, and that if you had
Speaker 2: merchant status, you could sponsor relatives to come to the
Speaker 2: United States. And I guess in nineteen fifteen, a court
Speaker 2: case got Chinese restaurants added to that merchant status clause.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this came from a historian named Heather Lee,
Speaker 1: and she makes the cas is like, you know, this
Speaker 1: addition to that list basically meant you were going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of like higher grade chop Suey palaces.
Speaker 1: So the restaurants kind of got nicer, and you had
Speaker 1: to in order to qualify. You also, if you were
Speaker 1: an investor and owner, you had to spend a year
Speaker 1: managing the restaurant as the manager and not like you know,
Speaker 1: working in the kitchen or something like that. And you've needed,
Speaker 1: of course, this had to be thrown in there. You
Speaker 1: needed two white witnesses to vouch for them. But because
Speaker 1: of these strict rules, you got again these these nicer
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants opening up that were qualifying for that merchant status.
Speaker 1: And then you would get investors getting together and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: let's start this restaurant. We'll take turns running it for
Speaker 1: a year and get our family members over here. And
Speaker 1: as a result, I mean, this is not the only reason,
Speaker 1: but this definitely helped Chinese restaurants in the US double
Speaker 1: between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, and again between nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty and nineteen thirty, and by nineteen thirty they had
Speaker 1: overtaken laundries as the largest employers of Chinese workers in
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the first third of the twentieth century there
Speaker 2: was a boom in Chinese restaurants, and in specifically higher
Speaker 2: end Chinese restaurants. And then another boom happened after the
Speaker 2: Immigration and Nationality Act of nineteen sixty five, which greatly
Speaker 2: loosened restrictions on immigration, particularly from China and within a
Speaker 2: decade of that act, the Chinese American population basically doubled,
Speaker 2: which sounds eye popping, but don't forget there was only
Speaker 2: like one hundred and four people coming in a year.
Speaker 2: So it went from like, I don't know, three thousand
Speaker 2: to six thousand in a decade.
Speaker 1: There's more than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely was. But the point is is that
Speaker 2: now you had way more patrons of authentic Chinese restaurants,
Speaker 2: which meant there were more authentic Chinese restaurants, and then
Speaker 2: you also had more people who were ready to open
Speaker 2: and staff more Chinese restaurants, So you had a huge
Speaker 2: boom in Chinese restaurants again in the sixties to the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And there was an article in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen in The New Yorker by Lauren Hilgers, and this
Speaker 1: was eleven years ago, but I imagine it's not completely
Speaker 1: different now. But how the labor arrangements work then and
Speaker 1: probably these days is if there's a Chinese restaurant in
Speaker 1: the US, there's more than forty thousand back then, and
Speaker 1: there's probably a few more now. But that's a lot
Speaker 1: of restaurants generally run by families. But staffed by new immigrants.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are undocumented, a lot of them
Speaker 1: apparently are coming from the Fujian province, and they're providing
Speaker 1: the labor. So what will happen is they'll they'll have
Speaker 1: a restaurant. A new immigrant will come to town, probably
Speaker 1: a hub city. I think they concentrated on New York,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and Chicago for the article, but any major
Speaker 1: city in the US probably, and they'll go to a
Speaker 1: Chinese language employment agency and they'll say, all right, I
Speaker 1: got a job for you. They'll say this in Chinese, though,
Speaker 1: go get on this bus, here's the person's name, here's
Speaker 1: their prone number, go to this restaurant, and you can
Speaker 1: probably get a job there. And that's how they staff
Speaker 1: their restaurants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Chuck, you mentioned the at least in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States. Yeah, which
Speaker 2: is impressive in and of itself, But if you compare
Speaker 2: it to McDonald's, which is you know, the benchmark comparison
Speaker 2: for US. Yeah, there are thirteen six and twenty two
Speaker 2: McDonald's in the United States. Wow, versus forty thousand Chinese restaurants.
Speaker 1: There's probably well, there's not, because we know that number two.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, there's probably fourteen thousand Panda expresses,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's close.
Speaker 1: The long and short of it is was with how
Speaker 1: the staffing arrangement works is these cooks are moving around
Speaker 1: a lot. They'll sometimes work at a place for just
Speaker 1: a few months and go to a different restaurant, maybe
Speaker 1: for better pay. Oftentimes outside of city centers you can
Speaker 1: get paid more, which sort of surprised me. I guess
Speaker 1: it makes sense though, But if you're getting Chinese food
Speaker 1: for years and years from the same place, a lot
Speaker 1: of times there will be a different cook every few months,
Speaker 1: and hopefully you won't even notice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of the reason you won't notice is
Speaker 2: because the immigrants from Fujian. I could not find out
Speaker 2: why the largest waves of migration lately have been coming
Speaker 2: from Fujian, but they are. But they are coming and
Speaker 2: buying Cantonese formerly Cantonese owned restaurants from the Cantonese owners
Speaker 2: who founded them, and they're just keeping the menu the same,
Speaker 2: because again this is American Chinese. Neither one's making the
Speaker 2: cuisine necessarily that you would find in their provinces. In China,
Speaker 2: they're making the American version. So if you have a
Speaker 2: set menu, you're probably any chef's going to be able
Speaker 2: to cook this stuff. I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now we're going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: General So another classic Chinese dish that I've never had.
Speaker 1: Oh really, now, I've never had it. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: i've had it if someone else somewhere and they ordered
Speaker 1: just a ton of food and I was kind of
Speaker 1: just dumping all of it on the plate, which is
Speaker 1: the best way to eat Chinese food. Yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: something I've never ordered myself. I kind of just stick
Speaker 1: to my main order and General So's chicken, is not it?
Speaker 2: It's good. It's a are you just sour? No, it's
Speaker 2: not even sour. It's like sweet and savory.
Speaker 1: It's kind of spicy too, isn't it.
Speaker 2: A little bit? But nothing anybody couldn't handle. I think
Speaker 2: there's usually sesame seeds on it too.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff, yeah, not like kung paw is the
Speaker 1: real spicy one.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and we all know who likes his kung
Speaker 2: pow spicy.
Speaker 1: There's a funny Judge John Hodgman episode about that too.
Speaker 1: There's a funny dad, or at least he thought it
Speaker 1: was funny, and his kids were trying to get him
Speaker 1: to stop making the same joke over and over. Wherever
Speaker 1: this guy goes, it could be like a toll booth worker.
Speaker 1: We'll ask like what kind of ticket he wants, and
Speaker 1: he'll say, I'll have the Kung paw chicken m hm.
Speaker 1: And he'll just say that to answer any question asked
Speaker 1: by anyone ever. Really, and the kids are really annoyed.
Speaker 1: I think it's hysterical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty funny, for sure, unless you're in
Speaker 2: a rush, because then you have to ask the question twice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I could also see how children of that
Speaker 1: dad might get really sick of that joke.
Speaker 2: Totally deads can be pretty embarrassing, except for this one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well not you, of course.
Speaker 1: All right, So what are the origins of General So's chicken?
Speaker 2: Actually, Chuck? There was a guy named Pencheng Wi k
Speaker 2: U e I. He was from Hunan and he was
Speaker 2: living in Taiwan at the time as part of the
Speaker 2: Nationalist government. He was a chef for the Nationalist government
Speaker 2: who was being visited in Taiwan by the chairman of
Speaker 2: the US Joint chiefs of staff. So he created a
Speaker 2: special dish that was in no way resembles what we
Speaker 2: think of General So's chicken today. It was a very
Speaker 2: heavy dish, sour, hot, saltya It was just not American.
Speaker 2: There wasn't fried. But this dish was named after an actual,
Speaker 2: real Honanese general from the Qing dynasty. His name was
Speaker 2: Zuo Zong Tang or So Sung Tang, and you get
Speaker 2: General So from that. I think he was a Minister
Speaker 2: of Taiwan for a little while. It made sense to Paning,
Speaker 2: and eventually it got exported to the United States, I
Speaker 2: think in the seventies, and it just got totally transformed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently if you're in the Boston area, it's going
Speaker 1: to be called General Gal either Gau or Gao. Did
Speaker 1: not know that.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that either. But that doesn't sound totally
Speaker 2: foreign to me, Like, I, well, it sounds a little form,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like I feel like I've
Speaker 2: heard that before something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I have too. So it may
Speaker 1: exist outside of Boston, or maybe it's you know, just
Speaker 1: more New England regional, but Chinese fuit is very popular
Speaker 1: as a delivery thing. I can't remember the last time
Speaker 1: I actually, actually I can rarely, rarely do I eat
Speaker 1: in a Chinese restaurant, but I ate in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: There's a very popular, very upscale Chinese restaurant in one
Speaker 1: of the casinos, the kind of place where like a
Speaker 1: week ahead of time, you tell them you want the duck,
Speaker 1: that kind of deal. H and our friend, the show
Speaker 1: in friend of ours, Adam Pranica, made that with Ben
Speaker 1: Harrison and our booking agent and friend Josh Lincren and
Speaker 1: all our wives. We all went and had this beautiful, big,
Speaker 1: big meal. But almost always I'm ordering takeout or delivery
Speaker 1: Chinese food and grubhub and this is ten years ago,
Speaker 1: but they said that General Sou's Chicken was the most
Speaker 1: popular dish that they deliver, fourth most popular overall, and
Speaker 1: just last year they reported Chinese takeout is the or
Speaker 1: delivery I guess is the third most popular food overall.
Speaker 1: I guess behind pizza, and I can't think of what else.
Speaker 1: I would figure Chinese would be second, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Pizza and take out lasagna maybe yeah, people love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this guy is from Grubhub named
Speaker 1: Garfield was reporting on.
Speaker 2: That nice that was a great joke, thank you. So
Speaker 2: back in twenty twenty three, grub hub did say that
Speaker 2: there are two cities where Chinese dish made the top
Speaker 2: ten crab Rangoon and hold your emails, because we know
Speaker 2: crab Rangoon is actually not a Chinese dish at all,
Speaker 2: but it is found in just about every American Chinese
Speaker 2: food place. It was invented by an American the restaurants
Speaker 2: who are Victor Bergeron, whereas Polynesian themed chain Trader vis
Speaker 2: Trade named after a city in Burma also known as
Speaker 2: me and Mar and it has cream cheese, which is
Speaker 2: as American as chop suey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know I'm retelling this, but I'll have
Speaker 1: to just quickly say. One of the funniest things from
Speaker 1: when I was a kid was when I was like
Speaker 1: twelve years old in a restaurant and there was a
Speaker 1: gentleman ordering takeout from the counter and after like six
Speaker 1: dishes in a row, he asked if it had cheese
Speaker 1: on it, and the very kind restaurant owner kept saying no, no, no,
Speaker 1: and at the very end he said, in his very
Speaker 1: sweet broken English, that no Chinese food has cheese on it.
Speaker 1: And I think the last time I told that story,
Speaker 1: you and I thought about like a slice of American
Speaker 1: cheese just on some stir fry. And then we're like,
Speaker 1: I think we might want to try that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like something we would try for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very funny childhood memory.
Speaker 2: What else, Oh, hey, there's another reason that some Chinese
Speaker 2: food became americanized.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
Speaker 2: Ingredients, that's right.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of them were changed to fit
Speaker 1: our tastes, including the ingredient sometimes. One example that Laura found,
Speaker 1: of course, is beef with broccoli that is not you know,
Speaker 1: they don't have that kind of you know, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, they don't have that kind of broccoli
Speaker 1: in China. What they use is Chinese broccoli or guy lahn,
Speaker 1: which if you look that up, it looks it's more
Speaker 1: like bakchoi than what we think of as broccoli.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was like, where's broccoli from? Turns out
Speaker 2: the Mediterranean?
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: It was, according to legend, brought to America by Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 2: who grew it experimentally in his garden. And they like
Speaker 2: to fart. Yep, he said this is gonna make me
Speaker 2: blow and then it was it took off in popularity
Speaker 2: in the US in the nineteen twenties. Didn't see why,
Speaker 2: but it did.
Speaker 1: Believe me, Well, we got to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about fortune cookies because that is not Chinese either. That
Speaker 1: is originally adopted from something called the Japanese cracker, which
Speaker 1: is a savory thing. But in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants were owned a lot of times by Japanese people.
Speaker 1: Japanese bakeries were making these cookies, and then after Japanese
Speaker 1: in tournament, a lot of Chinese Americans took over these
Speaker 1: cookie factories. And that got me down the road of like, well,
Speaker 1: who's writing the fortunes. There's a guy named Donald Lao
Speaker 1: who's a CFO of Wantan Food Company, the largest fortune
Speaker 1: cookie maker in the world, and he was the sole writer,
Speaker 1: or has been for thirty years of writing these fortune cookies.
Speaker 2: I don't remember specifically talking about him or his name,
Speaker 2: but there's no way we don't talk about him in
Speaker 2: our fortune cookie short stuff from twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: If we missed him, I can't believe we would miss
Speaker 1: that guy's no way. But as a recap he he
Speaker 1: wrote him for thirty years. He used to write two
Speaker 1: to three per day. Now it's two or three per
Speaker 1: month because they have just thousands of them. And he
Speaker 1: got that job by default because he spoke the best
Speaker 1: English at the company. And his quote is I am
Speaker 1: the most read author in the United States.
Speaker 2: I believe it for sure.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great.
Speaker 2: And then we got to talk about a couple of
Speaker 2: regional specialties. Saint Louis. I remember when we went there.
Speaker 2: We when we get back to touring again, I really
Speaker 2: want to go to Saint Louis. Everyone there was crazy nice.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: They had really cool, like regional foods that you couldn't
Speaker 2: find anywhere else, like good stuff. Oh is this a
Speaker 2: good town? I want to go back. But I also
Speaker 2: want to try the Saint Paul sandwich. There is eggfou young,
Speaker 2: but a sandwich.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you've got an omelet with vegetables, a meat or
Speaker 2: seafood topped with brown gravy on a sandwich. So you've
Speaker 2: got mayo, pickle, lettuce, all that stuff. It sounds just
Speaker 2: totally off the chain, and I really want to try it.
Speaker 1: There's another one, and I don't know if you looked
Speaker 1: up a picture of this thing. No, I didn't, but
Speaker 1: if you go to Fall River, Massachusetts, do you have
Speaker 1: your phone with you or a computer or it means
Speaker 1: of looking up a photo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, let me do that.
Speaker 1: While I'm doing this, you should check this out. It's
Speaker 1: called a chow main sandwich. It hails from Fall River, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: but it's in surrounding towns there, and who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: elsewhere in New England. But it is exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like. It's chowmain on a sandwich on like a
Speaker 1: hamburger bun. But if you look this thing up, it's
Speaker 1: not a sandwich it is. You can't see the bottom bun.
Speaker 1: It is just chow main all over a plate. I
Speaker 1: guess there's a bun underneath, and there's just a hamburger
Speaker 1: bun sitting on top. Like it is a full plate
Speaker 1: of chow main with just a fun in there somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's not the kind of thing you would ever pick
Speaker 1: up and eat as a sandwich.
Speaker 2: It looks like cousin Nit wearing his hat, actually a
Speaker 2: little derby hamburger bun hat. Yeah, it's ostentatious to say
Speaker 2: the least, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, should we take another break? Yeah, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: take another break and we'll finish up with an ode
Speaker 1: to Panda Express and PF Changs right after this shot shot.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're gonna start off talking a little
Speaker 1: bit about how PF Changs came about a restaurant that
Speaker 1: I think I might have been to once. I definitely
Speaker 1: picked it up a lot as a PA in the
Speaker 1: film business US for like big production meetings. So I
Speaker 1: can't speak to its quality. It's supposed to be pretty good, right.
Speaker 2: PF Chang's Yeah, yeah, it's it's good. I mean, especially
Speaker 2: for comparing chain typical. I would not call it a
Speaker 2: high end chain, no more than you'd call cheesecake factory
Speaker 2: a high end chain. Well, it's it's virtually on the
Speaker 2: same level of dining. Okay, I'm not taking a shot
Speaker 2: at it. I'm just saying, like, it's not It's not
Speaker 2: like the place that you went to in Vegas or
Speaker 2: or Peaking Duck in fall I think Fall Falls Church, Virginia,
Speaker 2: which is an amazing spot. It's just like you can
Speaker 2: go to a mall and there might be one attached
Speaker 2: to it if it's a nice mall. Regardless, it is tasty,
Speaker 2: especially compared to like Chinese takeout. It's definitely several steps
Speaker 2: up from that. Okay, I got it's just really hard
Speaker 2: to like what high end restaurant has three hundreds now, Like,
Speaker 2: when you have three hundred locations, you're starting to work
Speaker 2: in economies of scale. It's really tough to keep like
Speaker 2: any kind of cuisine just top notch in that sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I want to quickly plug since
Speaker 1: you mentioned Cheesecake Factory, are again friends of the show
Speaker 1: and friends in real life. Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison
Speaker 1: of the Greatest Generation podcast have a side podcast called
Speaker 1: Factory Seconds where they're working their way through the menu
Speaker 1: of the Cheesecake Factory, one item at a time.
Speaker 2: Those two could not be any greater American treasures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Adam's uncle actually is the voice of the Memphis Grizzlies
Speaker 1: as the announcer basketball team. And apparently Cheesecake Factory is
Speaker 1: huge with NBA players, And I was like why, and
Speaker 1: his uncle he was like, because there's one in every city.
Speaker 1: It's the same menu. It's a huge menu, the portions
Speaker 1: are huge, and they and the quality is always the same.
Speaker 2: Economies of scale.
Speaker 1: Well, I was wrong. Apparently they make all their stuff fresh.
Speaker 1: It's not like bagged food.
Speaker 2: Oh, if you believe that, I actually no, I don't.
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: Huh. That is a little surprising. But I mean it's
Speaker 2: not like I'm hating on cheesecake factory.
Speaker 1: It's just I've never been.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's they have a really varied menu, that's yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the portions are gigantic and their cheesecakes are pretty great.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm going to be a guest on
Speaker 1: that show at some point. So next time in LA
Speaker 1: We're going to go to one and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a guest and okay, good. Anyway, A long
Speaker 1: way around describing PF. Chang's, there was a woman named
Speaker 1: Cecilia Chiang with an I in there from San Francisco
Speaker 1: and she and I believe before nineteen sixty five, before
Speaker 1: that immigration law, opened a high end restaurant there called Mandarin.
Speaker 1: And she said, no Chop suey in my menu, and
Speaker 1: no Eggfu Young. All this Chinatown stuff is a no no.
Speaker 1: And she owned a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo
Speaker 1: years ago, and her husband got a diplomatic post there,
Speaker 1: so that's why she was doing Chinese food there and
Speaker 1: Mandarin opened in nineteen sixty one, and that's where all
Speaker 1: of a sudden people are exposed to like kung pou,
Speaker 1: chicken tea, smoked duck, mushue, pork pot stickers, like some
Speaker 1: of the really good stuff and authentic stuff. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: She sold her son, Philip the restaurant Mandarin in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, and he is one of the co founders
Speaker 1: of PF Changs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Philip F. Chang, but he dropped the I exactly.
Speaker 2: So PF Chang's pretty large chain, three hundred restaurants. It's
Speaker 2: definitely nothing to sneeze at. But if you really want
Speaker 2: to talk economy of scales, let's talk Panda Express. They
Speaker 2: have two thousand more restaurants than PF Chang's does twenty
Speaker 2: three hundred in the United States.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, food Court City.
Speaker 2: But yeah, have you had Panda Express?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I have. I used to do it when I
Speaker 1: was younger. I'm not going to say it's like not
Speaker 1: any good, but you know, it's Chinese fast food, and
Speaker 1: it's just not something I would eat now. I would
Speaker 1: in a pinch. It's not like I'd turn my nose
Speaker 1: up at it. But I have been there before you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of times. And yeah, it is fast food,
Speaker 2: and it's great for fast food. It's just such a
Speaker 2: it's just different. It's not you know, Taco Bell or
Speaker 2: McDonald's or even like Chipotle or something. It's just Chinese version,
Speaker 2: the Chinese version of fast food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it. Apparently it's a family run business though,
Speaker 1: even though it's this huge chain, and in the seventies
Speaker 1: they just had a few little sit down restaurants and
Speaker 1: it kind of grew very naturally and organically as this
Speaker 1: family business, which I never knew, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: And if you're a fan of orange Chicken, you can
Speaker 2: thank your friends at Panda Express because they debuted it
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven and now you can find it
Speaker 2: basically everywhere. But they were the ones who came up
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's your order in a Chinese restaurant or for takeout?
Speaker 2: I'm trying some hunan to know because I don't normally
Speaker 2: eat that and I want to see what it's like.
Speaker 2: But typically a garlic chicken of some sort. I like
Speaker 2: savory brown sauces, umami brown sauces, usually chicken. If I'm
Speaker 2: really feeling crazy, maybe like a happy family or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Are you white rice or fried rice?
Speaker 2: White steamed rice?
Speaker 1: M boy, I gotta have that fried rice.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's too many peas and fried rice and
Speaker 2: peas are one of my most hated things on the
Speaker 2: entire planet.
Speaker 1: Oh I love peas.
Speaker 2: Eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta get that fried rice. I'll get a
Speaker 1: lot of sweet and sour chicken or ses some me chicken.
Speaker 1: Got to get the egg roll. I'll take a beef
Speaker 1: and broccoli if people have ordered it, but that's not
Speaker 1: my order. But I'll also try a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: If I'm at a big group and someone's just ordering
Speaker 1: a bunch of Chinese food, I'll eat almost all of it.
Speaker 2: Do you ask them first?
Speaker 1: What like what to order? No?
Speaker 2: Can I have some of your orders?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And then you know, if you're in a place not
Speaker 1: all cities have this stuff. But if you're in a
Speaker 1: place that has the really good, authentic stuff and you
Speaker 1: get dim sum or some pork buns or soup dumplings,
Speaker 1: like all that stuff is great, but you can't find
Speaker 1: that everywhere.
Speaker 2: No, I really want some Chinese food.
Speaker 1: Now it's gonna happen. That's the first thing I ordered
Speaker 1: after our week at the beach in South Carolina, after
Speaker 1: eating you know, coastal seafood, American seafood, I was like,
Speaker 1: I can eat some Chinese food.
Speaker 2: So America is not the only place that took Chinese
Speaker 2: food and said here you meat this orange and squeezed
Speaker 2: it together and then fried it. That's like I said
Speaker 2: at the outs, That's happened all over the world. And
Speaker 2: apparently I'm not on TikTok much as an ever, but
Speaker 2: there was a thing on TikTok a couple of years
Speaker 2: ago where American people picked up on UK British Chinese
Speaker 2: food and We're like, what are you guys doing over there?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't see any of that either, but apparently
Speaker 1: it was pretty funny. Apparently the food in the UK,
Speaker 1: the Chinese food is a lot different than here in America.
Speaker 1: It is very popular over there, maybe even one of
Speaker 1: the top two, maybe even the top food in the country.
Speaker 2: I saw that. It definitely was by a long shot.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Okay, so they love it over there. They
Speaker 1: will have things like French fries, what they call chips,
Speaker 1: a lot of curry sauces, which is different than us
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of great Indian food obviously in
Speaker 1: England and throughout the UK. And they also have something
Speaker 1: called a chicken ball, and that's just what they call it.
Speaker 1: I looked it up. I tried to find any difference.
Speaker 1: It looks like the exact same thing we get here
Speaker 1: in like a sweet and sour chicken. It's just a fried,
Speaker 1: little chunk of chicken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which everybody loves. Even if you don't need chicken,
Speaker 2: you'll eat that.
Speaker 1: I couldn't determine though from looking at first, if it
Speaker 1: was ground like a meatball, but it's not. And they're
Speaker 1: not even usually round. They're just you know, chicken chained. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a little chicken finger kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Man. So poor chicken meat has been like subjected to
Speaker 2: so many different indignantities over the eat, you know, more
Speaker 2: than any other meat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So India also has a version of Chinese food that's
Speaker 2: so popular that some Indian restaurants in the US. I've
Speaker 2: not seen this, but they'll sometimes have dishes there called
Speaker 2: Manchurian something or other. Yeah, and that I mean I
Speaker 2: didn't either, I've never run across that. And then in
Speaker 2: some cities, if the city's big enough, they might have
Speaker 2: like full on Indian Chinese restaurants there where it's the
Speaker 2: Indian version of Chinese, just like if you had an
Speaker 2: American version of the Chinese food in India, there's probably
Speaker 2: some sort of cultural exchange, like they open one here,
Speaker 2: we have to open one there. It's got to be balanced.
Speaker 1: It's contractual, the same for Latin America. In the United States,
Speaker 1: Chinese Cuban restaurants started opening in New York City, of course,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, and then what they call would
Speaker 1: it be China Latino?
Speaker 2: I'm going with Chino Latino.
Speaker 1: I mean, China Latino is what I want to say,
Speaker 1: because it sounds so great.
Speaker 2: Mm hm.
Speaker 1: I just wasn't sure if that was right. But they
Speaker 1: started opening later on. They're in decline in New York now,
Speaker 1: but apparently, just like everywhere over the course of centuries,
Speaker 1: Chinese workers were brought over to Latin America for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons, but usually servitude. Sadly, but again, they
Speaker 1: brought their food with them, and their food existed alongside
Speaker 1: stuff like Cuban food and Peruvian food, and then they
Speaker 1: start to blend it together, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you have these cool like sort of mix up dishes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to try all of these.
Speaker 1: I do too.
Speaker 2: And then apparently also South Africa has Afro Cantonese and
Speaker 2: that was again developed out of a Chinese community that
Speaker 2: were brought there as indentured workers back all the way
Speaker 2: back in the nineteenth century. Basically just like America, and
Speaker 2: also just like America, as more and more Chinese immigrants
Speaker 2: have come higher end, more Chinese authentic dishes have kind
Speaker 2: of become more favorited than just the Afro Cantonese version.
Speaker 1: Afro Cantonese just to my ear, sounds delicious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah again, I said it before and I'll say
Speaker 2: it again. I really want some Chinese food right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna happen, and we're recording earlier, so it's
Speaker 1: like creeping onto lunchtime right now.
Speaker 2: Oh are you doing it for lunch? I'm gonna make
Speaker 2: myself wait until dinner and really ttilate myself.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, I can't get it for lunch.
Speaker 1: I'll uh well, I'll probably do skip lunch and order
Speaker 1: it for dinner.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: But this has inspired me to I've been wanting to
Speaker 1: do an episode on Cajun food, but it was very intimidating,
Speaker 1: like Cajun sort of creole stuff because there's so many influences.
Speaker 1: I was just like, we're gonna screw it up, but this,
Speaker 1: this is uh maybe more brave.
Speaker 2: Well, if we do Cajun food, we have to consult
Speaker 2: our good friend and friend of the show, Doug Shasherie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, m hm, oh that's right Doug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when he brought us a Boudine balls at our
Speaker 2: New Orleans show and we ate him on stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what a guy. He's great.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's wonderful. So yeah, Plus his last name Sashery,
Speaker 2: so he knows what he's talking about Cajun food. That's right. Well,
Speaker 2: since we talked about our friend Doug Shasherie here on
Speaker 2: the episode, as was predicted back in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: By the way, Chuck, today's the seventeenth anniversary of stuff
Speaker 2: you should know today. Yeah, happy anniversary, baby.
Speaker 1: Wow, happy anniversary love.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, anyway, onto it, as was predicted back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. Since we said Doug Shasheri's name,
Speaker 2: we've unlocked listener mail boy.
Speaker 1: That's about as fan fairy as we get.
Speaker 2: Huh, yeah, we don't. Yeah, we don't do that. Kind
Speaker 2: of stuff, you know. I mean, we don't do media
Speaker 2: tours or anything and say look at us, everybody, look
Speaker 2: at us. You know, we do that every week anyway.
Speaker 1: Who wants to do that? This is a correction. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: heard your short stuff on Tulipmania and wanted to point
Speaker 1: out that Tulipmania is now largely believed to be a myth.
Speaker 1: I only found out about that a few years ago
Speaker 1: myself when I heard an interview from the author Anne Goldgar.
Speaker 1: She discovered the historical reality when she dug into the
Speaker 1: archives to research her book Tulipmania and Money, Honor and
Speaker 1: Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. The myth was largely
Speaker 1: promulgated great word by Scottsman Charles Mackie in his book
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and he
Speaker 1: sent along articles from Smithsonian and History dot Com and
Speaker 1: even Wikipedia that said although McKay's I'm sorry Mackie's book
Speaker 1: is a classic, citation needed, his account is contested citation needed.
Speaker 1: Many modern scholars believe that the mania was not as
Speaker 1: destructive as described A little behind on some of the
Speaker 1: show's guys. Perhaps others have written in but no one
Speaker 1: else has written in, Richard, so you're the only one.
Speaker 1: So way to go.
Speaker 2: I've seen that on the Internet's here there since we
Speaker 2: released it. But I mean, honestly, Chuck, we used a
Speaker 2: lot of different sources for that, and yeah, I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: you can make a case that it was exaggerated, but
Speaker 2: the idea that it's a myth is I did not
Speaker 2: run across that, but who knows, and if it was,
Speaker 2: then a lot of may that we released an episode
Speaker 2: where we were catfished by.
Speaker 1: History by the tulipmaniacs.
Speaker 2: We'll have to get to the bottom of it. Who
Speaker 2: wrote that, Richard? Thanks a lot, Richard. We appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Thank you for sending us straight publicly. And if you
Speaker 2: want to be like Richard and set us straight publicly,
Speaker 2: you can send us an email to send it off
Speaker 2: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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