WEBVTT - Chinese Food: Best Food?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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<v Speaker 2>Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's

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<v Speaker 2>Chuck and it's just us. But that's okay because we

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<v Speaker 2>can keep all the Chinese food to ourselves. I'll have

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<v Speaker 2>to share with Jerry. And this is stuff you should know.

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<v Speaker 1>That's right. A lot of caveats on this, can I

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<v Speaker 1>list off a few?

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<v Speaker 2>Sure? All right?

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<v Speaker 1>First of all, this is going to be a very

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<v Speaker 1>broad overview of a cuisine that we could probably do

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<v Speaker 1>like a ten part at least episode series on.

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<v Speaker 2>I would say eleven, Yeah.

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<v Speaker 1>Maybe eleven. So just you know, have your expectations set

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<v Speaker 1>going into this one. When you talk about Chinese food,

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<v Speaker 1>there's a lot there. We are going to do our

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<v Speaker 1>best to pronounce things correctly. I looked up a lot

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<v Speaker 1>of stuff and I'm doing my best. But some of

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<v Speaker 1>this stuff is hard for my dumb American mouth, and

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<v Speaker 1>a lot of this is going to be I mean,

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<v Speaker 1>it's mainly about sort of you know, Chinese food, although

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<v Speaker 1>we're going to talk about origins and stuff like that,

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<v Speaker 1>origin stories. It's mainly like what Chinese food has become

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<v Speaker 1>here in the States. Although we'll talk a little bit

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<v Speaker 1>about other countries later, but it's through our lens.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there you go. That was great Vat City right.

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<v Speaker 1>There, Caaveat City, David Bowie, great song.

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<v Speaker 2>So you said something that we were going to largely

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<v Speaker 2>focus on American Chinese cuisine, and Laura helped us with this,

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<v Speaker 2>and she makes a really good point that Chinese food

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<v Speaker 2>is not just one thing. Yeah. And the reason why

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<v Speaker 2>it's not just one thing, or one of the reasons

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<v Speaker 2>why is because it's been exported all over the globe.

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<v Speaker 2>Anywhere that Chinese people traveled, usually for work to immigrate,

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<v Speaker 2>they brought their food with them and introduced it to

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<v Speaker 2>wherever they were, and then over time, the local flavors

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<v Speaker 2>and tastes and ingredients from that place melded with the

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<v Speaker 2>Chinese food, and a new type of chines Use food

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<v Speaker 2>was born. And America is no exception to that. So

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<v Speaker 2>we have American Chinese food. Yeah.

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<v Speaker 1>And do you know what I love about that? This

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<v Speaker 1>whole story is like everywhere Chinese people went, they were like,

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<v Speaker 1>get a load of this, yeah, and everyone was like,

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<v Speaker 1>oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, and it took yeah

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<v Speaker 1>big time. I mean, I I have no examples of

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<v Speaker 1>places where Chinese immigrants had brought their food and people

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<v Speaker 1>are like, nah, no, thanks right.

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<v Speaker 2>The only one I could find was Belize.

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<v Speaker 1>Oh, I know you're kidding. I'm not going to fall

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<v Speaker 1>for it. And the reason why is because, I mean,

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<v Speaker 1>I can live on many, many, many cuisines from Asia.

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<v Speaker 1>I love Japanese food, I love Thai, I love Vietnamese,

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<v Speaker 1>I loved Filipino, like Korean food. I love it all.

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<v Speaker 1>But at the end of the day, good old fashioned

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<v Speaker 1>like Chinese takeout is just one of my favorite all

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<v Speaker 1>time things since I was a kid.

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<v Speaker 2>Very nice. Yeah, that's what I grew up on too.

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<v Speaker 2>It wasn't until I was an adult that I was like,

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<v Speaker 2>there's other kinds of Asian food out.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because that's kind of what you and if you

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<v Speaker 1>grew up in the seventies and eighties, that was sort

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<v Speaker 1>of the first, you know, probably one of the first,

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<v Speaker 1>you know, cuisines from another country you ever ate.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for sure, you know.

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<v Speaker 1>Maybe Mexican food wasn't that big back then. That's only

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<v Speaker 1>become more popular, I think in the eighties and nineties.

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<v Speaker 2>Even even still as a kid, the Mexican food I

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<v Speaker 2>was exposed to is chi cheese for God's Sake.

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<v Speaker 1>Or Del Taco.

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<v Speaker 2>We didn't even have that. That was really But I

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<v Speaker 2>think maybe even before Chinese food, I was exposed to

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<v Speaker 2>Japanese hibachi because there was this nice restaurant in Toledo

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<v Speaker 2>called in Japanese. Yeah, and we would go to that,

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<v Speaker 2>and I think I might have had that before Chinese food.

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<v Speaker 2>But regardless, I love Chinese food too. I would say

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<v Speaker 2>my top two are Japanese followed by Indian, but Chinese

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<v Speaker 2>is definitely up there in top five or so.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean, I'm a simple guy, like pork, fried

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<v Speaker 1>rice and an egg roll. And I'm just now realizing

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<v Speaker 1>we're not even going to talk about egg rolls in

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<v Speaker 1>this and I'm panicking all of a sudden.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that didn't strike me until you just said that too,

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<v Speaker 2>And although my voice doesn't betray that, I'm definitely scared

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<v Speaker 2>right now as well.

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<v Speaker 1>All Right, you know, hey, let's do let's do a

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<v Speaker 1>shorty on eggrolls. Maybe we'll pair it.

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<v Speaker 2>With this good idea. All right, So we said that

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<v Speaker 2>Chinese food is not just one thing because it's been

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<v Speaker 2>exported globally, but even in China, Chinese food is not

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<v Speaker 2>just one thing. And they divide Chinese cuisine into eight

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<v Speaker 2>different regions. Why did you tell them what the regions are, Chuck.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm just realizing I didn't look up a couple of these,

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<v Speaker 1>so maybe you did. But the regions as agreed upon

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<v Speaker 1>right now are and they have different names for each one.

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<v Speaker 1>So the first grouping is Sichuan, sa Chuan or I

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<v Speaker 1>didn't look up c h U a n.

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<v Speaker 2>I mean, you're braver than me. I was just gonna

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<v Speaker 2>say the first ones that are they're mostly known by

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<v Speaker 2>in the US.

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<v Speaker 1>Oh, we can do that, then that's much easier. So

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<v Speaker 1>let's go with Sechuan, Cantonese, Hunan, which is also Jong.

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<v Speaker 1>Let me see here, we have Shangdong, we have jung Su,

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<v Speaker 1>we have oh, I did look that one up Jong.

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<v Speaker 2>Very nice. Fujian I've always heard as Fujian, but that

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<v Speaker 2>sounds kind of like an American version.

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<v Speaker 1>Well I heard it pronounces if it had a y,

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<v Speaker 1>And they're almost like few okay, uh few Fujian okay.

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<v Speaker 1>And then what's the last one there on? Wi?

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, And some people added at least a ninth one

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<v Speaker 2>with sean Ji, and they're all a little different there.

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<v Speaker 2>They bear a lot of similarities. A lot of them

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<v Speaker 2>love sweet and sour, A lot of them are heavy

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<v Speaker 2>on the salt or umami, some like sauces. But one

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<v Speaker 2>of the big differences, or some of the big differences

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<v Speaker 2>is like where this area is located. Some of them

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<v Speaker 2>are coastal, so they incorporate a lot of seafood. Some

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<v Speaker 2>of them are colder, so there's like a lot of

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<v Speaker 2>soups and heavy noodles and like really really heavy flavors.

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<v Speaker 2>And then others are like, hey, we love panting around

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<v Speaker 2>the wilderness and catching deer, so they incorporate like local

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<v Speaker 2>wildlife into it. And usually what I've seen is when

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<v Speaker 2>when there's a lot of wildlife involved or game involved

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<v Speaker 2>in the recipes, they tend to let that flavor stand

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<v Speaker 2>on its own. It's not like heavy with sauces. That

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<v Speaker 2>kind of cuisine isn't.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And they how they achieve spices kind of different

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<v Speaker 1>depending where you are too. Sometimes it's those numbing Chinese peppercorns.

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<v Speaker 1>You can't do those, No. Yeah, I've learned to eat

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<v Speaker 1>a lot of spicy food over the last like five

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<v Speaker 1>or six years and increase my spice level, but there's

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<v Speaker 1>something about the numbing peppercorn that's I have a hard

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<v Speaker 1>time with it.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think that's natural.

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<v Speaker 1>It's tough, but I can. You know, it depends on

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<v Speaker 1>the cuisine other sort, like the chilies that they use,

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<v Speaker 1>I can. I can handle that pretty well. Well. It's hot,

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<v Speaker 1>but I like it. And sometimes it's just the chili flakes.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the little red chilis they'll sometimes serve hole with

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<v Speaker 2>the disc Yes, I can handle those two for sure. Cornible, Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>it's tough. Yeah. And what I mean by handling those

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<v Speaker 2>little red chili peppers is that I eat around them.

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<v Speaker 1>Same here.

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<v Speaker 2>So the cuisine that most people in the United States

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<v Speaker 2>are familiar with is Cantonese. That's definitely like the first

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<v Speaker 2>kind of Chinese food that Americans adopted, and that has

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<v Speaker 2>a lot to do with the first wave of migrants

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<v Speaker 2>that came over to the United States. A lot of

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<v Speaker 2>them were from Canton. And as a matter of fact,

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<v Speaker 2>the first Chinese restaurant to open in all of North America,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm including Canada and Mexico here was called Canton and

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<v Speaker 2>it was in San Francisco.

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<v Speaker 1>That's right. I mean, if you've ever had dim sum,

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<v Speaker 1>that's Cantonese. If you've never had dim sum. I highly

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<v Speaker 1>recommend it. It's I hate to say like because it

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<v Speaker 1>used to annoy me when a certain person I knew

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<v Speaker 1>used to say like tortillas or like American bread, and

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<v Speaker 1>I was like, no, they're just tortillas. Who said that,

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<v Speaker 1>I'm not gonna tell you. I'll tell you offline. But

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<v Speaker 1>I was going to say, like, if you've ever had tapas,

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<v Speaker 1>dim sum is kind of like the Chinese version of tapas,

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<v Speaker 1>but it really is just dim sum. But it's like

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<v Speaker 1>shared small plates, a lot of steam stuff, but also

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<v Speaker 1>fried stuff, baked stuff, a lot of dumplings, right, a

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<v Speaker 1>lot of dumplings. You know. Just go to New York,

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<v Speaker 1>go to hopkey, get some dim sum and thank me later.

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<v Speaker 2>Okay, it's amazing, I will thank you later. I've never

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<v Speaker 2>really had dim sum actually, and I think about it.

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<v Speaker 1>Oh boy. I mean, I like all kinds of food

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<v Speaker 1>in Chinatown and New York, but dim sum is definitely

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<v Speaker 1>one of them. But I'll also go to just the

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<v Speaker 1>you know, because if you're staying in a hotel, you

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<v Speaker 1>can't get these huge orders and just like take tons

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<v Speaker 1>and tons of food with you, right, So my move

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<v Speaker 1>now is generally just to pop down there. By myself

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<v Speaker 1>and get a couple of gigantic egg rolls.

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<v Speaker 2>You and the egg rolls. Huh wait, wait, we can't

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<v Speaker 2>talk about that. We have to save it for short stuff.

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<v Speaker 2>We forget I even said.

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<v Speaker 1>That, but you did mention. San Francisco in eighteen forty

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<v Speaker 1>nine was the first operating restaurant in North America, and

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<v Speaker 1>by eighteen fifty one, when the population of San Francisco

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<v Speaker 1>was but thirty four thousand and change, there were seven

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<v Speaker 1>full time Chinese restaurants open, which you know, for that

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<v Speaker 1>few people is pretty good for that time period.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's not bad.

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<v Speaker 1>Like people liked it clearly.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And there's a book that is going to come

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<v Speaker 2>up or we're going to draw from a lot in

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<v Speaker 2>this episode is called from Canton Restaurant to Panda Express

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<v Speaker 2>A History of Chinese Food in the United States by

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<v Speaker 2>Hi Ming Lao and Leo makes this this point that

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<v Speaker 2>a lot of like we tend to equate Chinese migrants

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<v Speaker 2>in the nineteenth century, especially to California, with like railroad workers,

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<v Speaker 2>maybe miners. We have like a certain idea of what

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<v Speaker 2>the Chinese migrants were at the time, and that is

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<v Speaker 2>a I mean, it's pretty stereotypical. It's also pretty narrow.

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<v Speaker 2>There were a lot of Chinese migrants who made their

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<v Speaker 2>way over just to feed the people in the Gold

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<v Speaker 2>Rush of eighteen forty nine in California. They were like,

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<v Speaker 2>people are going to need food, and we're going to

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<v Speaker 2>knock their socks off with Chinese food. And so they

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<v Speaker 2>started to go and open Chinese restaurants. And apparently you

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<v Speaker 2>could pick out a Chinese restaurant pretty easily because they

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<v Speaker 2>hung yellow flags outside.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and this is also sort of the kind of

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<v Speaker 1>right away when racist feelings toward Chinese immigrants started, racist

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<v Speaker 1>feelings toward their food even started arising out of the gate.

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<v Speaker 1>In Lao's book, there were some a couple of examples

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<v Speaker 1>that she cited. One was a criminal lawyer defending a

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<v Speaker 1>white client following their race riot in eighteen sixty five

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<v Speaker 1>and told the judge why, sir, and I'm not going

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<v Speaker 1>to say the racist Chinese name, but they live on rice,

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<v Speaker 1>and sir, they eat it with sticks. And then there

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<v Speaker 1>was a pamphlet from American Federation of Labor President Samuel

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<v Speaker 1>Gompers in nineteen oh two titled Some Reasons for Chinese

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<v Speaker 1>Exclusion colon Meat versus Rice, American manhood versus Asiatic coolism,

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<v Speaker 1>and apparently COOLi is a pejorita term for a low

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<v Speaker 1>age worker. Right, So it's all happening early on.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah for sure. And it's interesting because and we'll talk

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<v Speaker 2>about immigration and racism, but those two things definitely shaped

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<v Speaker 2>Chinese food in America in some surprising ways as a

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<v Speaker 2>matter of fact, Yeah, for sure. So it turns out

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<v Speaker 2>that the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the United

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<v Speaker 2>States is Pekin without a g noodle parlor and where

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<v Speaker 2>else but Montana, right, And it started out as a

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<v Speaker 2>general store back in nineteen oh nine, but within two

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<v Speaker 2>years they added a noodle parlor, the very same noodle

0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.400
<v Speaker 2>parlor that's still opened today. And I guess at some

0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:05.560
<v Speaker 2>point they ran an illegal gambling parlor out of the basement,

0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:08.640
<v Speaker 2>but that has since been turned into an old navy.

0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:17.559
<v Speaker 1>Is that true, because that I could believe. Actually, if

0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:18.920
<v Speaker 1>you you know, I looked at that place to see

0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:20.480
<v Speaker 1>what it looked like, and it looks like a you know,

0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:22.839
<v Speaker 1>a Chinese restaurant and a building of an old West

0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:25.600
<v Speaker 1>Town man exactly what you might think. And there's a

0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:30.000
<v Speaker 1>big neon sign this is chop suey, And I realized

0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.640
<v Speaker 1>that chop suey is not a dish I've ever had,

0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:38.640
<v Speaker 1>But chop suey is sort of the beginning of Chinese

0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:40.880
<v Speaker 1>food in America. That's the dish that first sort of

0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:46.000
<v Speaker 1>captured young America's attention. And there's some debates on whether

0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:49.280
<v Speaker 1>or not it's even American in origin. And we're going

0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:50.800
<v Speaker 1>to talk about chop suey right now.

0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:53.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I don't know if I've ever had it either,

0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:56.240
<v Speaker 2>but I think anytime you've ever made like a vague

0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:01.960
<v Speaker 2>Chinese surfry with chicken and vegeta and maybe like some

0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:05.719
<v Speaker 2>sort of thickish sauce, you basically made chop suey. Some

0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:07.520
<v Speaker 2>people say that you can make it with egg, but

0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.400
<v Speaker 2>those people are wrong. For the most part, is the

0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.400
<v Speaker 2>mixture of meat, vegetables of thick sauce, usually with rice.

0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.880
<v Speaker 2>And the name itself not only where it originated, but

0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:21.920
<v Speaker 2>the name itself is debatable what it means. I remember,

0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.160
<v Speaker 2>I think I might have learned this from Uncle John's

0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.920
<v Speaker 2>bathroom reader, that it meant leftovers in Chinese, so that

0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:31.960
<v Speaker 2>people from China coming to America would see chop suey house,

0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:35.040
<v Speaker 2>and they would think it would say like Leftover's house

0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:37.920
<v Speaker 2>to them. That's not exactly true, but it's not that

0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:38.720
<v Speaker 2>far off.

0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.199
<v Speaker 1>No, that's pretty close actually. Because some people say the

0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:49.040
<v Speaker 1>name came from Cantonese t sap top suey sui instead

0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:51.480
<v Speaker 1>of suey. That seems to be an American ice spelling

0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:56.119
<v Speaker 1>which is mixed bits or odds and ends aka probably leftovers.

0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:00.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Leau, the author of the book, said that it

0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.120
<v Speaker 2>probably comes from chow chop suey or chow chop suey,

0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:08.000
<v Speaker 2>which some people call. It probably comes from the Cantonese

0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:14.000
<v Speaker 2>pronouncing a Mandarin chow's zuei chow meaning stir fry and

0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:17.320
<v Speaker 2>z azui meaning animal intestines. I tend to go with

0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:18.320
<v Speaker 2>the sap sue.

0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:20.080
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:23.480
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's just my take and it's almost meaningless,

0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:25.280
<v Speaker 2>but that's where I'm gonna go with. Since it's up

0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:26.200
<v Speaker 2>for debate.

0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:28.240
<v Speaker 1>I'm with you. I'll be in your camp.

0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:29.000
<v Speaker 2>Okay, thanks.

0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:30.440
<v Speaker 1>At least we can hang out and play cards.

0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:32.360
<v Speaker 2>What do you want to play?

0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:34.880
<v Speaker 1>I don't know a lot of card games. I like

0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:35.520
<v Speaker 1>Jin Rummy.

0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:37.880
<v Speaker 2>I was gonna say gin Rummy too.

0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:40.800
<v Speaker 1>I do love spades. But we need Emily and U

0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:41.520
<v Speaker 1>me to come along.

0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:44.840
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that's fair enough. They probably will anyway if we

0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:46.239
<v Speaker 2>end up in a camp together.

0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:49.840
<v Speaker 1>Because that means zombie apocalypse has happened.

0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:53.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, or else the Russians have invaded all a red

0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.720
<v Speaker 2>dawn and you and I are alone in a men's camp,

0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.920
<v Speaker 2>which is really just a fenced off drive in Yeah.

0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:00.680
<v Speaker 1>Soon to die.

0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:02.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.

0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.840
<v Speaker 1>Anyway, that's a weird sidetrack a quote that and we're

0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:08.600
<v Speaker 1>going to explain the origins of this quote. But you

0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:11.680
<v Speaker 1>may have heard that Chop Suey is an American is

0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.000
<v Speaker 1>as American as pork and beans, and that actually comes

0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.920
<v Speaker 1>from a lawsuit from the early nineteen hundreds. In nineteen

0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:22.000
<v Speaker 1>oh four, a guy named lem Sen said, you know what,

0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.200
<v Speaker 1>I invented Chop Suey. I made it for a Chinese

0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:28.720
<v Speaker 1>diplomat who visited in eighteen eighty six. And everybody making

0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:29.960
<v Speaker 1>this dishos me money.

0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:34.880
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's kind of a bold law suit. Sure, I

0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:36.320
<v Speaker 2>don't even know who he sued.

0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:39.200
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't find it everybody, I guess, so.

0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:43.680
<v Speaker 2>Lem Sen versus all Chop Suey chefs, Yeah, exactly. So

0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:46.960
<v Speaker 2>he ended up dropping the suit. But The suit left

0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:51.400
<v Speaker 2>a huge mark on America. I mean like it was

0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:55.000
<v Speaker 2>reported on. It made the news for sure, and people

0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.200
<v Speaker 2>knew about it. And one reason why it became such

0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.840
<v Speaker 2>a big deal is because at the time, as we saw,

0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.400
<v Speaker 2>there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. So lem Suenn brought

0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:09.000
<v Speaker 2>his lawsuit in nineteen oh four. The Chinese Exclusion Act

0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:11.400
<v Speaker 2>was passed in eighteen eighty two. It was the first

0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.320
<v Speaker 2>time the United States had ever passed an immigration law

0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:19.720
<v Speaker 2>specifically targeted at one nationality. And it also basically laid

0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:24.600
<v Speaker 2>the foundation for exclusionary immigration laws and much tighter immigration

0:16:24.680 --> 0:16:27.120
<v Speaker 2>laws than we'd had before that we still have today.

0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.200
<v Speaker 2>But this was super tight. I read when they loosened

0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:34.080
<v Speaker 2>it up. The quota for Chinese immigrants was one hundred

0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:36.840
<v Speaker 2>and four Chinese immigrants per year.

0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:38.240
<v Speaker 1>Really wow.

0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:43.200
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And everybody was racist and against Chinese at the time, right, So,

0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.560
<v Speaker 2>but people also love Chop Suey by then, I mean

0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:50.880
<v Speaker 2>love Chop Suey. So lem Sen's lawsuit said, hey, you

0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.960
<v Speaker 2>can keep loving Chop Suey. I invented this in America.

0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.280
<v Speaker 2>It's really an American dish. So you can continue being

0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:00.880
<v Speaker 2>racist against Chinese immigrants while still loving Chop Suey, You're

0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:04.359
<v Speaker 2>welcome America, and America said thank you, get out.

0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:06.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And he's the one who had the quote it's

0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:09.720
<v Speaker 1>as an American as pork and beans.

0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, in the lawsuit. I think you said it too.

0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:14.760
<v Speaker 2>I couldn't find that quote. I couldn't find the lawsuit.

0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:17.960
<v Speaker 2>But even if it's not specifically in the lawsuit, it

0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:19.879
<v Speaker 2>definitely seems to have developed out of that.

0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:25.400
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. But it's possible that it was Chinese in origin initially,

0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.640
<v Speaker 1>because apparently there are some dishes from the Pearl River

0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:31.919
<v Speaker 1>Delta that are pretty similar, and some of the earliest

0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:35.199
<v Speaker 1>Chinese migrants to the US were from that area. I

0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.880
<v Speaker 1>can't parse out what's so different from Chop suey than

0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:38.960
<v Speaker 1>any stirfry.

0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:42.720
<v Speaker 2>I don't know either. There's a lot of overlap between

0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:49.040
<v Speaker 2>Chinese dishes and including authentic cuisine, Yeah, but especially American Chinese.

0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.280
<v Speaker 2>I think it was. It was one of the first.

0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.160
<v Speaker 2>It was almost like an umbrella term for all Chinese

0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:57.560
<v Speaker 2>dishes in America at the turn of the last century,

0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:02.080
<v Speaker 2>kind of like smurf but with Chinese food essentially. And

0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:04.439
<v Speaker 2>I think because it was the first, a lot of

0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:08.000
<v Speaker 2>dishes that we recognize as like American Chinese developed out

0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:08.280
<v Speaker 2>of it.

0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.439
<v Speaker 1>Okay, that makes sense. I do know that when I

0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:15.960
<v Speaker 1>was a kid going camping growing up in Georgia, I

0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:21.399
<v Speaker 1>loved nothing more than taking a can of Lachoi. You know,

0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:24.680
<v Speaker 1>it's like veggies and sauce, basically.

0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:26.480
<v Speaker 2>Just sipping on it the whole weekend, a lot of water.

0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.040
<v Speaker 1>Justice, Yeah, put it my canteen and you know, making

0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.199
<v Speaker 1>some campfire rice and dumping that stuff on top, you know,

0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:34.800
<v Speaker 1>heating it up and dumping it on top. I thought

0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.560
<v Speaker 1>it was like the peak of you know, fine cuisine

0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:39.120
<v Speaker 1>in the woods.

0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.399
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. No, I mean that's definitely better than you know,

0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:44.159
<v Speaker 2>a human finger that you found.

0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:46.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but they were. Lachoi was around since the nineteen

0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:50.600
<v Speaker 1>thirties doing that, you know, canned vegetable sauce. I was

0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:52.560
<v Speaker 1>gonna say trick, but you know it's a thing.

0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:55.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. But I mean that's a great explanation of just

0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:59.359
<v Speaker 2>how crazy people were in America for chop suey. Lachoi

0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:03.119
<v Speaker 2>could pack it and sell for decades this stuff, and

0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:07.280
<v Speaker 2>people were nuts for it. Another sign, apparently, was that

0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:10.160
<v Speaker 2>by the turn of the last century, chop suey houses

0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:14.680
<v Speaker 2>were so popular they'd started to migrate out of Chinatown. Yeah,

0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.199
<v Speaker 2>which was a huge deal, and I should say in

0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.600
<v Speaker 2>Manhattan specifically. That was a big deal because I think

0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:22.000
<v Speaker 2>there were a lot of people who are like, I'd

0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.159
<v Speaker 2>love chop suey, but I don't want to go to Chinatown,

0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.800
<v Speaker 2>and these Chinese entrepreneurs said, hey, you don't need to anymore.

0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:32.879
<v Speaker 2>Here we are at I don't know, so ho right.

0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:40.520
<v Speaker 1>Another like pretty startling factoid is that it was in

0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:42.760
<v Speaker 1>well this part isn't. It was in the nineteen forty

0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:45.880
<v Speaker 1>two edition of the US Army Cookbook. But as a result,

0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:50.399
<v Speaker 1>when US troops were stationed overseas in China and Japan

0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.359
<v Speaker 1>and World War Two, restaurants would put chop suey on

0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.360
<v Speaker 1>the menu to cater to those American soldiers because they

0:19:56.359 --> 0:19:58.600
<v Speaker 1>came in were like, where's the chop suey?

0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:03.919
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we want a hot hamburger and chopsuit exactly. You

0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:05.879
<v Speaker 2>want to take a break, We're like twenty minutes.

0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:08.119
<v Speaker 1>Basically, Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and put it in

0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:09.960
<v Speaker 1>my order for pork fread rice and a girl.

0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:12.119
<v Speaker 2>I'm definitely getting Chinese food for dinner.

0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:20.679
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, shot.

0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:39.840
<v Speaker 2>Shot, all right, chuck, So we're back, and we talked

0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:46.160
<v Speaker 2>about how immigration laws and racism against Chinese migrants helped

0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:50.240
<v Speaker 2>shape Chinese food in America. And one of the first

0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:54.280
<v Speaker 2>ways that it did was that eighteen eighty two Chinese

0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:58.960
<v Speaker 2>Exclusion Act actually led to a plethora of much more

0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:03.399
<v Speaker 2>upscale these restaurants. And the reason why is because part

0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:08.400
<v Speaker 2>of that Exclusion Act is that certain kinds of businesses

0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:12.840
<v Speaker 2>could achieve merchant status, or the owners of certain kind

0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.000
<v Speaker 2>of businesses they had to be legitimate businesses that were

0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:20.520
<v Speaker 2>considered kind of higher end, and that if you had

0:21:20.640 --> 0:21:23.720
<v Speaker 2>merchant status, you could sponsor relatives to come to the

0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:27.520
<v Speaker 2>United States. And I guess in nineteen fifteen, a court

0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:32.080
<v Speaker 2>case got Chinese restaurants added to that merchant status clause.

0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:34.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and this came from a historian named Heather Lee,

0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:37.959
<v Speaker 1>and she makes the cas is like, you know, this

0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:42.040
<v Speaker 1>addition to that list basically meant you were going to

0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:45.200
<v Speaker 1>get a lot of like higher grade chop Suey palaces.

0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:48.640
<v Speaker 1>So the restaurants kind of got nicer, and you had

0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:50.840
<v Speaker 1>to in order to qualify. You also, if you were

0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:52.680
<v Speaker 1>an investor and owner, you had to spend a year

0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:56.359
<v Speaker 1>managing the restaurant as the manager and not like you know,

0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.879
<v Speaker 1>working in the kitchen or something like that. And you've needed,

0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:02.240
<v Speaker 1>of course, this had to be thrown in there. You

0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:07.000
<v Speaker 1>needed two white witnesses to vouch for them. But because

0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:09.840
<v Speaker 1>of these strict rules, you got again these these nicer

0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:13.400
<v Speaker 1>Chinese restaurants opening up that were qualifying for that merchant status.

0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.480
<v Speaker 1>And then you would get investors getting together and saying, hey,

0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:20.600
<v Speaker 1>let's start this restaurant. We'll take turns running it for

0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:23.840
<v Speaker 1>a year and get our family members over here. And

0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:26.280
<v Speaker 1>as a result, I mean, this is not the only reason,

0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:30.040
<v Speaker 1>but this definitely helped Chinese restaurants in the US double

0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:33.600
<v Speaker 1>between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, and again between nineteen

0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.679
<v Speaker 1>twenty and nineteen thirty, and by nineteen thirty they had

0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:40.040
<v Speaker 1>overtaken laundries as the largest employers of Chinese workers in

0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:40.840
<v Speaker 1>the United States.

0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:46.359
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so the first third of the twentieth century there

0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:50.960
<v Speaker 2>was a boom in Chinese restaurants, and in specifically higher

0:22:51.040 --> 0:22:56.359
<v Speaker 2>end Chinese restaurants. And then another boom happened after the

0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:00.399
<v Speaker 2>Immigration and Nationality Act of nineteen sixty five, which greatly

0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:05.040
<v Speaker 2>loosened restrictions on immigration, particularly from China and within a

0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:09.960
<v Speaker 2>decade of that act, the Chinese American population basically doubled,

0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:13.320
<v Speaker 2>which sounds eye popping, but don't forget there was only

0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:15.280
<v Speaker 2>like one hundred and four people coming in a year.

0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.320
<v Speaker 2>So it went from like, I don't know, three thousand

0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:19.880
<v Speaker 2>to six thousand in a decade.

0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:21.280
<v Speaker 1>There's more than that.

0:23:21.640 --> 0:23:23.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it definitely was. But the point is is that

0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:27.719
<v Speaker 2>now you had way more patrons of authentic Chinese restaurants,

0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:30.520
<v Speaker 2>which meant there were more authentic Chinese restaurants, and then

0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.320
<v Speaker 2>you also had more people who were ready to open

0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:36.560
<v Speaker 2>and staff more Chinese restaurants, So you had a huge

0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:41.879
<v Speaker 2>boom in Chinese restaurants again in the sixties to the seventies.

0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.840
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, for sure. And there was an article in twenty

0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:49.199
<v Speaker 1>fourteen in The New Yorker by Lauren Hilgers, and this

0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.720
<v Speaker 1>was eleven years ago, but I imagine it's not completely

0:23:52.720 --> 0:23:56.520
<v Speaker 1>different now. But how the labor arrangements work then and

0:23:56.680 --> 0:24:00.520
<v Speaker 1>probably these days is if there's a Chinese restaurant in

0:24:00.520 --> 0:24:03.040
<v Speaker 1>the US, there's more than forty thousand back then, and

0:24:03.200 --> 0:24:05.320
<v Speaker 1>there's probably a few more now. But that's a lot

0:24:05.359 --> 0:24:10.560
<v Speaker 1>of restaurants generally run by families. But staffed by new immigrants.

0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:12.920
<v Speaker 1>A lot of them are undocumented, a lot of them

0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:17.280
<v Speaker 1>apparently are coming from the Fujian province, and they're providing

0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:21.240
<v Speaker 1>the labor. So what will happen is they'll they'll have

0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:25.040
<v Speaker 1>a restaurant. A new immigrant will come to town, probably

0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:27.520
<v Speaker 1>a hub city. I think they concentrated on New York,

0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:30.760
<v Speaker 1>San Francisco, and Chicago for the article, but any major

0:24:31.200 --> 0:24:34.879
<v Speaker 1>city in the US probably, and they'll go to a

0:24:34.960 --> 0:24:37.439
<v Speaker 1>Chinese language employment agency and they'll say, all right, I

0:24:37.480 --> 0:24:39.920
<v Speaker 1>got a job for you. They'll say this in Chinese, though,

0:24:40.960 --> 0:24:43.800
<v Speaker 1>go get on this bus, here's the person's name, here's

0:24:43.840 --> 0:24:46.800
<v Speaker 1>their prone number, go to this restaurant, and you can

0:24:46.880 --> 0:24:48.920
<v Speaker 1>probably get a job there. And that's how they staff

0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:49.639
<v Speaker 1>their restaurants.

0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:53.000
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and Chuck, you mentioned the at least in twenty fourteen,

0:24:53.160 --> 0:24:57.320
<v Speaker 2>forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States. Yeah, which

0:24:57.359 --> 0:25:00.600
<v Speaker 2>is impressive in and of itself, But if you compare

0:25:00.600 --> 0:25:03.840
<v Speaker 2>it to McDonald's, which is you know, the benchmark comparison

0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:08.680
<v Speaker 2>for US. Yeah, there are thirteen six and twenty two

0:25:08.800 --> 0:25:14.160
<v Speaker 2>McDonald's in the United States. Wow, versus forty thousand Chinese restaurants.

0:25:14.600 --> 0:25:16.840
<v Speaker 1>There's probably well, there's not, because we know that number two.

0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:19.240
<v Speaker 1>I was gonna say, there's probably fourteen thousand Panda expresses,

0:25:19.280 --> 0:25:20.400
<v Speaker 1>but we'll get to that later.

0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:21.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's close.

0:25:22.119 --> 0:25:24.680
<v Speaker 1>The long and short of it is was with how

0:25:24.680 --> 0:25:28.240
<v Speaker 1>the staffing arrangement works is these cooks are moving around

0:25:28.280 --> 0:25:30.040
<v Speaker 1>a lot. They'll sometimes work at a place for just

0:25:30.080 --> 0:25:32.440
<v Speaker 1>a few months and go to a different restaurant, maybe

0:25:32.440 --> 0:25:35.480
<v Speaker 1>for better pay. Oftentimes outside of city centers you can

0:25:35.680 --> 0:25:39.280
<v Speaker 1>get paid more, which sort of surprised me. I guess

0:25:39.320 --> 0:25:42.720
<v Speaker 1>it makes sense though, But if you're getting Chinese food

0:25:42.760 --> 0:25:45.200
<v Speaker 1>for years and years from the same place, a lot

0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:48.000
<v Speaker 1>of times there will be a different cook every few months,

0:25:48.040 --> 0:25:50.639
<v Speaker 1>and hopefully you won't even notice.

0:25:52.680 --> 0:25:55.159
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. A lot of the reason you won't notice is

0:25:55.160 --> 0:25:59.840
<v Speaker 2>because the immigrants from Fujian. I could not find out

0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:03.520
<v Speaker 2>why the largest waves of migration lately have been coming

0:26:03.600 --> 0:26:07.919
<v Speaker 2>from Fujian, but they are. But they are coming and

0:26:07.960 --> 0:26:13.679
<v Speaker 2>buying Cantonese formerly Cantonese owned restaurants from the Cantonese owners

0:26:13.680 --> 0:26:16.280
<v Speaker 2>who founded them, and they're just keeping the menu the same,

0:26:16.320 --> 0:26:19.800
<v Speaker 2>because again this is American Chinese. Neither one's making the

0:26:19.840 --> 0:26:23.879
<v Speaker 2>cuisine necessarily that you would find in their provinces. In China,

0:26:23.920 --> 0:26:26.439
<v Speaker 2>they're making the American version. So if you have a

0:26:26.440 --> 0:26:30.080
<v Speaker 2>set menu, you're probably any chef's going to be able

0:26:30.119 --> 0:26:31.240
<v Speaker 2>to cook this stuff. I think.

0:26:31.720 --> 0:26:34.320
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, now we're going to talk a little bit about

0:26:34.359 --> 0:26:38.560
<v Speaker 1>General So another classic Chinese dish that I've never had.

0:26:39.600 --> 0:26:42.320
<v Speaker 1>Oh really, now, I've never had it. I mean maybe

0:26:42.320 --> 0:26:45.280
<v Speaker 1>i've had it if someone else somewhere and they ordered

0:26:45.280 --> 0:26:46.600
<v Speaker 1>just a ton of food and I was kind of

0:26:46.640 --> 0:26:48.520
<v Speaker 1>just dumping all of it on the plate, which is

0:26:48.560 --> 0:26:51.880
<v Speaker 1>the best way to eat Chinese food. Yeah, but that's

0:26:51.880 --> 0:26:54.400
<v Speaker 1>something I've never ordered myself. I kind of just stick

0:26:54.440 --> 0:26:57.800
<v Speaker 1>to my main order and General So's chicken, is not it?

0:26:57.800 --> 0:27:02.080
<v Speaker 2>It's good. It's a are you just sour? No, it's

0:27:02.119 --> 0:27:04.160
<v Speaker 2>not even sour. It's like sweet and savory.

0:27:04.400 --> 0:27:05.840
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of spicy too, isn't it.

0:27:06.160 --> 0:27:09.640
<v Speaker 2>A little bit? But nothing anybody couldn't handle. I think

0:27:09.640 --> 0:27:11.760
<v Speaker 2>there's usually sesame seeds on it too.

0:27:12.280 --> 0:27:14.720
<v Speaker 1>It's good stuff, yeah, not like kung paw is the

0:27:14.760 --> 0:27:15.520
<v Speaker 1>real spicy one.

0:27:15.480 --> 0:27:18.000
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, and we all know who likes his kung

0:27:18.080 --> 0:27:19.520
<v Speaker 2>pow spicy.

0:27:21.800 --> 0:27:24.280
<v Speaker 1>There's a funny Judge John Hodgman episode about that too.

0:27:25.640 --> 0:27:28.040
<v Speaker 1>There's a funny dad, or at least he thought it

0:27:28.080 --> 0:27:30.160
<v Speaker 1>was funny, and his kids were trying to get him

0:27:30.160 --> 0:27:33.280
<v Speaker 1>to stop making the same joke over and over. Wherever

0:27:33.320 --> 0:27:36.879
<v Speaker 1>this guy goes, it could be like a toll booth worker.

0:27:37.160 --> 0:27:38.800
<v Speaker 1>We'll ask like what kind of ticket he wants, and

0:27:38.840 --> 0:27:40.800
<v Speaker 1>he'll say, I'll have the Kung paw chicken m hm.

0:27:41.600 --> 0:27:43.680
<v Speaker 1>And he'll just say that to answer any question asked

0:27:43.720 --> 0:27:47.119
<v Speaker 1>by anyone ever. Really, and the kids are really annoyed.

0:27:47.160 --> 0:27:48.119
<v Speaker 1>I think it's hysterical.

0:27:48.760 --> 0:27:51.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it is pretty funny, for sure, unless you're in

0:27:51.640 --> 0:27:54.959
<v Speaker 2>a rush, because then you have to ask the question twice.

0:27:55.200 --> 0:27:57.320
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And I could also see how children of that

0:27:57.440 --> 0:27:58.840
<v Speaker 1>dad might get really sick of that joke.

0:27:59.240 --> 0:28:04.640
<v Speaker 2>Totally deads can be pretty embarrassing, except for this one. Yeah,

0:28:04.840 --> 0:28:06.280
<v Speaker 2>well not you, of course.

0:28:06.720 --> 0:28:09.200
<v Speaker 1>All right, So what are the origins of General So's chicken?

0:28:10.600 --> 0:28:14.480
<v Speaker 2>Actually, Chuck? There was a guy named Pencheng Wi k

0:28:14.720 --> 0:28:18.080
<v Speaker 2>U e I. He was from Hunan and he was

0:28:18.119 --> 0:28:20.920
<v Speaker 2>living in Taiwan at the time as part of the

0:28:21.000 --> 0:28:23.800
<v Speaker 2>Nationalist government. He was a chef for the Nationalist government

0:28:24.080 --> 0:28:26.680
<v Speaker 2>who was being visited in Taiwan by the chairman of

0:28:26.720 --> 0:28:29.679
<v Speaker 2>the US Joint chiefs of staff. So he created a

0:28:29.720 --> 0:28:33.439
<v Speaker 2>special dish that was in no way resembles what we

0:28:33.480 --> 0:28:36.600
<v Speaker 2>think of General So's chicken today. It was a very

0:28:36.600 --> 0:28:42.480
<v Speaker 2>heavy dish, sour, hot, saltya It was just not American.

0:28:42.560 --> 0:28:47.200
<v Speaker 2>There wasn't fried. But this dish was named after an actual,

0:28:47.280 --> 0:28:51.959
<v Speaker 2>real Honanese general from the Qing dynasty. His name was

0:28:52.280 --> 0:28:57.280
<v Speaker 2>Zuo Zong Tang or So Sung Tang, and you get

0:28:57.320 --> 0:29:00.360
<v Speaker 2>General So from that. I think he was a Minister

0:29:00.440 --> 0:29:03.080
<v Speaker 2>of Taiwan for a little while. It made sense to Paning,

0:29:04.080 --> 0:29:08.040
<v Speaker 2>and eventually it got exported to the United States, I

0:29:08.080 --> 0:29:11.040
<v Speaker 2>think in the seventies, and it just got totally transformed.

0:29:11.520 --> 0:29:14.840
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, apparently if you're in the Boston area, it's going

0:29:14.920 --> 0:29:19.360
<v Speaker 1>to be called General Gal either Gau or Gao. Did

0:29:19.360 --> 0:29:19.880
<v Speaker 1>not know that.

0:29:21.040 --> 0:29:24.120
<v Speaker 2>I didn't know that either. But that doesn't sound totally

0:29:24.200 --> 0:29:27.440
<v Speaker 2>foreign to me, Like, I, well, it sounds a little form,

0:29:27.560 --> 0:29:30.520
<v Speaker 2>you know what I mean, Like I feel like I've

0:29:30.560 --> 0:29:31.800
<v Speaker 2>heard that before something.

0:29:32.280 --> 0:29:34.240
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I feel like I have too. So it may

0:29:34.560 --> 0:29:36.560
<v Speaker 1>exist outside of Boston, or maybe it's you know, just

0:29:36.600 --> 0:29:39.520
<v Speaker 1>more New England regional, but Chinese fuit is very popular

0:29:39.560 --> 0:29:42.200
<v Speaker 1>as a delivery thing. I can't remember the last time

0:29:42.240 --> 0:29:45.320
<v Speaker 1>I actually, actually I can rarely, rarely do I eat

0:29:45.320 --> 0:29:48.760
<v Speaker 1>in a Chinese restaurant, but I ate in Las Vegas.

0:29:48.800 --> 0:29:51.959
<v Speaker 1>There's a very popular, very upscale Chinese restaurant in one

0:29:51.960 --> 0:29:54.720
<v Speaker 1>of the casinos, the kind of place where like a

0:29:54.720 --> 0:29:56.480
<v Speaker 1>week ahead of time, you tell them you want the duck,

0:29:56.680 --> 0:30:00.440
<v Speaker 1>that kind of deal. H and our friend, the show

0:30:00.640 --> 0:30:03.280
<v Speaker 1>in friend of ours, Adam Pranica, made that with Ben

0:30:03.320 --> 0:30:06.680
<v Speaker 1>Harrison and our booking agent and friend Josh Lincren and

0:30:06.720 --> 0:30:09.680
<v Speaker 1>all our wives. We all went and had this beautiful, big,

0:30:09.720 --> 0:30:13.760
<v Speaker 1>big meal. But almost always I'm ordering takeout or delivery

0:30:13.840 --> 0:30:17.440
<v Speaker 1>Chinese food and grubhub and this is ten years ago,

0:30:17.480 --> 0:30:19.560
<v Speaker 1>but they said that General Sou's Chicken was the most

0:30:19.600 --> 0:30:23.320
<v Speaker 1>popular dish that they deliver, fourth most popular overall, and

0:30:23.480 --> 0:30:26.840
<v Speaker 1>just last year they reported Chinese takeout is the or

0:30:27.000 --> 0:30:29.960
<v Speaker 1>delivery I guess is the third most popular food overall.

0:30:30.560 --> 0:30:33.040
<v Speaker 1>I guess behind pizza, and I can't think of what else.

0:30:34.200 --> 0:30:36.320
<v Speaker 1>I would figure Chinese would be second, but I don't know.

0:30:37.000 --> 0:30:42.000
<v Speaker 2>Pizza and take out lasagna maybe yeah, people love that.

0:30:42.440 --> 0:30:44.920
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And I think this guy is from Grubhub named

0:30:44.960 --> 0:30:46.480
<v Speaker 1>Garfield was reporting on.

0:30:46.440 --> 0:30:51.040
<v Speaker 2>That nice that was a great joke, thank you. So

0:30:51.360 --> 0:30:54.240
<v Speaker 2>back in twenty twenty three, grub hub did say that

0:30:54.320 --> 0:30:57.800
<v Speaker 2>there are two cities where Chinese dish made the top

0:30:57.880 --> 0:31:01.600
<v Speaker 2>ten crab Rangoon and hold your emails, because we know

0:31:01.680 --> 0:31:04.560
<v Speaker 2>crab Rangoon is actually not a Chinese dish at all,

0:31:05.520 --> 0:31:08.160
<v Speaker 2>but it is found in just about every American Chinese

0:31:08.240 --> 0:31:13.760
<v Speaker 2>food place. It was invented by an American the restaurants

0:31:13.760 --> 0:31:18.360
<v Speaker 2>who are Victor Bergeron, whereas Polynesian themed chain Trader vis

0:31:18.840 --> 0:31:22.080
<v Speaker 2>Trade named after a city in Burma also known as

0:31:22.120 --> 0:31:25.640
<v Speaker 2>me and Mar and it has cream cheese, which is

0:31:25.680 --> 0:31:27.360
<v Speaker 2>as American as chop suey.

0:31:28.040 --> 0:31:31.720
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I know I'm retelling this, but I'll have

0:31:31.800 --> 0:31:33.880
<v Speaker 1>to just quickly say. One of the funniest things from

0:31:33.920 --> 0:31:35.640
<v Speaker 1>when I was a kid was when I was like

0:31:35.680 --> 0:31:37.640
<v Speaker 1>twelve years old in a restaurant and there was a

0:31:37.680 --> 0:31:41.200
<v Speaker 1>gentleman ordering takeout from the counter and after like six

0:31:41.240 --> 0:31:43.080
<v Speaker 1>dishes in a row, he asked if it had cheese

0:31:43.080 --> 0:31:49.040
<v Speaker 1>on it, and the very kind restaurant owner kept saying no, no, no,

0:31:49.280 --> 0:31:52.400
<v Speaker 1>and at the very end he said, in his very

0:31:52.560 --> 0:31:55.560
<v Speaker 1>sweet broken English, that no Chinese food has cheese on it.

0:31:56.680 --> 0:31:58.520
<v Speaker 1>And I think the last time I told that story,

0:31:58.680 --> 0:32:01.880
<v Speaker 1>you and I thought about like a slice of American

0:32:01.960 --> 0:32:04.440
<v Speaker 1>cheese just on some stir fry. And then we're like,

0:32:04.680 --> 0:32:05.880
<v Speaker 1>I think we might want to try that.

0:32:06.240 --> 0:32:08.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it sounds like something we would try for sure.

0:32:09.080 --> 0:32:10.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, very funny childhood memory.

0:32:12.680 --> 0:32:16.920
<v Speaker 2>What else, Oh, hey, there's another reason that some Chinese

0:32:16.960 --> 0:32:18.400
<v Speaker 2>food became americanized.

0:32:18.840 --> 0:32:19.400
<v Speaker 1>Let's hear it.

0:32:19.840 --> 0:32:21.720
<v Speaker 2>Ingredients, that's right.

0:32:23.440 --> 0:32:25.360
<v Speaker 1>You know, a lot of them were changed to fit

0:32:25.440 --> 0:32:30.360
<v Speaker 1>our tastes, including the ingredient sometimes. One example that Laura found,

0:32:30.480 --> 0:32:35.120
<v Speaker 1>of course, is beef with broccoli that is not you know,

0:32:35.160 --> 0:32:36.960
<v Speaker 1>they don't have that kind of you know, as far

0:32:36.960 --> 0:32:38.520
<v Speaker 1>as I know, they don't have that kind of broccoli

0:32:38.520 --> 0:32:42.080
<v Speaker 1>in China. What they use is Chinese broccoli or guy lahn,

0:32:42.920 --> 0:32:45.000
<v Speaker 1>which if you look that up, it looks it's more

0:32:45.000 --> 0:32:47.040
<v Speaker 1>like bakchoi than what we think of as broccoli.

0:32:47.400 --> 0:32:49.640
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and I was like, where's broccoli from? Turns out

0:32:49.640 --> 0:32:50.600
<v Speaker 2>the Mediterranean?

0:32:51.040 --> 0:32:51.480
<v Speaker 1>Okay.

0:32:51.600 --> 0:32:55.560
<v Speaker 2>It was, according to legend, brought to America by Thomas Jefferson,

0:32:55.600 --> 0:32:59.440
<v Speaker 2>who grew it experimentally in his garden. And they like

0:32:59.480 --> 0:33:03.200
<v Speaker 2>to fart. Yep, he said this is gonna make me

0:33:03.280 --> 0:33:07.840
<v Speaker 2>blow and then it was it took off in popularity

0:33:07.880 --> 0:33:10.480
<v Speaker 2>in the US in the nineteen twenties. Didn't see why,

0:33:10.520 --> 0:33:11.240
<v Speaker 2>but it did.

0:33:11.360 --> 0:33:14.080
<v Speaker 1>Believe me, Well, we got to talk a little bit

0:33:14.120 --> 0:33:18.240
<v Speaker 1>about fortune cookies because that is not Chinese either. That

0:33:18.400 --> 0:33:21.600
<v Speaker 1>is originally adopted from something called the Japanese cracker, which

0:33:21.640 --> 0:33:24.840
<v Speaker 1>is a savory thing. But in the early twentieth century,

0:33:24.920 --> 0:33:28.960
<v Speaker 1>Chinese restaurants were owned a lot of times by Japanese people.

0:33:29.360 --> 0:33:32.520
<v Speaker 1>Japanese bakeries were making these cookies, and then after Japanese

0:33:32.560 --> 0:33:35.840
<v Speaker 1>in tournament, a lot of Chinese Americans took over these

0:33:36.040 --> 0:33:40.720
<v Speaker 1>cookie factories. And that got me down the road of like, well,

0:33:40.720 --> 0:33:44.640
<v Speaker 1>who's writing the fortunes. There's a guy named Donald Lao

0:33:45.040 --> 0:33:47.960
<v Speaker 1>who's a CFO of Wantan Food Company, the largest fortune

0:33:48.000 --> 0:33:50.960
<v Speaker 1>cookie maker in the world, and he was the sole writer,

0:33:51.240 --> 0:33:54.960
<v Speaker 1>or has been for thirty years of writing these fortune cookies.

0:33:55.760 --> 0:33:58.680
<v Speaker 2>I don't remember specifically talking about him or his name,

0:33:58.800 --> 0:34:01.080
<v Speaker 2>but there's no way we don't talk about him in

0:34:01.120 --> 0:34:03.680
<v Speaker 2>our fortune cookie short stuff from twenty twenty two.

0:34:04.280 --> 0:34:06.680
<v Speaker 1>If we missed him, I can't believe we would miss

0:34:06.680 --> 0:34:09.759
<v Speaker 1>that guy's no way. But as a recap he he

0:34:09.760 --> 0:34:11.440
<v Speaker 1>wrote him for thirty years. He used to write two

0:34:11.480 --> 0:34:14.040
<v Speaker 1>to three per day. Now it's two or three per

0:34:14.120 --> 0:34:17.640
<v Speaker 1>month because they have just thousands of them. And he

0:34:18.000 --> 0:34:19.919
<v Speaker 1>got that job by default because he spoke the best

0:34:19.960 --> 0:34:23.319
<v Speaker 1>English at the company. And his quote is I am

0:34:23.360 --> 0:34:25.400
<v Speaker 1>the most read author in the United States.

0:34:26.120 --> 0:34:27.200
<v Speaker 2>I believe it for sure.

0:34:27.360 --> 0:34:28.080
<v Speaker 1>It's pretty great.

0:34:29.400 --> 0:34:31.319
<v Speaker 2>And then we got to talk about a couple of

0:34:31.360 --> 0:34:35.959
<v Speaker 2>regional specialties. Saint Louis. I remember when we went there.

0:34:36.000 --> 0:34:38.439
<v Speaker 2>We when we get back to touring again, I really

0:34:38.520 --> 0:34:41.640
<v Speaker 2>want to go to Saint Louis. Everyone there was crazy nice.

0:34:41.960 --> 0:34:42.200
<v Speaker 1>Yep.

0:34:43.000 --> 0:34:46.120
<v Speaker 2>They had really cool, like regional foods that you couldn't

0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:48.600
<v Speaker 2>find anywhere else, like good stuff. Oh is this a

0:34:48.640 --> 0:34:51.440
<v Speaker 2>good town? I want to go back. But I also

0:34:51.640 --> 0:34:58.080
<v Speaker 2>want to try the Saint Paul sandwich. There is eggfou young,

0:34:58.520 --> 0:34:59.600
<v Speaker 2>but a sandwich.

0:35:00.719 --> 0:35:01.160
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:35:01.480 --> 0:35:05.000
<v Speaker 2>So you've got an omelet with vegetables, a meat or

0:35:05.080 --> 0:35:09.239
<v Speaker 2>seafood topped with brown gravy on a sandwich. So you've

0:35:09.239 --> 0:35:14.040
<v Speaker 2>got mayo, pickle, lettuce, all that stuff. It sounds just

0:35:14.160 --> 0:35:16.480
<v Speaker 2>totally off the chain, and I really want to try it.

0:35:17.280 --> 0:35:19.080
<v Speaker 1>There's another one, and I don't know if you looked

0:35:19.120 --> 0:35:21.359
<v Speaker 1>up a picture of this thing. No, I didn't, but

0:35:21.360 --> 0:35:24.040
<v Speaker 1>if you go to Fall River, Massachusetts, do you have

0:35:24.080 --> 0:35:27.319
<v Speaker 1>your phone with you or a computer or it means

0:35:27.320 --> 0:35:28.200
<v Speaker 1>of looking up a photo.

0:35:28.360 --> 0:35:29.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, sure, let me do that.

0:35:29.560 --> 0:35:31.160
<v Speaker 1>While I'm doing this, you should check this out. It's

0:35:31.200 --> 0:35:35.520
<v Speaker 1>called a chow main sandwich. It hails from Fall River, Massachusetts,

0:35:35.920 --> 0:35:38.279
<v Speaker 1>but it's in surrounding towns there, and who knows, maybe

0:35:38.320 --> 0:35:40.640
<v Speaker 1>elsewhere in New England. But it is exactly what it

0:35:40.680 --> 0:35:42.840
<v Speaker 1>sounds like. It's chowmain on a sandwich on like a

0:35:42.880 --> 0:35:46.960
<v Speaker 1>hamburger bun. But if you look this thing up, it's

0:35:46.960 --> 0:35:50.040
<v Speaker 1>not a sandwich it is. You can't see the bottom bun.

0:35:50.160 --> 0:35:53.400
<v Speaker 1>It is just chow main all over a plate. I

0:35:53.400 --> 0:35:55.640
<v Speaker 1>guess there's a bun underneath, and there's just a hamburger

0:35:55.680 --> 0:35:58.240
<v Speaker 1>bun sitting on top. Like it is a full plate

0:35:58.640 --> 0:36:01.720
<v Speaker 1>of chow main with just a fun in there somewhere.

0:36:01.760 --> 0:36:03.520
<v Speaker 1>It's not the kind of thing you would ever pick

0:36:03.600 --> 0:36:04.600
<v Speaker 1>up and eat as a sandwich.

0:36:05.040 --> 0:36:10.480
<v Speaker 2>It looks like cousin Nit wearing his hat, actually a

0:36:10.560 --> 0:36:15.000
<v Speaker 2>little derby hamburger bun hat. Yeah, it's ostentatious to say

0:36:15.000 --> 0:36:15.960
<v Speaker 2>the least, for sure.

0:36:16.280 --> 0:36:19.680
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, should we take another break? Yeah, all right, we'll

0:36:19.719 --> 0:36:22.360
<v Speaker 1>take another break and we'll finish up with an ode

0:36:22.920 --> 0:36:33.920
<v Speaker 1>to Panda Express and PF Changs right after this shot shot.

0:36:50.000 --> 0:36:52.080
<v Speaker 1>All right, so we're gonna start off talking a little

0:36:52.080 --> 0:36:55.400
<v Speaker 1>bit about how PF Changs came about a restaurant that

0:36:55.840 --> 0:36:58.000
<v Speaker 1>I think I might have been to once. I definitely

0:36:58.000 --> 0:36:59.480
<v Speaker 1>picked it up a lot as a PA in the

0:36:59.480 --> 0:37:04.000
<v Speaker 1>film business US for like big production meetings. So I

0:37:04.000 --> 0:37:06.880
<v Speaker 1>can't speak to its quality. It's supposed to be pretty good, right.

0:37:07.520 --> 0:37:12.120
<v Speaker 2>PF Chang's Yeah, yeah, it's it's good. I mean, especially

0:37:12.120 --> 0:37:15.440
<v Speaker 2>for comparing chain typical. I would not call it a

0:37:15.480 --> 0:37:18.280
<v Speaker 2>high end chain, no more than you'd call cheesecake factory

0:37:18.280 --> 0:37:22.279
<v Speaker 2>a high end chain. Well, it's it's virtually on the

0:37:22.320 --> 0:37:26.400
<v Speaker 2>same level of dining. Okay, I'm not taking a shot

0:37:26.440 --> 0:37:28.600
<v Speaker 2>at it. I'm just saying, like, it's not It's not

0:37:28.640 --> 0:37:32.279
<v Speaker 2>like the place that you went to in Vegas or

0:37:33.440 --> 0:37:38.840
<v Speaker 2>or Peaking Duck in fall I think Fall Falls Church, Virginia,

0:37:39.000 --> 0:37:42.839
<v Speaker 2>which is an amazing spot. It's just like you can

0:37:42.880 --> 0:37:46.400
<v Speaker 2>go to a mall and there might be one attached

0:37:46.480 --> 0:37:49.680
<v Speaker 2>to it if it's a nice mall. Regardless, it is tasty,

0:37:49.800 --> 0:37:53.240
<v Speaker 2>especially compared to like Chinese takeout. It's definitely several steps

0:37:53.320 --> 0:37:56.520
<v Speaker 2>up from that. Okay, I got it's just really hard

0:37:56.560 --> 0:38:01.040
<v Speaker 2>to like what high end restaurant has three hundreds now, Like,

0:38:01.080 --> 0:38:03.640
<v Speaker 2>when you have three hundred locations, you're starting to work

0:38:03.680 --> 0:38:07.840
<v Speaker 2>in economies of scale. It's really tough to keep like

0:38:07.920 --> 0:38:11.320
<v Speaker 2>any kind of cuisine just top notch in that sense.

0:38:11.760 --> 0:38:14.560
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, for sure. And I want to quickly plug since

0:38:14.600 --> 0:38:17.160
<v Speaker 1>you mentioned Cheesecake Factory, are again friends of the show

0:38:17.200 --> 0:38:19.280
<v Speaker 1>and friends in real life. Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison

0:38:19.800 --> 0:38:22.359
<v Speaker 1>of the Greatest Generation podcast have a side podcast called

0:38:22.400 --> 0:38:26.320
<v Speaker 1>Factory Seconds where they're working their way through the menu

0:38:26.320 --> 0:38:28.319
<v Speaker 1>of the Cheesecake Factory, one item at a time.

0:38:28.440 --> 0:38:32.319
<v Speaker 2>Those two could not be any greater American treasures.

0:38:33.040 --> 0:38:33.879
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's pretty great.

0:38:33.920 --> 0:38:34.239
<v Speaker 2>I love it.

0:38:34.600 --> 0:38:37.600
<v Speaker 1>Adam's uncle actually is the voice of the Memphis Grizzlies

0:38:38.000 --> 0:38:42.799
<v Speaker 1>as the announcer basketball team. And apparently Cheesecake Factory is

0:38:42.920 --> 0:38:46.719
<v Speaker 1>huge with NBA players, And I was like why, and

0:38:46.760 --> 0:38:49.080
<v Speaker 1>his uncle he was like, because there's one in every city.

0:38:49.480 --> 0:38:52.840
<v Speaker 1>It's the same menu. It's a huge menu, the portions

0:38:52.840 --> 0:38:55.399
<v Speaker 1>are huge, and they and the quality is always the same.

0:38:56.440 --> 0:38:57.520
<v Speaker 2>Economies of scale.

0:38:58.440 --> 0:39:01.080
<v Speaker 1>Well, I was wrong. Apparently they make all their stuff fresh.

0:39:01.080 --> 0:39:02.080
<v Speaker 1>It's not like bagged food.

0:39:03.280 --> 0:39:06.440
<v Speaker 2>Oh, if you believe that, I actually no, I don't.

0:39:07.400 --> 0:39:08.320
<v Speaker 1>It's true.

0:39:08.520 --> 0:39:11.439
<v Speaker 2>Huh. That is a little surprising. But I mean it's

0:39:11.480 --> 0:39:13.520
<v Speaker 2>not like I'm hating on cheesecake factory.

0:39:13.600 --> 0:39:14.839
<v Speaker 1>It's just I've never been.

0:39:15.719 --> 0:39:19.799
<v Speaker 2>Oh, it's they have a really varied menu, that's yeah. Yeah,

0:39:19.800 --> 0:39:23.399
<v Speaker 2>the portions are gigantic and their cheesecakes are pretty great.

0:39:23.800 --> 0:39:25.799
<v Speaker 1>All right, Well, I'm going to be a guest on

0:39:25.800 --> 0:39:27.480
<v Speaker 1>that show at some point. So next time in LA

0:39:27.560 --> 0:39:28.839
<v Speaker 1>We're going to go to one and then I'm going

0:39:28.880 --> 0:39:32.200
<v Speaker 1>to be a guest and okay, good. Anyway, A long

0:39:32.239 --> 0:39:35.680
<v Speaker 1>way around describing PF. Chang's, there was a woman named

0:39:35.719 --> 0:39:40.320
<v Speaker 1>Cecilia Chiang with an I in there from San Francisco

0:39:40.400 --> 0:39:43.959
<v Speaker 1>and she and I believe before nineteen sixty five, before

0:39:43.960 --> 0:39:47.680
<v Speaker 1>that immigration law, opened a high end restaurant there called Mandarin.

0:39:48.280 --> 0:39:50.640
<v Speaker 1>And she said, no Chop suey in my menu, and

0:39:50.680 --> 0:39:53.160
<v Speaker 1>no Eggfu Young. All this Chinatown stuff is a no no.

0:39:54.080 --> 0:39:56.640
<v Speaker 1>And she owned a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo

0:39:57.840 --> 0:40:01.000
<v Speaker 1>years ago, and her husband got a diplomatic post there,

0:40:01.040 --> 0:40:04.120
<v Speaker 1>so that's why she was doing Chinese food there and

0:40:04.239 --> 0:40:07.239
<v Speaker 1>Mandarin opened in nineteen sixty one, and that's where all

0:40:07.239 --> 0:40:08.960
<v Speaker 1>of a sudden people are exposed to like kung pou,

0:40:09.080 --> 0:40:12.799
<v Speaker 1>chicken tea, smoked duck, mushue, pork pot stickers, like some

0:40:12.840 --> 0:40:16.480
<v Speaker 1>of the really good stuff and authentic stuff. Yeah exactly.

0:40:17.120 --> 0:40:22.120
<v Speaker 1>She sold her son, Philip the restaurant Mandarin in nineteen

0:40:22.120 --> 0:40:24.400
<v Speaker 1>eighty nine, and he is one of the co founders

0:40:24.520 --> 0:40:25.360
<v Speaker 1>of PF Changs.

0:40:25.560 --> 0:40:29.719
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Philip F. Chang, but he dropped the I exactly.

0:40:30.280 --> 0:40:33.759
<v Speaker 2>So PF Chang's pretty large chain, three hundred restaurants. It's

0:40:33.800 --> 0:40:37.080
<v Speaker 2>definitely nothing to sneeze at. But if you really want

0:40:37.080 --> 0:40:40.680
<v Speaker 2>to talk economy of scales, let's talk Panda Express. They

0:40:40.719 --> 0:40:45.400
<v Speaker 2>have two thousand more restaurants than PF Chang's does twenty

0:40:45.400 --> 0:40:48.000
<v Speaker 2>three hundred in the United States.

0:40:48.360 --> 0:40:50.440
<v Speaker 1>Right, yeah, food Court City.

0:40:50.600 --> 0:40:53.000
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, have you had Panda Express?

0:40:53.160 --> 0:40:56.239
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? I have. I used to do it when I

0:40:56.280 --> 0:40:58.880
<v Speaker 1>was younger. I'm not going to say it's like not

0:40:59.000 --> 0:41:02.000
<v Speaker 1>any good, but you know, it's Chinese fast food, and

0:41:02.000 --> 0:41:04.640
<v Speaker 1>it's just not something I would eat now. I would

0:41:04.960 --> 0:41:06.960
<v Speaker 1>in a pinch. It's not like I'd turn my nose

0:41:07.000 --> 0:41:10.200
<v Speaker 1>up at it. But I have been there before you.

0:41:11.680 --> 0:41:14.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, a couple of times. And yeah, it is fast food,

0:41:14.840 --> 0:41:18.759
<v Speaker 2>and it's great for fast food. It's just such a

0:41:18.880 --> 0:41:22.560
<v Speaker 2>it's just different. It's not you know, Taco Bell or

0:41:22.640 --> 0:41:26.600
<v Speaker 2>McDonald's or even like Chipotle or something. It's just Chinese version,

0:41:26.800 --> 0:41:28.360
<v Speaker 2>the Chinese version of fast food.

0:41:28.480 --> 0:41:31.239
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, like it. Apparently it's a family run business though,

0:41:31.760 --> 0:41:35.200
<v Speaker 1>even though it's this huge chain, and in the seventies

0:41:35.200 --> 0:41:37.200
<v Speaker 1>they just had a few little sit down restaurants and

0:41:37.360 --> 0:41:40.520
<v Speaker 1>it kind of grew very naturally and organically as this

0:41:40.600 --> 0:41:42.640
<v Speaker 1>family business, which I never knew, which is pretty cool.

0:41:43.200 --> 0:41:45.120
<v Speaker 2>And if you're a fan of orange Chicken, you can

0:41:45.160 --> 0:41:48.719
<v Speaker 2>thank your friends at Panda Express because they debuted it

0:41:48.719 --> 0:41:51.000
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen eighty seven and now you can find it

0:41:51.040 --> 0:41:53.360
<v Speaker 2>basically everywhere. But they were the ones who came up

0:41:53.440 --> 0:41:53.759
<v Speaker 2>with it.

0:41:54.120 --> 0:41:57.480
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, what's your order in a Chinese restaurant or for takeout?

0:41:57.880 --> 0:42:01.240
<v Speaker 2>I'm trying some hunan to know because I don't normally

0:42:01.320 --> 0:42:03.160
<v Speaker 2>eat that and I want to see what it's like.

0:42:04.040 --> 0:42:06.799
<v Speaker 2>But typically a garlic chicken of some sort. I like

0:42:06.920 --> 0:42:11.600
<v Speaker 2>savory brown sauces, umami brown sauces, usually chicken. If I'm

0:42:11.640 --> 0:42:14.480
<v Speaker 2>really feeling crazy, maybe like a happy family or something

0:42:14.560 --> 0:42:14.879
<v Speaker 2>like that.

0:42:15.280 --> 0:42:16.759
<v Speaker 1>Are you white rice or fried rice?

0:42:17.520 --> 0:42:18.480
<v Speaker 2>White steamed rice?

0:42:18.960 --> 0:42:21.319
<v Speaker 1>M boy, I gotta have that fried rice.

0:42:21.719 --> 0:42:24.360
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, there's too many peas and fried rice and

0:42:24.480 --> 0:42:26.360
<v Speaker 2>peas are one of my most hated things on the

0:42:26.520 --> 0:42:27.200
<v Speaker 2>entire planet.

0:42:27.400 --> 0:42:28.239
<v Speaker 1>Oh I love peas.

0:42:28.719 --> 0:42:28.919
<v Speaker 2>Eat.

0:42:29.320 --> 0:42:30.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I gotta get that fried rice. I'll get a

0:42:30.960 --> 0:42:32.800
<v Speaker 1>lot of sweet and sour chicken or ses some me chicken.

0:42:33.320 --> 0:42:35.640
<v Speaker 1>Got to get the egg roll. I'll take a beef

0:42:35.680 --> 0:42:37.440
<v Speaker 1>and broccoli if people have ordered it, but that's not

0:42:37.520 --> 0:42:40.520
<v Speaker 1>my order. But I'll also try a lot of stuff.

0:42:40.560 --> 0:42:42.640
<v Speaker 1>If I'm at a big group and someone's just ordering

0:42:42.680 --> 0:42:44.880
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of Chinese food, I'll eat almost all of it.

0:42:45.120 --> 0:42:46.320
<v Speaker 2>Do you ask them first?

0:42:47.440 --> 0:42:49.680
<v Speaker 1>What like what to order? No?

0:42:49.800 --> 0:42:51.320
<v Speaker 2>Can I have some of your orders?

0:42:51.320 --> 0:42:51.480
<v Speaker 1>Oh?

0:42:52.160 --> 0:42:53.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for sure.

0:42:54.440 --> 0:42:56.880
<v Speaker 1>And then you know, if you're in a place not

0:42:56.960 --> 0:42:58.640
<v Speaker 1>all cities have this stuff. But if you're in a

0:42:58.640 --> 0:43:01.360
<v Speaker 1>place that has the really good, authentic stuff and you

0:43:01.400 --> 0:43:04.759
<v Speaker 1>get dim sum or some pork buns or soup dumplings,

0:43:04.800 --> 0:43:06.680
<v Speaker 1>like all that stuff is great, but you can't find

0:43:06.680 --> 0:43:07.240
<v Speaker 1>that everywhere.

0:43:07.400 --> 0:43:09.839
<v Speaker 2>No, I really want some Chinese food.

0:43:09.840 --> 0:43:14.160
<v Speaker 1>Now it's gonna happen. That's the first thing I ordered

0:43:14.160 --> 0:43:16.000
<v Speaker 1>after our week at the beach in South Carolina, after

0:43:16.000 --> 0:43:19.000
<v Speaker 1>eating you know, coastal seafood, American seafood, I was like,

0:43:19.000 --> 0:43:20.160
<v Speaker 1>I can eat some Chinese food.

0:43:20.880 --> 0:43:24.360
<v Speaker 2>So America is not the only place that took Chinese

0:43:24.400 --> 0:43:27.920
<v Speaker 2>food and said here you meat this orange and squeezed

0:43:27.920 --> 0:43:31.080
<v Speaker 2>it together and then fried it. That's like I said

0:43:31.080 --> 0:43:33.640
<v Speaker 2>at the outs, That's happened all over the world. And

0:43:33.719 --> 0:43:37.799
<v Speaker 2>apparently I'm not on TikTok much as an ever, but

0:43:38.120 --> 0:43:40.640
<v Speaker 2>there was a thing on TikTok a couple of years

0:43:40.680 --> 0:43:45.760
<v Speaker 2>ago where American people picked up on UK British Chinese

0:43:45.800 --> 0:43:48.840
<v Speaker 2>food and We're like, what are you guys doing over there?

0:43:49.640 --> 0:43:52.520
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I didn't see any of that either, but apparently

0:43:52.560 --> 0:43:56.640
<v Speaker 1>it was pretty funny. Apparently the food in the UK,

0:43:56.719 --> 0:43:58.840
<v Speaker 1>the Chinese food is a lot different than here in America.

0:43:59.080 --> 0:44:03.360
<v Speaker 1>It is very popular over there, maybe even one of

0:44:03.400 --> 0:44:07.120
<v Speaker 1>the top two, maybe even the top food in the country.

0:44:07.200 --> 0:44:09.560
<v Speaker 2>I saw that. It definitely was by a long shot.

0:44:09.800 --> 0:44:12.560
<v Speaker 1>Oh really, Okay, so they love it over there. They

0:44:12.560 --> 0:44:14.720
<v Speaker 1>will have things like French fries, what they call chips,

0:44:15.400 --> 0:44:17.920
<v Speaker 1>a lot of curry sauces, which is different than us

0:44:18.239 --> 0:44:20.279
<v Speaker 1>because there's a lot of great Indian food obviously in

0:44:20.320 --> 0:44:24.160
<v Speaker 1>England and throughout the UK. And they also have something

0:44:24.480 --> 0:44:27.359
<v Speaker 1>called a chicken ball, and that's just what they call it.

0:44:27.760 --> 0:44:29.600
<v Speaker 1>I looked it up. I tried to find any difference.

0:44:29.680 --> 0:44:31.600
<v Speaker 1>It looks like the exact same thing we get here

0:44:32.480 --> 0:44:34.920
<v Speaker 1>in like a sweet and sour chicken. It's just a fried,

0:44:35.040 --> 0:44:36.440
<v Speaker 1>little chunk of chicken.

0:44:36.320 --> 0:44:39.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, which everybody loves. Even if you don't need chicken,

0:44:39.400 --> 0:44:39.960
<v Speaker 2>you'll eat that.

0:44:40.520 --> 0:44:42.600
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't determine though from looking at first, if it

0:44:42.719 --> 0:44:46.160
<v Speaker 1>was ground like a meatball, but it's not. And they're

0:44:46.200 --> 0:44:51.680
<v Speaker 1>not even usually round. They're just you know, chicken chained. Yeah,

0:44:51.680 --> 0:44:53.160
<v Speaker 1>like a little chicken finger kind of thing.

0:44:53.280 --> 0:44:57.040
<v Speaker 2>Man. So poor chicken meat has been like subjected to

0:44:57.120 --> 0:44:59.799
<v Speaker 2>so many different indignantities over the eat, you know, more

0:44:59.840 --> 0:45:00.879
<v Speaker 2>than any other meat.

0:45:01.440 --> 0:45:02.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.

0:45:02.840 --> 0:45:05.560
<v Speaker 2>So India also has a version of Chinese food that's

0:45:05.600 --> 0:45:08.480
<v Speaker 2>so popular that some Indian restaurants in the US. I've

0:45:08.520 --> 0:45:11.680
<v Speaker 2>not seen this, but they'll sometimes have dishes there called

0:45:11.719 --> 0:45:15.160
<v Speaker 2>Manchurian something or other. Yeah, and that I mean I

0:45:15.200 --> 0:45:17.719
<v Speaker 2>didn't either, I've never run across that. And then in

0:45:17.760 --> 0:45:20.600
<v Speaker 2>some cities, if the city's big enough, they might have

0:45:20.680 --> 0:45:24.640
<v Speaker 2>like full on Indian Chinese restaurants there where it's the

0:45:24.719 --> 0:45:26.920
<v Speaker 2>Indian version of Chinese, just like if you had an

0:45:26.960 --> 0:45:31.960
<v Speaker 2>American version of the Chinese food in India, there's probably

0:45:31.960 --> 0:45:34.399
<v Speaker 2>some sort of cultural exchange, like they open one here,

0:45:34.640 --> 0:45:37.080
<v Speaker 2>we have to open one there. It's got to be balanced.

0:45:37.680 --> 0:45:43.280
<v Speaker 1>It's contractual, the same for Latin America. In the United States,

0:45:43.360 --> 0:45:46.439
<v Speaker 1>Chinese Cuban restaurants started opening in New York City, of course,

0:45:46.480 --> 0:45:50.279
<v Speaker 1>in the nineteen seventies, and then what they call would

0:45:50.280 --> 0:45:51.520
<v Speaker 1>it be China Latino?

0:45:52.239 --> 0:45:53.719
<v Speaker 2>I'm going with Chino Latino.

0:45:54.120 --> 0:45:55.759
<v Speaker 1>I mean, China Latino is what I want to say,

0:45:55.760 --> 0:45:56.839
<v Speaker 1>because it sounds so great.

0:45:56.920 --> 0:45:57.680
<v Speaker 2>Mm hm.

0:45:57.719 --> 0:45:59.200
<v Speaker 1>I just wasn't sure if that was right. But they

0:45:59.239 --> 0:46:03.399
<v Speaker 1>started opening later on. They're in decline in New York now,

0:46:03.600 --> 0:46:08.000
<v Speaker 1>but apparently, just like everywhere over the course of centuries,

0:46:08.320 --> 0:46:11.719
<v Speaker 1>Chinese workers were brought over to Latin America for a

0:46:11.760 --> 0:46:15.400
<v Speaker 1>lot of reasons, but usually servitude. Sadly, but again, they

0:46:15.480 --> 0:46:18.880
<v Speaker 1>brought their food with them, and their food existed alongside

0:46:18.880 --> 0:46:21.520
<v Speaker 1>stuff like Cuban food and Peruvian food, and then they

0:46:21.560 --> 0:46:23.560
<v Speaker 1>start to blend it together, and all of a sudden

0:46:23.560 --> 0:46:25.600
<v Speaker 1>you have these cool like sort of mix up dishes.

0:46:25.719 --> 0:46:27.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I want to try all of these.

0:46:28.280 --> 0:46:28.799
<v Speaker 1>I do too.

0:46:29.239 --> 0:46:34.520
<v Speaker 2>And then apparently also South Africa has Afro Cantonese and

0:46:34.800 --> 0:46:37.799
<v Speaker 2>that was again developed out of a Chinese community that

0:46:37.840 --> 0:46:40.399
<v Speaker 2>were brought there as indentured workers back all the way

0:46:40.440 --> 0:46:44.759
<v Speaker 2>back in the nineteenth century. Basically just like America, and

0:46:44.840 --> 0:46:48.240
<v Speaker 2>also just like America, as more and more Chinese immigrants

0:46:48.239 --> 0:46:52.960
<v Speaker 2>have come higher end, more Chinese authentic dishes have kind

0:46:52.960 --> 0:46:57.160
<v Speaker 2>of become more favorited than just the Afro Cantonese version.

0:46:58.239 --> 0:47:01.239
<v Speaker 1>Afro Cantonese just to my ear, sounds delicious.

0:47:01.560 --> 0:47:05.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah again, I said it before and I'll say

0:47:05.680 --> 0:47:08.200
<v Speaker 2>it again. I really want some Chinese food right now.

0:47:08.560 --> 0:47:10.960
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's gonna happen, and we're recording earlier, so it's

0:47:11.000 --> 0:47:12.759
<v Speaker 1>like creeping onto lunchtime right now.

0:47:12.920 --> 0:47:14.719
<v Speaker 2>Oh are you doing it for lunch? I'm gonna make

0:47:14.760 --> 0:47:17.480
<v Speaker 2>myself wait until dinner and really ttilate myself.

0:47:17.680 --> 0:47:19.080
<v Speaker 1>Oh no, no, no, I can't get it for lunch.

0:47:19.200 --> 0:47:21.160
<v Speaker 1>I'll uh well, I'll probably do skip lunch and order

0:47:21.200 --> 0:47:21.760
<v Speaker 1>it for dinner.

0:47:22.080 --> 0:47:22.640
<v Speaker 2>There you go.

0:47:23.800 --> 0:47:25.799
<v Speaker 1>But this has inspired me to I've been wanting to

0:47:25.840 --> 0:47:29.440
<v Speaker 1>do an episode on Cajun food, but it was very intimidating,

0:47:29.480 --> 0:47:33.839
<v Speaker 1>like Cajun sort of creole stuff because there's so many influences.

0:47:34.760 --> 0:47:36.560
<v Speaker 1>I was just like, we're gonna screw it up, but this,

0:47:36.719 --> 0:47:38.840
<v Speaker 1>this is uh maybe more brave.

0:47:39.360 --> 0:47:41.840
<v Speaker 2>Well, if we do Cajun food, we have to consult

0:47:41.880 --> 0:47:44.799
<v Speaker 2>our good friend and friend of the show, Doug Shasherie.

0:47:45.480 --> 0:47:48.160
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, m hm, oh that's right Doug.

0:47:48.360 --> 0:47:51.160
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, when he brought us a Boudine balls at our

0:47:51.239 --> 0:47:53.480
<v Speaker 2>New Orleans show and we ate him on stage.

0:47:53.880 --> 0:47:55.040
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, what a guy. He's great.

0:47:55.080 --> 0:47:58.680
<v Speaker 2>Oh, he's wonderful. So yeah, Plus his last name Sashery,

0:47:58.800 --> 0:48:02.600
<v Speaker 2>so he knows what he's talking about Cajun food. That's right. Well,

0:48:02.640 --> 0:48:05.560
<v Speaker 2>since we talked about our friend Doug Shasherie here on

0:48:05.600 --> 0:48:09.120
<v Speaker 2>the episode, as was predicted back in two thousand and eight.

0:48:09.920 --> 0:48:12.600
<v Speaker 2>By the way, Chuck, today's the seventeenth anniversary of stuff

0:48:12.600 --> 0:48:16.399
<v Speaker 2>you should know today. Yeah, happy anniversary, baby.

0:48:16.400 --> 0:48:18.520
<v Speaker 1>Wow, happy anniversary love.

0:48:19.040 --> 0:48:22.239
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Well, anyway, onto it, as was predicted back in

0:48:22.239 --> 0:48:24.759
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and eight. Since we said Doug Shasheri's name,

0:48:24.800 --> 0:48:29.080
<v Speaker 2>we've unlocked listener mail boy.

0:48:29.120 --> 0:48:30.799
<v Speaker 1>That's about as fan fairy as we get.

0:48:30.880 --> 0:48:34.560
<v Speaker 2>Huh, yeah, we don't. Yeah, we don't do that. Kind

0:48:34.560 --> 0:48:36.800
<v Speaker 2>of stuff, you know. I mean, we don't do media

0:48:36.840 --> 0:48:39.000
<v Speaker 2>tours or anything and say look at us, everybody, look

0:48:39.040 --> 0:48:41.160
<v Speaker 2>at us. You know, we do that every week anyway.

0:48:41.320 --> 0:48:43.960
<v Speaker 1>Who wants to do that? This is a correction. Hey, guys,

0:48:44.040 --> 0:48:46.000
<v Speaker 1>heard your short stuff on Tulipmania and wanted to point

0:48:46.040 --> 0:48:48.439
<v Speaker 1>out that Tulipmania is now largely believed to be a myth.

0:48:49.239 --> 0:48:50.919
<v Speaker 1>I only found out about that a few years ago

0:48:50.960 --> 0:48:54.000
<v Speaker 1>myself when I heard an interview from the author Anne Goldgar.

0:48:54.560 --> 0:48:57.160
<v Speaker 1>She discovered the historical reality when she dug into the

0:48:57.280 --> 0:49:01.360
<v Speaker 1>archives to research her book Tulipmania and Money, Honor and

0:49:01.440 --> 0:49:04.800
<v Speaker 1>Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. The myth was largely

0:49:05.320 --> 0:49:10.040
<v Speaker 1>promulgated great word by Scottsman Charles Mackie in his book

0:49:10.080 --> 0:49:14.319
<v Speaker 1>Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and he

0:49:14.400 --> 0:49:17.880
<v Speaker 1>sent along articles from Smithsonian and History dot Com and

0:49:17.960 --> 0:49:22.400
<v Speaker 1>even Wikipedia that said although McKay's I'm sorry Mackie's book

0:49:22.480 --> 0:49:27.920
<v Speaker 1>is a classic, citation needed, his account is contested citation needed.

0:49:28.800 --> 0:49:30.960
<v Speaker 1>Many modern scholars believe that the mania was not as

0:49:31.000 --> 0:49:34.480
<v Speaker 1>destructive as described A little behind on some of the

0:49:34.520 --> 0:49:37.560
<v Speaker 1>show's guys. Perhaps others have written in but no one

0:49:37.560 --> 0:49:40.600
<v Speaker 1>else has written in, Richard, so you're the only one.

0:49:40.680 --> 0:49:41.520
<v Speaker 1>So way to go.

0:49:41.880 --> 0:49:44.120
<v Speaker 2>I've seen that on the Internet's here there since we

0:49:44.239 --> 0:49:48.000
<v Speaker 2>released it. But I mean, honestly, Chuck, we used a

0:49:48.080 --> 0:49:51.680
<v Speaker 2>lot of different sources for that, and yeah, I mean, yes,

0:49:51.719 --> 0:49:53.600
<v Speaker 2>you can make a case that it was exaggerated, but

0:49:53.680 --> 0:49:55.360
<v Speaker 2>the idea that it's a myth is I did not

0:49:55.480 --> 0:49:58.560
<v Speaker 2>run across that, but who knows, and if it was,

0:49:58.600 --> 0:50:02.240
<v Speaker 2>then a lot of may that we released an episode

0:50:02.239 --> 0:50:03.880
<v Speaker 2>where we were catfished by.

0:50:04.040 --> 0:50:06.200
<v Speaker 1>History by the tulipmaniacs.

0:50:07.760 --> 0:50:09.120
<v Speaker 2>We'll have to get to the bottom of it. Who

0:50:09.200 --> 0:50:12.480
<v Speaker 2>wrote that, Richard? Thanks a lot, Richard. We appreciate that.

0:50:12.600 --> 0:50:15.719
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for sending us straight publicly. And if you

0:50:15.760 --> 0:50:17.960
<v Speaker 2>want to be like Richard and set us straight publicly,

0:50:18.320 --> 0:50:20.440
<v Speaker 2>you can send us an email to send it off

0:50:20.480 --> 0:50:26.040
<v Speaker 2>to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

0:50:26.200 --> 0:50:29.080
<v Speaker 1>Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

0:50:29.160 --> 0:50:33.319
<v Speaker 1>more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

0:50:33.440 --> 0:50:35.280
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.