Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Andrew Coe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 16, 2009

In 1784, passengers on the ship Empress of China became the first Americans to land in China, and the first to eat Chinese food. Today there are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States--by far the most plentiful among all our ethnic eateries. Now, in Chop Suey Andrew Coe provides the authoritative history of the American infatuation with Chinese food, telling its fascinating story for the first time.
It's a tale that moves from curiosity to disgust and then desire. From China, Coe's story travels to the American West, where Chinese immigrants drawn by the 1848 Gold Rush struggled against racism and culinary prejudice but still established restaurants and farms and imported an array of Asian ingredients. He traces the Chinese migration to the East Coast, highlighting that crucial moment when New York "Bohemians" discovered Chinese cuisine--and for better or worse, chop suey. Along the way, Coe shows how the peasant food of an obscure part of China came to dominate Chinese-American restaurants; unravels the truth of chop suey's origins; reveals why American Jews fell in love with egg rolls and chow mein; shows how President Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened our palates to a new range of cuisine; and explains why we still can't get dishes like those served in Beijing or Shanghai. The book also explores how American tastes have been shaped by our relationship with the outside world, and how we've relentlessly changed foreign foods to adapt to them our own deep-down conservative culinary preferences.
Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States is a fascinating tour of America's centuries-long appetite for Chinese food. Always illuminating, often exploding long-held culinary myths, this book opens a new window into defining what is American cuisine.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to food writer Coe, America's taste for Chinese tea goes back more than two centuries, and so does our confusion about the use of chopsticks. In this brief but ambitious volume, he chronicles the back-and-forth story of our relationship to the Middle Kingdom, its people and, above all, its food. Meals eaten by Americans in China in the early years of mercantilism and diplomacy (late 18th and early 19th century) were more European than Asian; the author dates the first record of an American eating indigenous Chinese food only to 1819. The gold rush and other expansionist projects brought thousands of Chinese to American soil along with their culture and their cuisine. Though xenophobia sometimes erupted as violent racism, public eating establishments in some cities began attracting the curious, and fads for such Westernized Chinese dishes as the eponymous stir-fry of the book's title swept urban populations. This short, dense history comes full circle with another American diplomatic mission: Nixon's historic 1972 banquet. Like its subject, the book is a little bit of a lot of different things at once—a solid and comprehensive sampling of a much larger topic. (July)
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Review

"A wide-ranging look at the interaction of Chinese food and American society and a fascinating mélange of gastronomic tidbits and historical nuggets."--Wall Street Journal

"An enlightening study of America's fascination with Chinese food, from our first epicurean envoys in 1748 to the plethora of Chinese restaurants of every caliber that dot the landscape today."--Barnes & Noble Review

"If my family's knowledge of real Chinese food was stunted-- and we weren't alone--Andrew Coe's engaging history tells why."--Seattle Times

"Coe's delightful book is a bit of 'odds and ends' itself, with pages on the use of pidgin, Chinese-kosher cuisine, the new look of San Francisco's Chinatown after the earthquake, the connection of Chinatowns with white slavery, and the Kon-Tiki craze for Cantonese food. The Chinese food we get is mostly a hybrid; Coe has documented a cuisine that may not always be authentic Chinese, but is a genuine American success story."--Columbus Dispatch

"According to food writer Coe, America's taste for Chinese tea goes back more than two centuries, and so does our confusion about the use of chopsticks. In this brief but ambitious volume, he chronicles the back-and-forth story of our relationship to the Middle Kingdom, its people and, above all, its food...Like its subject, the book is a little bit of a lot of different things at once--a solid and comprehensive sampling of a much larger topic."--Publishers Weekly

"Coe's ever-surprising history brims with plenty of enchanting anecdotes. "--Booklist

"Andrew Coe draws on the history, politics and cuisine of two hungry nations to tell one of the most fascinating stories in east-west cultural history: how Americans learned to stop worrying and love Chinese food."--Laura Shapiro, author of Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America

"This book will take an important place on a growing shelf of works that seriously tackles the conjunctions of food, migration, and ethnicity in America."--Hasia R. Diner, author, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration

"Chop Suey is a dish with crispy vegetables, crunchy noodles, and leftover meat or poultry which balances texture and flavor. It was created in the early 20th century with good reason-most Americans were not as sophisticated about food as they are today. In his immensely likable and detailed history, Andrew Coe tells us why early generations of Chinese restaurant owners like my mother and father-in-law served the food that they believed Americans liked instead of cooking the food that they themselves loved to eat."--Susanna Foo, two-time James Beard Award winner, and recipient of the Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence

"I always wondered how it was that the rich variety, delicacy, and refinement of Chinese cuisines got translated into Chinese takeout from restaurants in every town in America. Coe tells riveting stories of the ups and downs of American-Chinese relations in both countries through our cross-cultural exchange of food. I couldn't put this marvelous book down, but now it's time to eat--Chinese, of course."--Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and author of What to Eat

"His research among U.S. sources is solid, and his chronicle interesting and informative, especially regarding Nixon's trip to China."--Library Journal

"If you know what people eat, why they eat it, and how they eat it, you know a lot about the people. In Chop Suey, Andrew Coe's meticulous scholarship and engaging story telling combine for a page-turning, mouth-watering tale of two cultures and how they relate. I recommend it to all world leaders, diplomats, and everyone who loves Chinese food. No joke!"--Arthur Schwartz, author of Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited

"The story of America's love-hate relationship with Chinese food ... is told in this well-researched, lively and digestible book. Some of its tales of misconceptions of the Chinese and their food are hilarious, some are shocking."--Financial Times

"Andrew Coe is a very fine writer indeed ... [He] takes deeply researched historical information and presents them smoothly, telling stories that are packed with fascinating details to bring a subject we think we know into much clearer perspective."--WritersCast.com

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (July 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195331079
• ASIN: B004NSVFF4
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Chinese

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more informative than I expected July 20, 2009

By oldtaku

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I have to admit that from the cover I expected a fluffy but entertaining book in the style of _Eat My Globe_ but I actually got a lot more than that. This is a fact dense book, well researched.

The book opens with the new country of America sending its first ambassador (actually a merchant, which is very apropos on both sides) to China. It then diverges into a brief history of Chinese food in China - and Coe does a marvelous job of editing here, considering it's over 10,000 years of history and at least four major regions, each with their own sub-regions with their own culinary traditions.

Then back to the US, where Chinese restaurants arrived in the 1850s to feed all the Chinese people who'd come over looking for the mountains of gold. Americans never really developed a taste for the food till the 1900s, at which point it had become bland and homogenized enough to appeal to our whitebread tastes. Finally we go through the Jewish-Chinese food boom, the revitalization after WW2, Nixon's re-opening of China, and the state we're in today. The book ends with the happy yet sad state of affairs that you can get real Chinese food in the US if you know where to look, but most of it is still neutered to what we find acceptable - but we do that to all cuisines.

Unfortunately the history of Chinese people in the US is also the history of racism, so you will feel very uncomfortable about some of the quoted newspaper articles and accounts which are sprinkled with racial slurs and provincial attitudes - and not just about Chinese. Coe commendably reprints these without any squeamishness, as they're crucial to understanding American attitudes towards China.

Since the facts are so dense and interesting on their own, Coe doesn't really try to spice them up or breathlessly embroider them. The humor is very dry and low key - such as the tale of the socialite who scandalized society by her night trips to Chinatown to satiate her forbidden lust for... noodles. This means that if you're looking for something like _Kitchen Confidential_ you won't find it here. This makes it more informative, but if you need the stream of information rationed out and tarted up you'll be bored.

You'll find several bits of Chinese food trivia (and misinformation) covered here, such as where General Tso's chicken came from, the persistent notion that Chinese will eat anything (yes but no), and as promised by the title page, the history of Chop Suey.

All in all, I liked it quite a bit and blew threw it in two nights. This was much denser than I expected - it obviously skips a lot of detail in places, but it still ends up at 320 pages of fascinating overview with selected digressions, and he does give you a list of references if you're hungry for more.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Possibly Mismarketed October 22, 2009

By E. A. Montgomery TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I have often been told that if you have not traveled to China, then (as an American) you have never eaten Chinese food. I expected Chop Suey to be a foodie book about the evolution of the way food is prepared in China to the way it is served in our Chinese eateries. Chop Suey bills itself as "A Cultural History Of Chinese Food In The United States". It's really more of a history of how America has viewed the Chinese. It is not until a hundred pages or so in that the details of Chinese cuisine come into play. Prior to that, the book is a history of the China / American trade and a limited look at propaganda produced from those early voyages. There is a report here or there about the Americans being offered a meal they could not appreciate, but the primary focus is on the bigotry between the two.

From that point Chop Suey moves into the exploitation of early Chinese immigrants, the extreme racism they faced, and how they tried to hold on to their culture and cuisine in the face of it. Along the way many found jobs as cooks or opened fast food counters trying to prepare a food that met the expectations and tastes of their customers. Since those expectations were rooted in post colonial bias, the food that resulted bore little relation to what the Chinese ate at home. Moving into kosher Chinese food and eventually to Nixon's visit to China, Chop Suey continues to be a history of Chinese American relations with food as the tie and excuse for the journey. The murder of a young woman has little bearing on Chinese food as we know it, but such side trips relate to what seems to have been the author's real intention, exposing how racism kept our palates from a true cultural exchange.

There is a wealth of information in Chop Suey. The flaw of the book is that it doesn't match one's expectations. After those expectations are adjusted, it's a somewhat disjointed bundle of information without an overriding point of view to carry the reader along. It's like listening to someone go on at length about a topic they've studied in depth and become and expert on without them engaging your interest as well. This is a heavier read than it appears, and likely to thrill those who want to take a quick course in the topic while losing those just looking for a weekend jaunt.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great read as history, good read for a foodie July 26, 2009

By T. Simons TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

There are two groups of people I can see wanting to read this book: people interested in history, and people interested in food. This book is a great niche resource for historians or history lovers and a good read for foodies.

The history side of the book is great because the author manages the difficult trick of presenting richly detailed history in a way that's accessible to a normal reader --- the author has very clearly done his research, and he presents an immense number of excerpts from first-hand accounts of meals eaten by everyone from 1800's San Francisco workmen to Jazz Age New York socialites "slumming it" in Chinatown. (My personal favorite was his account of a 1950's-era _Mad Magazine_ comic strip on dinner in a chinese restaurant that I could dimly remember reading myself as a child). It never gets dry or boring, though, perhaps because food is so inextricably tied into so many other issues -- culture, race, class; immigration, poverty, and the changing of social mores over time -- and the author does a great job of tying all those things into the tale. When he describes the plight of a hostess in Sinclair Lewis' 1920 novel _Main Street_ who throws a chinese-themed party that none of the guests in her rural Minnesota town can appreciate, or the development of Nixon's love for chinese food (from secretly packing pepperidge farm bread and frozen hamburgers onto Air Force One during his China visit, to later frequently patronizing select New York chinese restaurants), the reader gets an excellent picture of how America gradually came to accept and appreciate chinese food.

The author doesn't just spout an excess of facts; he expertly uses his extensive background research to effectively tell his story. As history, and as cultural history, this book is almost impeccable.

As a food book, it's also pretty good, but it's less compelling, primarily because it includes almost no recipes at all. The author will spend a whole chapter talking about Chop Suey, for example, from its origins to modern versions, but the closest thing to a recipe in the whole chapter was an excerpt from a 1920's _New York Home Journal_ article. Similarly, I was immensely interested to find out the true history of General Tso's Chicken, but I would have liked something closer to a detailed recipe than the quick description provided ("dark meat chicken marinated in egg whites and soy sauce . . . quickly deep fried, [then] stir-fried with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, cornstarch, sesame oil, and dried chili peppers.") Give me proportions and times and temperatures! If I've read a whole book on the history of chinese food, there's decent odds I'd want to try replicating some historical recipes myself; the failure to include more detailed, complete recipes strikes me as a missed opportunity.

All in all, this is a neat read, and I'd strongly recommend it to both the lover of cultural history and the lover of food; but moreso to the former than to the latter.