5 ms·

How Did Chop Suey Become a Staple of Chinese American Cuisine?

38 points by prismatic 5y ago

1MachineElf 5y ago
I ask the same thing, but about Nu Metal: https://loudwire.com/chop-suey-one-billion-views-youtube-system-of-a-down/ https://loudwire.com/chop-suey-one-billion-views-youtube-sys...
- xxpor 5y ago
  I had absolutely no idea chop suey was that popular on YouTube. I feel like it wasn't played on the radio at all in NJ, as opposed to say In the End which was on once an hour at its peak.
reactspa 5y ago
I had never heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act until I read this piece. And I've lived in the US for over 20 years. Shocking trip down the Wiki entries. Thank you to the author.
- leephillips 5y ago
  It’s back: https://admissionsight.com/getting-into-the-ivy-league-for-asian-americans/ https://admissionsight.com/getting-into-the-ivy-league-for-a...
  - Rygu 5y ago
    Understand the frustration, but it is incomparable.
hiisukun 5y ago
In Australia, we have a number of dishes available as a staple at heaps of Chinese restaurants that are far from 'authentic'. Certainly, this is something I enjoy - though I'm not the biggest fan of honey chicken, I see it as a strength of merging cultures and food preferences. Vietnamese food is also very popular in Australian capital cities, especially banh mi. The fact at some stage a crusty French bread roll merged with delicious Vietnamese meats is one of those pleasant parts of otherwise complex and questionable colonialism. In Australia, we're still yet to properly come to terms with some of the unsavoury elements of our colonial history, and I'm reminded of this when I enjoy Australia's most popular foods: the mix of food cultures of the many migrants who have settled here is wonderful, even when their other cultural elements are less visible.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  The old joke is that when the British colonized a country they left behind railways and a legal system, while when the French colonized a country they left behind baguettes and coffee. Unsurprisingly, Vietnam is also a major coffee producer.
  - staticautomatic 5y ago
    Hong Kong got that weird breakfast cuisine that looks like it’s made out of wartime rations— among other things condensed milk spread on toast and that coffee/tea mix.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      A lot of those products became popular because Hong Kong is a tropical city reliant on food imports. Things like condensed milk, luncheon meats, etc. became popular because they were shelf-stable without refrigeration, and thus were affordable to keep around.
      - stevehawk 5y ago
        see also: hawaii + spam (also, spam is surprisingly good. I had it for the first time as a ~40 year old American recently and realized I've let public righteousness / shitty opinions keep me from something good)
        bobthepanda 5y ago
        "Luncheon meat" is the generic term I've seen for it in Hong Kong English, since Spam is still a trademark. The problem is mostly that your average American does not know how to properly treat it. It is technically edible out of the can but you really want to brown it in a pan. And you need a relatively large amount of carbs to soak up all the sodium (so for Asians and Hawaiians, rice.)
- monkeybutton 5y ago
Rapzid 5y ago
Here is something funny.. I've heard the term, of course, but have never associated it with an actual dish!
beervirus 5y ago
>parable about the indignities caused by the demands of whiteness Barf.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rmason 5y ago
Chop Suey was my late father's favorite dish to order when we visited a Chinese restaurant. He remembered first having it as a boy in the 1920's in Detroit. In fact I've seen Detroit pictures from that era and you can see big signs advertising Chop Suey restaurants. But sometime in the eighties it began disappearing from Chinese restaurant menus and I'm not certain why? Perhaps it became less popular over time.
- sethhochberg 5y ago
  http://conniewenchang.bol.ucla.edu/menus/index.html http://conniewenchang.bol.ucla.edu/menus/index.html You might find this interesting - it seems like every few years we get a new history / analysis of chinese-american food like this, and this student project is one of my favorite versions (I'd seen it shared previously in the comments of another article on the same topic) . It uses an NYPL database of historical restaurant menus and proposes some ideas about why the menus changed over time.
- wenc 5y ago
  Chinese restaurants in the Chicago area still have chop suey on their menus. I had some a few weeks ago. I also bought some for a homeless person a few months ago —- they specially mentioned they wanted chop suey. You do have to go to an American Chinese restaurant though - these are usually the ones located in strip malls or in the suburbs. Newer Chinese restaurants tend to be run by more recent immigrants and therefore don’t serve American Chinese — American Chinese is a different cuisine from Chinese.
Clewza313 5y ago
I always figured that it's essentially the same dish as the Fujian/Peranakan/Indonesian cap cai (雜菜), pronounced "chap chai" and meaning literally "mixed vegetables": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_cai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_cai Depending on dialect, cai can be pronounced choy, tsoi, sai etc.
washadjeffmad 5y ago
That's funny, because I grew up making and consuming Japanese "chashu" and didn't learn that Chinese "char siu" was the same chop suey I'd seen and heard from old cartoons until recently. Roast pork is a wonderful thing, and while I find a lot of commercial styles cloyingly sweet, the recipe is fairly simple in a convection oven or sous vide with a broil at the end.
- pezezin 5y ago
  Wait, what? Char siu is 叉燒 and chop suey is 杂碎, they are two totally different dishes.

38 points by prismatic 5y ago

I ask the same thing, but about Nu Metal: https://loudwire.com/chop-suey-one-billion-views-youtube-system-of-a-down/ https://loudwire.com/chop-suey-one-billion-views-youtube-sys...

xxpor 5y ago
I had absolutely no idea chop suey was that popular on YouTube. I feel like it wasn't played on the radio at all in NJ, as opposed to say In the End which was on once an hour at its peak.

reactspa 5y ago

I had never heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act until I read this piece. And I've lived in the US for over 20 years. Shocking trip down the Wiki entries. Thank you to the author.

leephillips 5y ago
It’s back: https://admissionsight.com/getting-into-the-ivy-league-for-asian-americans/ https://admissionsight.com/getting-into-the-ivy-league-for-a...
- Rygu 5y ago
  Understand the frustration, but it is incomparable.

hiisukun 5y ago

In Australia, we have a number of dishes available as a staple at heaps of Chinese restaurants that are far from 'authentic'. Certainly, this is something I enjoy - though I'm not the biggest fan of honey chicken, I see it as a strength of merging cultures and food preferences. Vietnamese food is also very popular in Australian capital cities, especially banh mi. The fact at some stage a crusty French bread roll merged with delicious Vietnamese meats is one of those pleasant parts of otherwise complex and questionable colonialism. In Australia, we're still yet to properly come to terms with some of the unsavoury elements of our colonial history, and I'm reminded of this when I enjoy Australia's most popular foods: the mix of food cultures of the many migrants who have settled here is wonderful, even when their other cultural elements are less visible.

Clewza313 5y ago
The old joke is that when the British colonized a country they left behind railways and a legal system, while when the French colonized a country they left behind baguettes and coffee. Unsurprisingly, Vietnam is also a major coffee producer.
- staticautomatic 5y ago
  Hong Kong got that weird breakfast cuisine that looks like it’s made out of wartime rations— among other things condensed milk spread on toast and that coffee/tea mix.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    A lot of those products became popular because Hong Kong is a tropical city reliant on food imports. Things like condensed milk, luncheon meats, etc. became popular because they were shelf-stable without refrigeration, and thus were affordable to keep around.
    - stevehawk 5y ago
      see also: hawaii + spam (also, spam is surprisingly good. I had it for the first time as a ~40 year old American recently and realized I've let public righteousness / shitty opinions keep me from something good)
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        "Luncheon meat" is the generic term I've seen for it in Hong Kong English, since Spam is still a trademark. The problem is mostly that your average American does not know how to properly treat it. It is technically edible out of the can but you really want to brown it in a pan. And you need a relatively large amount of carbs to soak up all the sodium (so for Asians and Hawaiians, rice.)
monkeybutton 5y ago

Rapzid 5y ago

Here is something funny.. I've heard the term, of course, but have never associated it with an actual dish!

beervirus 5y ago

>parable about the indignities caused by the demands of whiteness Barf.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rmason 5y ago

Chop Suey was my late father's favorite dish to order when we visited a Chinese restaurant. He remembered first having it as a boy in the 1920's in Detroit. In fact I've seen Detroit pictures from that era and you can see big signs advertising Chop Suey restaurants. But sometime in the eighties it began disappearing from Chinese restaurant menus and I'm not certain why? Perhaps it became less popular over time.

sethhochberg 5y ago
http://conniewenchang.bol.ucla.edu/menus/index.html http://conniewenchang.bol.ucla.edu/menus/index.html You might find this interesting - it seems like every few years we get a new history / analysis of chinese-american food like this, and this student project is one of my favorite versions (I'd seen it shared previously in the comments of another article on the same topic) . It uses an NYPL database of historical restaurant menus and proposes some ideas about why the menus changed over time.
wenc 5y ago
Chinese restaurants in the Chicago area still have chop suey on their menus. I had some a few weeks ago. I also bought some for a homeless person a few months ago —- they specially mentioned they wanted chop suey. You do have to go to an American Chinese restaurant though - these are usually the ones located in strip malls or in the suburbs. Newer Chinese restaurants tend to be run by more recent immigrants and therefore don’t serve American Chinese — American Chinese is a different cuisine from Chinese.

Clewza313 5y ago

I always figured that it's essentially the same dish as the Fujian/Peranakan/Indonesian cap cai (雜菜), pronounced "chap chai" and meaning literally "mixed vegetables": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_cai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_cai Depending on dialect, cai can be pronounced choy, tsoi, sai etc.

washadjeffmad 5y ago

That's funny, because I grew up making and consuming Japanese "chashu" and didn't learn that Chinese "char siu" was the same chop suey I'd seen and heard from old cartoons until recently. Roast pork is a wonderful thing, and while I find a lot of commercial styles cloyingly sweet, the recipe is fairly simple in a convection oven or sous vide with a broil at the end.

pezezin 5y ago
Wait, what? Char siu is 叉燒 and chop suey is 杂碎, they are two totally different dishes.