Are You Eating "Fake" Cantonese Food?

Are You  Eating "Fake" Cantonese Food? - Menuism Dining Blog, June 18, 2018

I first heard the term "Fake Canto" used by Los Angeles area food blogger Tony Chen, to refer to Cantonese restaurants run by Mandarin speaking non-Cantonese immigrants from Mainland China.  Well before the advent of fake news, fake Canto restaurants launched, occasioned primarily by the lack of Cantonese restauranteurs in the locality.

 

The History of Cantonese and Fake Canto Restaurants

American Chinatowns founded in the 19th century and early 20th century were necessarily Cantonese in origin.  Originally concentrated in California, Chinese-Americans headed eastward across America to escape the violence associated with the 19th century anti-Chinese movement spearheaded by immigrant Irish workers.  While these Chinese generally landed in major urban centers, not every major American city attracted a major Chinese settlement.  For example, in Texas, Chinese settled in Houston, El Paso and San Antonio, but not in Dallas, mainly because Dallas was not a stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad.  More curiously, a Chinese community grew in Augusta, GA, but not Atlanta.

With the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and more importantly the 1960s reform of America's immigration laws, non-Cantonese Chinese started arriving in the United States in major numbers.  To some extent they migrated to cities already having a major, pre-existing Cantonese community, such as San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.  But they also moved to cities that had no existing Chinese community, like Dallas, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Orlando and Flushing NY, or cities with a small remnant of an old Cantonese community, like Phoenix, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh.  

 

Today, the impact of Mandarin speaking Chinese immigrants has completely flipped the  historic ratio of  Cantonese/non-Cantonese Chinese food in Chinese American communities.  In recent years in the San Gabriel Valley, of new Chinese restaurants opening in the San Gabriel Valley, only about 10 percent of new Chinese restaurants serve Cantonese food. 

While all Chinese are partial to their own regional cuisine, Cantonese food has a broad appeal to Chinese of all backgrounds.  Indeed, in all Chinese-American communities, Cantonese dim sum is extremely popular with all stripes of Chinese.  Likewise, banquet trade for weddings, birthdays and other auspicious celebrations is almost entirely confined to banquet sized Cantonese restaurants.   Consequently, in new or revived Chinese American communities, there demand for Cantonese food  exceeds the local pool of “native” Cantonese restauranteurs.

In the East, Midwest and South, immigrants from Fujian province, dominant players in the Eastern US Chinese restaurant industry, largely have filled the Cantonese void.  While better known for setting up Americanized buffet, takeout, and sit down restaurants, the Fujianese have over the past two decades also opened authentic Cantonese dim sum and seafood restaurants in these new Chinese American communities that lack a significant local Cantonese population.

 

 

While it may be fair to assume that many authentic Cantonese restaurants in a city having a negligible Cantonese population are fake Canto, the task is complicated in a place like Flushing, which may have few local Cantonese residents, but is easily accessible to Manhattan and Brooklyn, which still have a significant Cantonese presence.  Likewise identifying a fake Canto restaurant is even more difficult in Manhattan Chinatown, whose Cantonese population is still substantial, but clearly receding. Even here, however, some of the Cantonese restaurants are Fujianese operated.  

So what are the signs of fake Canto food?  Most notably, hearing the staff converse among themselves in Mandarin clearly indicates a fake Canto restaurant. Similarly, the inclusion on the restaurant’s menu of other regional Chinese dishes that would traditionally never be seen on the menu of a Cantonese restaurant, or perhaps something as subtle as the use of simplified Chinese characters introduced by the Communist Chinese government on the Chinese mainland, which would not be used by a restauranteur originally from Hong Kong, would be fake Canto signs.

Still, it's hard to know for sure.   I've heard unconfirmed whispers that one of the San Gabriel Valley’s top Hong Kong style restaurants might be fake Canto.  And now, the fake Canto restaurant has just come to the most unlikely location in America:   Los Angeles Chinatown,  culinarily the last bastion of Cantonese food in the country.  With the opening of East Garden Restaurant, fake Canto has arrived even here.

My labeling of fake Canto doesn't imply that the food is unsatisfactory.  In fact, one of the hallmarks of a fake Canto restaurant is its clientele is primarily Chinese, and these patrons often don't realize the Cantonese restaurant is run by non-Cantonese.  So don’t feel too bad if you find you’ve eaten at a fake Canto restaurant, because the rest of us might not know either.  Even fake Canto is often authentically delicious.