The Blending of Chinese Regional Cuisines in America

The Blending of Chinese Regional Cuisines in America - Menuism Dining Blog, November 6, 2017

 

As our readers know, for more than a century Chinese food in America was exclusively Cantonese, and particularly a brand of Cantonese food brought by immigrants from rural Toishan.  It wasn’t until the 1960s that non-Cantonese food made its appearance in the United States, first under the moniker “Mandarin” or “Northern” food , then subsequently in the 1970s more specifically Sichuan and Hunan style food.   When Chinese food divided into Cantonese and non-Cantonese camps a truism arose which withstood into the 21^st Century—never order a non-Cantonese dish at a Cantonese restaurant, and never order a Cantonese dish at a Mandarin restaurant.  Xiao long bao or kung pao chicken at a Cantonese restaurant?  Forget it!   Char shiu at a non-Cantonese restaurant?  No way!   Restaurants touting “Cantonese, Szechuan and Hunan cuisine?”  Turn around and run away as fast as you can.

 

But with so many facets of Chinese dining in America having changed in the last five to ten years, the truism reserving Chinese dishes to restaurants of the correct ilk is also starting the pass by the wayside.  Perhaps the most glaring example of the changes afoot are the startling developments with some newly opened dim sum restaurants.   Dim sum is Cantonese in origin, and is traditionally a brunch or lunchtime offering.   Consequently, restaurants offering dim sum in the daytime need a completely different bill of fare at dinnertime.  And since the 1980s in the United States and Canada, that dinner fare has uniformly been centered around Hong Kong style cuisine, and in particular Hong Kong style seafood.  No surprise here since that’s the most logical pairing given dim sum’s Cantonese roots and the dominance of Cantonese style food in Chinese-American communities until quite recently.  

 

But then a little over five years ago in the city of San Gabriel, an opulent new restaurant called Shanghai #1 Seafood Village (the most common description of the restaurant decor was “like a Shanghai bordello”) opened up offering a combination of dim sum at lunch and Shanghai cuisine at dinnertime.   The restaurant’s opening generated widespread skepticism in pairing dim sum with the totally unrelated Shanghai style cuisine.  Since Shanghai #1 Seafood Village was the first US branch of a Shanghai based restaurant chain, there was no question that the Shanghainese dinners would be excellent.  But the question on everybody’s minds was whether the dim sum would be any good.  As it turns out, the answer was “Yes”, though not good enough to put it in the top tier of San Gabriel Valley dim sum.  And a couple of years later China Red opened up in Arcadia serving daytime dim sum which many observers do include in the top tier of Los Angeles area dim sum, and at dinnertime, a mixture of Hong Kong style seafood with a few Beijing and Shanghai style dishes thrown in to reflect the changing demographics in the Chinese community.

 

But it is the past few months where conspicuous cracks in the historic link between dim sum and Cantonese dinners has broken down.  In Chino Hills, a burgeoning Chinese American community east of the San Gabriel Valley with few Cantonese residents, Taste of China opened up pairing dim sum with a selection of Sichuan food at dinnertime.  And a few weeks ago in Temple City, perhaps the best dim sum restaurant to open up in the San Gabriel Valley in years, Xiang Yuan Gourmet debuted serving traditional Hunan style food at dinnertime, a truly unprecedented if not downright unthinkable combination.  The manager told me the dinner menu was targeted to the "locals", reflecting the Mainlander demographics in the restaurant's immediate area.

 

These mixtures of dim sum and non-Cantonese food are an extension of a more subtle recent trend of restaurant menus going beyond a single regional Chinese cuisine.  Even as authentic non-Cantonese restaurants started opening up in the late 1970s, regional distinctions were carefully observed and restaurants were easily classifiable as Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Sichuan or Hunan style eateries.  This continued into the 21^st century as new Chinese regional styles arrived—a newly opened Dongbei style restaurant was clearly identifiable as such. 

 

But around ten years ago, things began to change.   For the first time I’d look at the menu at a new Chinese restaurant and could not identify the restaurant as specializing in a particular Chinese regional cuisine.   For quite a while I found this quite puzzling, but in hindsight this is really a logical development reflecting changes in the Chinese American community on several counts.

 

Rapid addition of new Chinese regional cuisines.  There are at least two dozen regional Chinese cuisines represented at Chinese restaurants in the Los Angeles area, and even more nationally.  One might assume this would reinforce the distinction between these cuisines, but in fact it has the opposite effect.  Chinese restaurants still tend to have extensive menus and, and as more obscure regional styles make their appearance, there might not be enough distinctive dishes, or an audience large enough to appreciate such an exclusive selection of a particular regional cuisine.  Consequently, popular dishes from other regional cuisines are a safe addition to fill out the menu.

 

Development of hybrid Chinese regional dishes in the US.  One of the most ubiquitous dishes in the San Gabriel Valley is the so-called Shandong beef roll.  Except that it’s not from Shandong province, but rather like chop suey from more than a century earlier, it is largely a dish concocted in the United States (specifically Los Angeles), though rooted in traditional Chinese ingredients. As such, Shandong beef rolls are found in Los Angeles area Chinese restaurants of all non-Cantonese stripes.  And its Los Angeles roots explain why they are just now showing up in New York and other cities even though they could be found on almost every block in the San Gabriel Valley for at least the past decade.

 

Rise of the 626 Generation.   Los Angeles has seen the rise of the 626 Generation, the American born children of the post-immigration reform wave of Chinese who moved to the United States.  While Chinese coming to the US may have been parochial about their preference for their own regional style of food, their offspring in America have no such prejudices, and have adopted a taste for the best of Chinese cuisine regardless of the regional origin.

 

Chinese university students in America.  A common theme in this series has been the culinary effect of the hundreds of thousands of Mainland Chinese students studying at American universities, and the campus town restaurants that have arisen to meet their food preferences.  These students come from all regions of the Chinese mainland, resulting in these college town restaurants serving a wide variety of authentic regional dishes to satisfy their clientele.

 

So once again, what had always been true with regard to authentic Chinese food in the United States is changing, thanks to demographic changes in the Chinese-American community.