How An Old Time Chinese-American Dish Became a Trendy Hangover Cure in New Orleans

One of my earliest articles for Menuism was about how unique Chinese dishes evolved in specific cities in the United States, such as cashew chicken in Springfield, MO, the St. Paul sandwich in St. Louis, and war shu gai in Detroit.  While in New Orleans last year, I posted a picture from a Chinese restaurant there on Instagram, and I received a couple of replies suggesting that I try a unique New Orleans dish called Yakamein.  Unfortunately I was only in New Orleans for a short period and didn't get a chance to search for the dish.  

But Yakamein did sound intriguing since it seemed to be another unique regional Chinese American dish like the others I had written about in the original Menuism article.    Wikipedia describes it as a stewed beef noodle soup, often served in Creole restaurants with creole spices and seasonings, half a hard boiled egg, green onions and chili seasoning.  More interestingly, Yakamein is more often served at non-Chinese restaurants, particularly in African-American restaurants and stores, sometimes under the alternative name "Old Sober," in recognition of its purported powers as a hangover cure.  

 

 

The origins of Yakamein were said to be unknown, and theories about its background abounded. This included speculation that it was traced to African American soldiers returning from the Korean war, possibly because many thought it first appeared in African-American eateries, both restaurants and stores, in  the 1950s.  University of New Orleans historian Winston Ho has since disproven this theory, finding the dish in New Orleans decades earlier.  There have also been comments as to Yakamein's resemblance to Taiwanese beef noodle soup.  With all that background, I thought I had found the granddaddy of all of the unique regional Chinese American foods.

However, as I ultimately discovered, while Yakamein at first appeared to be the greatest addition to my collection of regional Chinese-American dishes, it really wasn't something truly unique.  Indeed, the name Yakamein itself is just one of many variations of a similar dish found all across the United States, most commonly once called Yat Gaw Mein, or one of several other similar pronunciations of the now nearly extinct Chinese-American dish which in Cantonese means "one order of noodles."

According to Winston Ho, a dish called Yet Quo Mein appears on the 1904 menu of Oriental Restaurant in New York.  The earliest recipe, for something called Yet Ca Mein, dates from a 1907 volume printed in Illinois called The Chinese Cook Book in Plain English.  Then there's the recipe for Yat Koi Mein which appears in the pioneering 1917 Chinese cookbook out of New York (still available as a reprint on Amazon) called The Chinese Cookbook, written by Shiu Wong Chan, a simple noodle soup made with soy sauce and sesame oil.  This dish eventually spread to most corners of the United States under the different name variations.  

I personally first ran into Yetcamein in Sioux City, Iowa in the late 1970s, at Hong Kong Restaurant near the Sioux Bee honey factory.  The version I had there, however, was not a soup noodle dish, but rather was served in a delicious brown gravy.   I had never encountered Yetcamein in Los Angeles.  So when I got back to Los Angeles, I asked my favorite Chinese restauranteur George Cheng of On Luck Restaurant, located in Los Angeles' secret Chinatown in the City Market produce district, about Yetcamein.  Mr. Cheng, whose family owned Hong Kong Noodle Company, one of the claimants to being the inventor of the fortune cookie, said, "Oh, you mean Yat Gaw Mein."  So I guess that means that the dish had been served in Los Angeles at some point in time.

From what I gather, the dry, perhaps lo mein-ish version of Yet Ca Mein or Yat Gaw Mein, or whatever it was called was the minority, but not uncommon version of the dish.  Numerous recipes for the soupy Yet Ca Mein can be found on the internet.  Apparently the version with gravy is still served to this day in Baltimore, and a tomato version seems to exist in Virginia.   And I do remember eating the soupy version of Yat Gaw Mein somewhere in the Midwest.  Or was it the south?  And why both soupy and dry versions?  I would guess the commonality of both being wheat noodles, boiled instead of fried.

The dish clearly disappeared long ago from major centers of Chinese population, but still lives on in places like New Orleans, as well as Montreal in Canada.  Indeed in New Orleans it is actually gaining in popularity, which is probably why my attention was called to it on this last trip I took to New Orleans, and not on any previous trips I made there over the years. The growing fame of the dish is largely due to the efforts of Linda Green, a New Orleans soul food caterer dubbed the Yak-A-Mein Lady, and who has pushed the dish firmly into the consciousness of the greater New Orleans community in the past decade.  Her family had its own secret recipe for Yakamein, far different from those found in pioneering Chinese cookbooks, that had been handed down to her, testament to the unique connection of Yakamein to the African-American community in New Orleans.  In the post-Katrina revival of New Orleans and the return of Jazz Festivals, Green has used these events to gain notoriety for her style of Yakamein beyond the Afirican-American or Chinese communities.

So within the larger perspective of Chinese-American food history, it turns out that New Orleans Yakamein is just one of many permutations of a simple, basic, longstanding Chinese-American dish.  But certainly it's the most storied one of the bunch.