Chandavkl's Menuism Blog

  How Chinese Food in America Has Defied the Odds of History - Menuism Dining Blog, July 22, 2019   With something in the neighborhood of 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States, Chinese food is one of the most popular types of ethnic food here. Indeed, Chinese restaurants outnumber the 14,000 McDonalds locations , and even the top five fast food outlets combined. Towns with as few as 1,000 residents sport a Chinese restaurant. The popularity of Chinese food in the United States is a testament to the popularity of the food itself. But when you consider all of the obstacles that had to be overcome, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to racial discrimination, from boycotts to legislation backed by labor unions, the endurance of Chinese food is also stunning. The barriers to today’s success of Chinese restaurants fell into two categories: those placed on the Chinese American community in general, and those specific to Chinese restaurants.    Bar...

  Is Montana’s Chinese food outpacing L.A.? In at least one way, yes. - Menuism Dining Blog, June 17, 2019 West Yellowstone, Montana offers authentic Chinese food options that Los Angeles Chinatown doesn’t. Let me say that again: You can eat Chinese dishes in Montana that you can’t eat in downtown L.A. I am in no way suggesting that Montana is any kind of Chinese dining destination. However, this improbable but true statement combines two recurring topics I have addressed: the Mainland Chinese cuisine and the effect of Chinese nationals across the United States. Los Angeles Chinatown still serves predominantly Cantonese food In most Chinese-American communities, Mainland Chinese regional cuisines are the current face of the restaurant food scene. In all of Los Angeles Chinatown, however, the only Mainland restaurant you’ll find is Qin West . This paucity of Mainland regional cuisines sets Los Angeles Chinatown apart from every other Chinese community in the ...

  Yunbanbao Satisfies “the Chinese Stomach” on Wall Street - Menuism Dining Blog, October 6, 2019   A few years ago, I first discussed the concept of the “ Chinese stomach ,” which describes the preference of Chinese diners for Chinese food over other types of food. My initial article focused on Chinese travelers who prefer to eat Chinese food — even of inferior quality — on their trips, rather than what might be considered higher quality host country food.   Doubters argued that tour operators served low-quality Chinese food to cut costs, but I found the “Chinese stomach” at work throughout the United States under other manifestations. For instance, Chinese food is used to entice Chinese Americans to casinos along the East and West Coasts. When college campuses see surging Mainland Chinese student populations, authentic Chinese restaurants and food trucks quickly follow. On these campuses, some Chinese students will even shell out $50 deliv...

  How Housing Discrimination Shaped Chinese Food in Los Angeles - Menuism Dining Blog, April 1, 2019 Three mega-Chinese communities in the United States—Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York—are each home to more than 600,000 Chinese Americans. But L.A. stands out in a peculiar way. Unlike San Francisco and New York, where authentic Chinese food has been fairly well geographically dispersed for a number of years, the Los Angeles area until quite recently concentrated its authentic Chinese food in just a handful of places, especially the San Gabriel Valley. Why? Explaining the holes in the Chinese food map What makes the distribution of authentic Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles so different than its counterparts? It’s a complex question. The sheer geographic spread of the L.A. metropolitan area makes it inherently different than the compact cities of San Francisco and New York. Still, barely three years ago, I wrote about how L.A.’s entire Westside was a ...

Why Are Chinese Restaurants So Similar? - Menuism Dining Blog, February 18, 2019   This is my favorite of anything I have ever written.  As someone who has observed the Chinese restaurant industry for decades, I often why many mom and pop Chinese restaurants could seemingly serve identical dishes or offer uncannily similar menus. My first clue into the answer came from an unexpected place:  a story the financial press which I only stumbled upon while Googling something else.  My experience as an attorney and a CPA enabled me to follow the trail to find source documents that were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that provided a trove of information that had never been made public.  And it took a combination of these things, along with my eating at many Chinese restaurants for this article to come about! But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's start at the beginning. Fujianese domination of Chinese restaurants   Since the late 1...

The L.A. Chinese Food Destination You Probably Don't Know About - Menuism Dining Blog, January 14, 2019   In the Los Angeles area, both the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles Chinatown provide many choices for finding authentic Chinese food. But few are aware that there is also a nice collection of authentic Chinese restaurants tucked away in the South Bay.  This concentration is centered in the unlikely location of Lomita, mostly along Pacific Coast Highway.  With a negligible Chinese population, Lomita boasts no Chinese grocery, dry goods, or other kinds of Chinese stores or businesses anywhere in the vicinity.  But decades ago, in a roundabout manner, Lomita started to become a center of Chinese dining.   The story begins several miles to the north in the early 1960s in communities like El Segundo, Hawthorne, Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach.  That region rapidly built up as the home to many aerospace companies busily involved in the cold war and ...