Chop suey is to Chinese restaurants what hamburgers are to American fast-food stands. It’s hard to imagine now, but chop suey was the Howlin’ Ray’s fried chicken of its day…Okay, not quite.
But remember, Cantonese laborers came to America during the Gold Rush of the 1850s for menial jobs as servants, housekeepers and cooks. Later they built railroads. They didn’t come to start restaurants. That came later. The first Chinese restaurants in California were almost certainly for an exclusively Chinese clientele. Maybe they served something like “chop suey” or “miscellaneous leftovers” — a dish stir fried with slivers of meat and whatever vegetables they grew here — such as onions and celery.
And yet, improbably, chop suey would grow in popularity among Americans in towns all across the country. And eventually chop suey would pave the way for today’s 40,000 Chinese restaurants.
Hard to believe. Back in the 1870s and ‘80s, Americans were violently assaulting Chinese workers and passing restrictive laws blocking more of them from coming here. Chinese living here could not become full citizens until after World War II.
Yet, in the late 1800s, Americans began to grow fond of Cantonese cooking — and chop suey became mythical in its fame.
There weren’t five-star Yelp reviews in those days, of course. And yet, by the beginning of the 20th century, newspaper articles inspired the hipsters of the day to seek out Chinese restaurants as an exotic adventure into foreign culture. The Chinese haters talked about the Chinese cooking animal intestines and worse. Yet, Americans ate it up, literally. It was the genius of Cantonese cooks that they could tweak and re-invent Chinese dishes for American tastes.
By the 1920s, the staples at many Chinese restaurants were fairly common. They served combination dinners that included egg flower soup, chow mein, fried shrimp, chop suey and fried rice for 75 cents a person. Fried noodles were an extra 5 cents. This is all according to a menu from Far East Cafe in the Los Angeles Public Library menu collection.
Chop suey’s popularity would fade as new waves of immigrants from throughout China began to come in the 1960s. Yet Chinese restaurants remain among America’s most popular ethnic eateries. Just try getting a table at Din Tai Fung at your nearby mall.
