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    Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States
    Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States
    Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States
    Audiobook8 hours

    Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States

    Written by Andrew Coe

    Narrated by Eric Jason Martin

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In 1784, passengers on the ship Empress of China became the first Americans to land in China, and the first to eat Chinese food. Today there are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States-by far the most plentiful among all our ethnic eateries. Now, in Chop Suey Andrew Coe provides the authoritative history of the American infatuation with Chinese food, telling its fascinating story for the first time.

    It's a tale that moves from curiosity to disgust and then desire. From China, Coe's story travels to the American West, where Chinese immigrants drawn by the 1848 Gold Rush struggled against racism and culinary prejudice but still established restaurants and farms and imported an array of Asian ingredients. He traces the Chinese migration to the East Coast, highlighting that crucial moment when New York "Bohemians" discovered Chinese cuisine-and for better or worse, chop suey. Along the way, Coe shows how the peasant food of an obscure part of China came to dominate Chinese-American restaurants; unravels the truth of chop suey's origins; reveals why American Jews fell in love with egg rolls and chow mein; shows how President Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened our palates to a new range of cuisine; and explains why we still can't get dishes like those served in Beijing or Shanghai. The book also explores how American tastes have been shaped by our relationship with the outside world, and how we've relentlessly changed foreign foods to adapt them to our own deep-down conservative culinary preferences.

    Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States is a fascinating tour of America's centuries-long appetite for Chinese food. Always illuminating, often exploding long-held culinary myths, this book opens a new window into defining what is American cuisine.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 20, 2018
    ISBN9781977388643
    Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States

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    Reviews for Chop Suey

    3.5/5

    43 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The history and story of American Chinese food. The narrator can be a little dull at times.
    • 3/5
      I picked this up hoping for an in-depth comparison between Chinese cuisine and American Chinese cuisine over time - which isn't exactly what this book delivers. Instead, it traces the history of Chinese food in American experience, from the first traders who visited China through a resurgence in Chinese restaurants when Nixon made his famous visit. The book explores the peaks and valleys of American Chinese eating throughout that history, and brings in parts of the Chinese immigrant experience and the reactions of other parts of American culture to it. It's pretty comprehensive, given its scope, and, in my experience especially as the book goes on, is an interesting tale. I did leave with a bit of a better understanding of how Chinese immigrants adapted their food to the American palate - and why - but I would have loved a bit more of a close look at specific dishes. That said, I think it's a great read for anyone interested in the subject and interested in the Chinese experience in America - it provides a unique look at this topic.
    • 3/5
      This was a very nice, succinct look at Americans' reactions to Chinese food and the people who brought it to the U.S. it was interesting to see how stereotypes have changed over the years. Things have gotten better, much better, but the media's reactions to the food at the Beijing Olympics show that not all the prejudices hae been erased. I liked this book. Recommended.