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Chinese Food: Best Food? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us. But that's okay because we
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: can keep all the Chinese food to ourselves. I'll have
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: to share with Jerry. And this is stuff you should know.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: That's right. A lot of caveats on this, can I
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: list off a few?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Sure? All right?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: First of all, this is going to be a very
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: broad overview of a cuisine that we could probably do
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: like a ten part at least episode series on.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I would say eleven, Yeah.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe eleven. So just you know, have your expectations set
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: going into this one. When you talk about Chinese food,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: there's a lot there. We are going to do our
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: best to pronounce things correctly. I looked up a lot
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: of stuff and I'm doing my best. But some of
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: this stuff is hard for my dumb American mouth, and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of this is going to be I mean,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it's mainly about sort of you know, Chinese food, although
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about origins and stuff like that,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: origin stories. It's mainly like what Chinese food has become
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: here in the States. Although we'll talk a little bit
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: about other countries later, but it's through our lens.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. That was great Vat City right.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: There, Caaveat City, David Bowie, great song.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: So you said something that we were going to largely
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: focus on American Chinese cuisine, and Laura helped us with this,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: and she makes a really good point that Chinese food
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: is not just one thing. Yeah. And the reason why
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: it's not just one thing, or one of the reasons
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: why is because it's been exported all over the globe.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Anywhere that Chinese people traveled, usually for work to immigrate,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: they brought their food with them and introduced it to
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: wherever they were, and then over time, the local flavors
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: and tastes and ingredients from that place melded with the
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Chinese food, and a new type of chines Use food
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: was born. And America is no exception to that. So
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: we have American Chinese food. Yeah.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: And do you know what I love about that? This
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: whole story is like everywhere Chinese people went, they were like,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: get a load of this, yeah, and everyone was like,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, and it took yeah
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: big time. I mean, I I have no examples of
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: places where Chinese immigrants had brought their food and people
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: are like, nah, no, thanks right.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: The only one I could find was Belize.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know you're kidding. I'm not going to fall
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: for it. And the reason why is because, I mean,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I can live on many, many, many cuisines from Asia.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I love Japanese food, I love Thai, I love Vietnamese,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I loved Filipino, like Korean food. I love it all.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, good old fashioned
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: like Chinese takeout is just one of my favorite all
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: time things since I was a kid.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Very nice. Yeah, that's what I grew up on too.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until I was an adult that I was like,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: there's other kinds of Asian food out.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's kind of what you and if you
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: grew up in the seventies and eighties, that was sort
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: of the first, you know, probably one of the first,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: you know, cuisines from another country you ever ate.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you know.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe Mexican food wasn't that big back then. That's only
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: become more popular, I think in the eighties and nineties.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Even even still as a kid, the Mexican food I
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: was exposed to is chi cheese for God's Sake.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Or Del Taco.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: We didn't even have that. That was really But I
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: think maybe even before Chinese food, I was exposed to
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Japanese hibachi because there was this nice restaurant in Toledo
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: called in Japanese. Yeah, and we would go to that,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: and I think I might have had that before Chinese food.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: But regardless, I love Chinese food too. I would say
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: my top two are Japanese followed by Indian, but Chinese
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: is definitely up there in top five or so.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I'm a simple guy, like pork, fried
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: rice and an egg roll. And I'm just now realizing
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: we're not even going to talk about egg rolls in
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: this and I'm panicking all of a sudden.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that didn't strike me until you just said that too,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: And although my voice doesn't betray that, I'm definitely scared
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: right now as well.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: All Right, you know, hey, let's do let's do a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: shorty on eggrolls. Maybe we'll pair it.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: With this good idea. All right, So we said that
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Chinese food is not just one thing because it's been
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: exported globally, but even in China, Chinese food is not
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: just one thing. And they divide Chinese cuisine into eight
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: different regions. Why did you tell them what the regions are, Chuck.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I'm just realizing I didn't look up a couple of these,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: so maybe you did. But the regions as agreed upon
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: right now are and they have different names for each one.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So the first grouping is Sichuan, sa Chuan or I
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: didn't look up c h U a n.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're braver than me. I was just gonna
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: say the first ones that are they're mostly known by
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: in the US.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, we can do that, then that's much easier. So
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: let's go with Sechuan, Cantonese, Hunan, which is also Jong.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Let me see here, we have Shangdong, we have jung Su,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: we have oh, I did look that one up Jong.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Very nice. Fujian I've always heard as Fujian, but that
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: sounds kind of like an American version.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Well I heard it pronounces if it had a y,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And they're almost like few okay, uh few Fujian okay.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And then what's the last one there on? Wi?
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, And some people added at least a ninth one
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: with sean Ji, and they're all a little different there.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: They bear a lot of similarities. A lot of them
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: love sweet and sour, A lot of them are heavy
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: on the salt or umami, some like sauces. But one
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: of the big differences, or some of the big differences
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: is like where this area is located. Some of them
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: are coastal, so they incorporate a lot of seafood. Some
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: of them are colder, so there's like a lot of
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: soups and heavy noodles and like really really heavy flavors.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: And then others are like, hey, we love panting around
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the wilderness and catching deer, so they incorporate like local
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: wildlife into it. And usually what I've seen is when
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: when there's a lot of wildlife involved or game involved
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: in the recipes, they tend to let that flavor stand
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: on its own. It's not like heavy with sauces. That
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: kind of cuisine isn't.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And they how they achieve spices kind of different
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: depending where you are too. Sometimes it's those numbing Chinese peppercorns.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: You can't do those, No. Yeah, I've learned to eat
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of spicy food over the last like five
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: or six years and increase my spice level, but there's
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: something about the numbing peppercorn that's I have a hard
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: time with it.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's natural.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: It's tough, but I can. You know, it depends on
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the cuisine other sort, like the chilies that they use,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I can. I can handle that pretty well. Well. It's hot,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: but I like it. And sometimes it's just the chili flakes.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the little red chilis they'll sometimes serve hole with
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: the disc Yes, I can handle those two for sure. Cornible, Yeah,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: it's tough. Yeah. And what I mean by handling those
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: little red chili peppers is that I eat around them.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Same here.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: So the cuisine that most people in the United States
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: are familiar with is Cantonese. That's definitely like the first
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: kind of Chinese food that Americans adopted, and that has
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: a lot to do with the first wave of migrants
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: that came over to the United States. A lot of
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: them were from Canton. And as a matter of fact,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: the first Chinese restaurant to open in all of North America,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I'm including Canada and Mexico here was called Canton and
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: it was in San Francisco.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, if you've ever had dim sum,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: that's Cantonese. If you've never had dim sum. I highly
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: recommend it. It's I hate to say like because it
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: used to annoy me when a certain person I knew
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: used to say like tortillas or like American bread, and
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I was like, no, they're just tortillas. Who said that,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you. I'll tell you offline. But
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, like, if you've ever had tapas,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: dim sum is kind of like the Chinese version of tapas,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: but it really is just dim sum. But it's like
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: shared small plates, a lot of steam stuff, but also
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: fried stuff, baked stuff, a lot of dumplings, right, a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: lot of dumplings. You know. Just go to New York,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: go to hopkey, get some dim sum and thank me later.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's amazing, I will thank you later. I've never
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: really had dim sum actually, and I think about it.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Oh boy. I mean, I like all kinds of food
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: in Chinatown and New York, but dim sum is definitely
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: one of them. But I'll also go to just the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: you know, because if you're staying in a hotel, you
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: can't get these huge orders and just like take tons
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and tons of food with you, right, So my move
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: now is generally just to pop down there. By myself
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: and get a couple of gigantic egg rolls.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: You and the egg rolls. Huh wait, wait, we can't
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: talk about that. We have to save it for short stuff.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: We forget I even said.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: That, but you did mention. San Francisco in eighteen forty
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: nine was the first operating restaurant in North America, and
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: by eighteen fifty one, when the population of San Francisco
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: was but thirty four thousand and change, there were seven
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: full time Chinese restaurants open, which you know, for that
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: few people is pretty good for that time period.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not bad.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Like people liked it clearly.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's a book that is going to come
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: up or we're going to draw from a lot in
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: this episode is called from Canton Restaurant to Panda Express
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: A History of Chinese Food in the United States by
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Hi Ming Lao and Leo makes this this point that
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of like we tend to equate Chinese migrants
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, especially to California, with like railroad workers,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: maybe miners. We have like a certain idea of what
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: the Chinese migrants were at the time, and that is
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: a I mean, it's pretty stereotypical. It's also pretty narrow.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: There were a lot of Chinese migrants who made their
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: way over just to feed the people in the Gold
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Rush of eighteen forty nine in California. They were like,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: people are going to need food, and we're going to
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: knock their socks off with Chinese food. And so they
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: started to go and open Chinese restaurants. And apparently you
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: could pick out a Chinese restaurant pretty easily because they
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: hung yellow flags outside.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is also sort of the kind of
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: right away when racist feelings toward Chinese immigrants started, racist
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: feelings toward their food even started arising out of the gate.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: In Lao's book, there were some a couple of examples
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that she cited. One was a criminal lawyer defending a
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: white client following their race riot in eighteen sixty five
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and told the judge why, sir, and I'm not going
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: to say the racist Chinese name, but they live on rice,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: and sir, they eat it with sticks. And then there
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: was a pamphlet from American Federation of Labor President Samuel
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Gompers in nineteen oh two titled Some Reasons for Chinese
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Exclusion colon Meat versus Rice, American manhood versus Asiatic coolism,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: and apparently COOLi is a pejorita term for a low
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: age worker. Right, So it's all happening early on.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And it's interesting because and we'll talk
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: about immigration and racism, but those two things definitely shaped
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Chinese food in America in some surprising ways as a
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: matter of fact, Yeah, for sure. So it turns out
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: that the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the United
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: States is Pekin without a g noodle parlor and where
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: else but Montana, right, And it started out as a
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: general store back in nineteen oh nine, but within two
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: years they added a noodle parlor, the very same noodle
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: parlor that's still opened today. And I guess at some
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: point they ran an illegal gambling parlor out of the basement,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: but that has since been turned into an old navy.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Is that true, because that I could believe. Actually, if
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: you you know, I looked at that place to see
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: what it looked like, and it looks like a you know,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: a Chinese restaurant and a building of an old West
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Town man exactly what you might think. And there's a
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: big neon sign this is chop suey, And I realized
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: that chop suey is not a dish I've ever had,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: But chop suey is sort of the beginning of Chinese
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: food in America. That's the dish that first sort of
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: captured young America's attention. And there's some debates on whether
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: or not it's even American in origin. And we're going
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: to talk about chop suey right now.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if I've ever had it either,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: but I think anytime you've ever made like a vague
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Chinese surfry with chicken and vegeta and maybe like some
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: sort of thickish sauce, you basically made chop suey. Some
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: people say that you can make it with egg, but
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: those people are wrong. For the most part, is the
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: mixture of meat, vegetables of thick sauce, usually with rice.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: And the name itself not only where it originated, but
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: the name itself is debatable what it means. I remember,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: I think I might have learned this from Uncle John's
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: bathroom reader, that it meant leftovers in Chinese, so that
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: people from China coming to America would see chop suey house,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: and they would think it would say like Leftover's house
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: to them. That's not exactly true, but it's not that
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: far off.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: No, that's pretty close actually. Because some people say the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: name came from Cantonese t sap top suey sui instead
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of suey. That seems to be an American ice spelling
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: which is mixed bits or odds and ends aka probably leftovers.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Leau, the author of the book, said that it
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: probably comes from chow chop suey or chow chop suey,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: which some people call. It probably comes from the Cantonese
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: pronouncing a Mandarin chow's zuei chow meaning stir fry and
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: z azui meaning animal intestines. I tend to go with
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: the sap sue.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's just my take and it's almost meaningless,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: but that's where I'm gonna go with. Since it's up
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: for debate.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I'm with you. I'll be in your camp.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, thanks.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: At least we can hang out and play cards.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: What do you want to play?
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know a lot of card games. I like
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Jin Rummy.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I was gonna say gin Rummy too.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I do love spades. But we need Emily and U
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: me to come along.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's fair enough. They probably will anyway if we
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: end up in a camp together.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Because that means zombie apocalypse has happened.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or else the Russians have invaded all a red
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: dawn and you and I are alone in a men's camp,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: which is really just a fenced off drive in Yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Soon to die.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Anyway, that's a weird sidetrack a quote that and we're
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: going to explain the origins of this quote. But you
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: may have heard that Chop Suey is an American is
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: as American as pork and beans, and that actually comes
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: from a lawsuit from the early nineteen hundreds. In nineteen
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: oh four, a guy named lem Sen said, you know what,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: I invented Chop Suey. I made it for a Chinese
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: diplomat who visited in eighteen eighty six. And everybody making
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: this dishos me money.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a bold law suit. Sure, I
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: don't even know who he sued.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I couldn't find it everybody, I guess, so.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Lem Sen versus all Chop Suey chefs, Yeah, exactly. So
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: he ended up dropping the suit. But The suit left
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: a huge mark on America. I mean like it was
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: reported on. It made the news for sure, and people
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: knew about it. And one reason why it became such
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: a big deal is because at the time, as we saw,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. So lem Suenn brought
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: his lawsuit in nineteen oh four. The Chinese Exclusion Act
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: was passed in eighteen eighty two. It was the first
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: time the United States had ever passed an immigration law
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: specifically targeted at one nationality. And it also basically laid
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: the foundation for exclusionary immigration laws and much tighter immigration
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: laws than we'd had before that we still have today.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: But this was super tight. I read when they loosened
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: it up. The quota for Chinese immigrants was one hundred
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: and four Chinese immigrants per year.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Really wow.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And everybody was racist and against Chinese at the time, right, So,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: but people also love Chop Suey by then, I mean
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: love Chop Suey. So lem Sen's lawsuit said, hey, you
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: can keep loving Chop Suey. I invented this in America.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: It's really an American dish. So you can continue being
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: racist against Chinese immigrants while still loving Chop Suey, You're
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: welcome America, and America said thank you, get out.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And he's the one who had the quote it's
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: as an American as pork and beans.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in the lawsuit. I think you said it too.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: I couldn't find that quote. I couldn't find the lawsuit.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: But even if it's not specifically in the lawsuit, it
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: definitely seems to have developed out of that.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But it's possible that it was Chinese in origin initially,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: because apparently there are some dishes from the Pearl River
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Delta that are pretty similar, and some of the earliest
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Chinese migrants to the US were from that area. I
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: can't parse out what's so different from Chop suey than
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: any stirfry.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know either. There's a lot of overlap between
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Chinese dishes and including authentic cuisine, Yeah, but especially American Chinese.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I think it was. It was one of the first.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: It was almost like an umbrella term for all Chinese
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: dishes in America at the turn of the last century,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: kind of like smurf but with Chinese food essentially. And
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: I think because it was the first, a lot of
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: dishes that we recognize as like American Chinese developed out
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. I do know that when I
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: was a kid going camping growing up in Georgia, I
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: loved nothing more than taking a can of Lachoi. You know,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: it's like veggies and sauce, basically.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Just sipping on it the whole weekend, a lot of water.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Justice, Yeah, put it my canteen and you know, making
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: some campfire rice and dumping that stuff on top, you know,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: heating it up and dumping it on top. I thought
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: it was like the peak of you know, fine cuisine
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: in the woods.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I mean that's definitely better than you know,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a human finger that you found.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they were. Lachoi was around since the nineteen
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: thirties doing that, you know, canned vegetable sauce. I was
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: gonna say trick, but you know it's a thing.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But I mean that's a great explanation of just
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: how crazy people were in America for chop suey. Lachoi
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: could pack it and sell for decades this stuff, and
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: people were nuts for it. Another sign, apparently, was that
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: by the turn of the last century, chop suey houses
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: were so popular they'd started to migrate out of Chinatown. Yeah,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: which was a huge deal, and I should say in
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Manhattan specifically. That was a big deal because I think
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: there were a lot of people who are like, I'd
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: love chop suey, but I don't want to go to Chinatown,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: and these Chinese entrepreneurs said, hey, you don't need to anymore.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Here we are at I don't know, so ho right.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Another like pretty startling factoid is that it was in
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: well this part isn't. It was in the nineteen forty
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: two edition of the US Army Cookbook. But as a result,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: when US troops were stationed overseas in China and Japan
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and World War Two, restaurants would put chop suey on
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the menu to cater to those American soldiers because they
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: came in were like, where's the chop suey?
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we want a hot hamburger and chopsuit exactly. You
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: want to take a break, We're like twenty minutes.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and put it in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: my order for pork fread rice and a girl.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I'm definitely getting Chinese food for dinner.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, shot.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Shot, all right, chuck, So we're back, and we talked
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: about how immigration laws and racism against Chinese migrants helped
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: shape Chinese food in America. And one of the first
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: ways that it did was that eighteen eighty two Chinese
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Exclusion Act actually led to a plethora of much more
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: upscale these restaurants. And the reason why is because part
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: of that Exclusion Act is that certain kinds of businesses
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: could achieve merchant status, or the owners of certain kind
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: of businesses they had to be legitimate businesses that were
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: considered kind of higher end, and that if you had
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: merchant status, you could sponsor relatives to come to the
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: United States. And I guess in nineteen fifteen, a court
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: case got Chinese restaurants added to that merchant status clause.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this came from a historian named Heather Lee,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and she makes the cas is like, you know, this
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: addition to that list basically meant you were going to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: get a lot of like higher grade chop Suey palaces.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So the restaurants kind of got nicer, and you had
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: to in order to qualify. You also, if you were
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: an investor and owner, you had to spend a year
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: managing the restaurant as the manager and not like you know,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: working in the kitchen or something like that. And you've needed,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of course, this had to be thrown in there. You
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: needed two white witnesses to vouch for them. But because
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: of these strict rules, you got again these these nicer
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants opening up that were qualifying for that merchant status.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: And then you would get investors getting together and saying, hey,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: let's start this restaurant. We'll take turns running it for
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: a year and get our family members over here. And
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: as a result, I mean, this is not the only reason,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: but this definitely helped Chinese restaurants in the US double
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, and again between nineteen
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: twenty and nineteen thirty, and by nineteen thirty they had
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: overtaken laundries as the largest employers of Chinese workers in
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the United States.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the first third of the twentieth century there
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: was a boom in Chinese restaurants, and in specifically higher
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: end Chinese restaurants. And then another boom happened after the
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Immigration and Nationality Act of nineteen sixty five, which greatly
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: loosened restrictions on immigration, particularly from China and within a
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: decade of that act, the Chinese American population basically doubled,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: which sounds eye popping, but don't forget there was only
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: like one hundred and four people coming in a year.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: So it went from like, I don't know, three thousand
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: to six thousand in a decade.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: There's more than that.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely was. But the point is is that
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: now you had way more patrons of authentic Chinese restaurants,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: which meant there were more authentic Chinese restaurants, and then
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: you also had more people who were ready to open
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: and staff more Chinese restaurants, So you had a huge
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: boom in Chinese restaurants again in the sixties to the seventies.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And there was an article in twenty
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: fourteen in The New Yorker by Lauren Hilgers, and this
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: was eleven years ago, but I imagine it's not completely
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: different now. But how the labor arrangements work then and
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: probably these days is if there's a Chinese restaurant in
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the US, there's more than forty thousand back then, and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: there's probably a few more now. But that's a lot
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: of restaurants generally run by families. But staffed by new immigrants.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: A lot of them are undocumented, a lot of them
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: apparently are coming from the Fujian province, and they're providing
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the labor. So what will happen is they'll they'll have
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: a restaurant. A new immigrant will come to town, probably
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: a hub city. I think they concentrated on New York,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: San Francisco, and Chicago for the article, but any major
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: city in the US probably, and they'll go to a
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Chinese language employment agency and they'll say, all right, I
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: got a job for you. They'll say this in Chinese, though,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: go get on this bus, here's the person's name, here's
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: their prone number, go to this restaurant, and you can
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: probably get a job there. And that's how they staff
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: their restaurants.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Chuck, you mentioned the at least in twenty fourteen,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States. Yeah, which
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: is impressive in and of itself, But if you compare
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: it to McDonald's, which is you know, the benchmark comparison
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: for US. Yeah, there are thirteen six and twenty two
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: McDonald's in the United States. Wow, versus forty thousand Chinese restaurants.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: There's probably well, there's not, because we know that number two.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, there's probably fourteen thousand Panda expresses,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: but we'll get to that later.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's close.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: The long and short of it is was with how
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the staffing arrangement works is these cooks are moving around
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: a lot. They'll sometimes work at a place for just
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a few months and go to a different restaurant, maybe
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: for better pay. Oftentimes outside of city centers you can
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: get paid more, which sort of surprised me. I guess
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: it makes sense though, But if you're getting Chinese food
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: for years and years from the same place, a lot
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of times there will be a different cook every few months,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and hopefully you won't even notice.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of the reason you won't notice is
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: because the immigrants from Fujian. I could not find out
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: why the largest waves of migration lately have been coming
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: from Fujian, but they are. But they are coming and
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: buying Cantonese formerly Cantonese owned restaurants from the Cantonese owners
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: who founded them, and they're just keeping the menu the same,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: because again this is American Chinese. Neither one's making the
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: cuisine necessarily that you would find in their provinces. In China,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: they're making the American version. So if you have a
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: set menu, you're probably any chef's going to be able
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: to cook this stuff. I think.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now we're going to talk a little bit about
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: General So another classic Chinese dish that I've never had.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Oh really, now, I've never had it. I mean maybe
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: i've had it if someone else somewhere and they ordered
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: just a ton of food and I was kind of
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: just dumping all of it on the plate, which is
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the best way to eat Chinese food. Yeah, but that's
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: something I've never ordered myself. I kind of just stick
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: to my main order and General So's chicken, is not it?
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: It's good. It's a are you just sour? No, it's
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: not even sour. It's like sweet and savory.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: It's kind of spicy too, isn't it.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: A little bit? But nothing anybody couldn't handle. I think
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: there's usually sesame seeds on it too.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: It's good stuff, yeah, not like kung paw is the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: real spicy one.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and we all know who likes his kung
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: pow spicy.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: There's a funny Judge John Hodgman episode about that too.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: There's a funny dad, or at least he thought it
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: was funny, and his kids were trying to get him
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: to stop making the same joke over and over. Wherever
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: this guy goes, it could be like a toll booth worker.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: We'll ask like what kind of ticket he wants, and
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: he'll say, I'll have the Kung paw chicken m hm.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And he'll just say that to answer any question asked
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: by anyone ever. Really, and the kids are really annoyed.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's hysterical.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty funny, for sure, unless you're in
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: a rush, because then you have to ask the question twice.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I could also see how children of that
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: dad might get really sick of that joke.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Totally deads can be pretty embarrassing, except for this one. Yeah,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: well not you, of course.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: All right, So what are the origins of General So's chicken?
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Actually, Chuck? There was a guy named Pencheng Wi k
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: U e I. He was from Hunan and he was
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: living in Taiwan at the time as part of the
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Nationalist government. He was a chef for the Nationalist government
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: who was being visited in Taiwan by the chairman of
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: the US Joint chiefs of staff. So he created a
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: special dish that was in no way resembles what we
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: think of General So's chicken today. It was a very
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: heavy dish, sour, hot, saltya It was just not American.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: There wasn't fried. But this dish was named after an actual,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: real Honanese general from the Qing dynasty. His name was
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Zuo Zong Tang or So Sung Tang, and you get
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: General So from that. I think he was a Minister
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: of Taiwan for a little while. It made sense to Paning,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: and eventually it got exported to the United States, I
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: think in the seventies, and it just got totally transformed.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently if you're in the Boston area, it's going
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: to be called General Gal either Gau or Gao. Did
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: not know that.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that either. But that doesn't sound totally
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: foreign to me, Like, I, well, it sounds a little form,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like I feel like I've
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: heard that before something.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I have too. So it may
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: exist outside of Boston, or maybe it's you know, just
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: more New England regional, but Chinese fuit is very popular
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: as a delivery thing. I can't remember the last time
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: I actually, actually I can rarely, rarely do I eat
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: in a Chinese restaurant, but I ate in Las Vegas.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: There's a very popular, very upscale Chinese restaurant in one
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of the casinos, the kind of place where like a
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: week ahead of time, you tell them you want the duck,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: that kind of deal. H and our friend, the show
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: in friend of ours, Adam Pranica, made that with Ben
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Harrison and our booking agent and friend Josh Lincren and
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: all our wives. We all went and had this beautiful, big,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: big meal. But almost always I'm ordering takeout or delivery
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Chinese food and grubhub and this is ten years ago,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: but they said that General Sou's Chicken was the most
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: popular dish that they deliver, fourth most popular overall, and
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: just last year they reported Chinese takeout is the or
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: delivery I guess is the third most popular food overall.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I guess behind pizza, and I can't think of what else.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I would figure Chinese would be second, but I don't know.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Pizza and take out lasagna maybe yeah, people love that.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this guy is from Grubhub named
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Garfield was reporting on.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: That nice that was a great joke, thank you. So
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: back in twenty twenty three, grub hub did say that
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: there are two cities where Chinese dish made the top
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: ten crab Rangoon and hold your emails, because we know
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: crab Rangoon is actually not a Chinese dish at all,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: but it is found in just about every American Chinese
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: food place. It was invented by an American the restaurants
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: who are Victor Bergeron, whereas Polynesian themed chain Trader vis
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Trade named after a city in Burma also known as
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: me and Mar and it has cream cheese, which is
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: as American as chop suey.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know I'm retelling this, but I'll have
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to just quickly say. One of the funniest things from
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid was when I was like
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: twelve years old in a restaurant and there was a
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: gentleman ordering takeout from the counter and after like six
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: dishes in a row, he asked if it had cheese
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: on it, and the very kind restaurant owner kept saying no, no, no,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and at the very end he said, in his very
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: sweet broken English, that no Chinese food has cheese on it.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: And I think the last time I told that story,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: you and I thought about like a slice of American
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: cheese just on some stir fry. And then we're like,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I think we might want to try that.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like something we would try for sure.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very funny childhood memory.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: What else, Oh, hey, there's another reason that some Chinese
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: food became americanized.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Ingredients, that's right.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: You know, a lot of them were changed to fit
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: our tastes, including the ingredient sometimes. One example that Laura found,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: of course, is beef with broccoli that is not you know,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: they don't have that kind of you know, as far
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: as I know, they don't have that kind of broccoli
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: in China. What they use is Chinese broccoli or guy lahn,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: which if you look that up, it looks it's more
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: like bakchoi than what we think of as broccoli.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was like, where's broccoli from? Turns out
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: the Mediterranean?
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: It was, according to legend, brought to America by Thomas Jefferson,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: who grew it experimentally in his garden. And they like
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: to fart. Yep, he said this is gonna make me
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: blow and then it was it took off in popularity
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: in the US in the nineteen twenties. Didn't see why,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: but it did.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Believe me, Well, we got to talk a little bit
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: about fortune cookies because that is not Chinese either. That
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: is originally adopted from something called the Japanese cracker, which
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: is a savory thing. But in the early twentieth century,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Chinese restaurants were owned a lot of times by Japanese people.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Japanese bakeries were making these cookies, and then after Japanese
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: in tournament, a lot of Chinese Americans took over these
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: cookie factories. And that got me down the road of like, well,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: who's writing the fortunes. There's a guy named Donald Lao
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: who's a CFO of Wantan Food Company, the largest fortune
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: cookie maker in the world, and he was the sole writer,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: or has been for thirty years of writing these fortune cookies.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: I don't remember specifically talking about him or his name,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: but there's no way we don't talk about him in
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: our fortune cookie short stuff from twenty twenty two.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: If we missed him, I can't believe we would miss
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: that guy's no way. But as a recap he he
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: wrote him for thirty years. He used to write two
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: to three per day. Now it's two or three per
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: month because they have just thousands of them. And he
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: got that job by default because he spoke the best
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: English at the company. And his quote is I am
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the most read author in the United States.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: I believe it for sure.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: It's pretty great.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: And then we got to talk about a couple of
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: regional specialties. Saint Louis. I remember when we went there.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: We when we get back to touring again, I really
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: want to go to Saint Louis. Everyone there was crazy nice.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: They had really cool, like regional foods that you couldn't
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: find anywhere else, like good stuff. Oh is this a
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: good town? I want to go back. But I also
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: want to try the Saint Paul sandwich. There is eggfou young,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: but a sandwich.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: So you've got an omelet with vegetables, a meat or
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: seafood topped with brown gravy on a sandwich. So you've
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: got mayo, pickle, lettuce, all that stuff. It sounds just
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: totally off the chain, and I really want to try it.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: There's another one, and I don't know if you looked
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: up a picture of this thing. No, I didn't, but
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: if you go to Fall River, Massachusetts, do you have
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: your phone with you or a computer or it means
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: of looking up a photo.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, let me do that.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: While I'm doing this, you should check this out. It's
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: called a chow main sandwich. It hails from Fall River, Massachusetts,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: but it's in surrounding towns there, and who knows, maybe
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: elsewhere in New England. But it is exactly what it
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: sounds like. It's chowmain on a sandwich on like a
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: hamburger bun. But if you look this thing up, it's
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: not a sandwich it is. You can't see the bottom bun.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: It is just chow main all over a plate. I
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: guess there's a bun underneath, and there's just a hamburger
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: bun sitting on top. Like it is a full plate
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: of chow main with just a fun in there somewhere.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: It's not the kind of thing you would ever pick
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: up and eat as a sandwich.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: It looks like cousin Nit wearing his hat, actually a
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: little derby hamburger bun hat. Yeah, it's ostentatious to say
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: the least, for sure.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, should we take another break? Yeah, all right, we'll
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: take another break and we'll finish up with an ode
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: to Panda Express and PF Changs right after this shot shot.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: All right, so we're gonna start off talking a little
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: bit about how PF Changs came about a restaurant that
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I think I might have been to once. I definitely
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: picked it up a lot as a PA in the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: film business US for like big production meetings. So I
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: can't speak to its quality. It's supposed to be pretty good, right.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: PF Chang's Yeah, yeah, it's it's good. I mean, especially
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: for comparing chain typical. I would not call it a
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: high end chain, no more than you'd call cheesecake factory
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: a high end chain. Well, it's it's virtually on the
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: same level of dining. Okay, I'm not taking a shot
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: at it. I'm just saying, like, it's not It's not
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: like the place that you went to in Vegas or
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: or Peaking Duck in fall I think Fall Falls Church, Virginia,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: which is an amazing spot. It's just like you can
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: go to a mall and there might be one attached
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: to it if it's a nice mall. Regardless, it is tasty,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: especially compared to like Chinese takeout. It's definitely several steps
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: up from that. Okay, I got it's just really hard
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: to like what high end restaurant has three hundreds now, Like,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: when you have three hundred locations, you're starting to work
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: in economies of scale. It's really tough to keep like
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: any kind of cuisine just top notch in that sense.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I want to quickly plug since
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: you mentioned Cheesecake Factory, are again friends of the show
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: and friends in real life. Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: of the Greatest Generation podcast have a side podcast called
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Factory Seconds where they're working their way through the menu
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: of the Cheesecake Factory, one item at a time.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Those two could not be any greater American treasures.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty great.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Adam's uncle actually is the voice of the Memphis Grizzlies
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: as the announcer basketball team. And apparently Cheesecake Factory is
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: huge with NBA players, And I was like why, and
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: his uncle he was like, because there's one in every city.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: It's the same menu. It's a huge menu, the portions
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: are huge, and they and the quality is always the same.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Economies of scale.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I was wrong. Apparently they make all their stuff fresh.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: It's not like bagged food.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, if you believe that, I actually no, I don't.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Huh. That is a little surprising. But I mean it's
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: not like I'm hating on cheesecake factory.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: It's just I've never been.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's they have a really varied menu, that's yeah. Yeah,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: the portions are gigantic and their cheesecakes are pretty great.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm going to be a guest on
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: that show at some point. So next time in LA
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: We're going to go to one and then I'm going
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: to be a guest and okay, good. Anyway, A long
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: way around describing PF. Chang's, there was a woman named
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Cecilia Chiang with an I in there from San Francisco
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: and she and I believe before nineteen sixty five, before
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: that immigration law, opened a high end restaurant there called Mandarin.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: And she said, no Chop suey in my menu, and
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: no Eggfu Young. All this Chinatown stuff is a no no.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: And she owned a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: years ago, and her husband got a diplomatic post there,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: so that's why she was doing Chinese food there and
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Mandarin opened in nineteen sixty one, and that's where all
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: of a sudden people are exposed to like kung pou,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: chicken tea, smoked duck, mushue, pork pot stickers, like some
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: of the really good stuff and authentic stuff. Yeah exactly.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: She sold her son, Philip the restaurant Mandarin in nineteen
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: eighty nine, and he is one of the co founders
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: of PF Changs.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Philip F. Chang, but he dropped the I exactly.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: So PF Chang's pretty large chain, three hundred restaurants. It's
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: definitely nothing to sneeze at. But if you really want
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: to talk economy of scales, let's talk Panda Express. They
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: have two thousand more restaurants than PF Chang's does twenty
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: three hundred in the United States.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, food Court City.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: But yeah, have you had Panda Express?
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I have. I used to do it when I
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: was younger. I'm not going to say it's like not
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: any good, but you know, it's Chinese fast food, and
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: it's just not something I would eat now. I would
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: in a pinch. It's not like I'd turn my nose
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: up at it. But I have been there before you.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of times. And yeah, it is fast food,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: and it's great for fast food. It's just such a
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: it's just different. It's not you know, Taco Bell or
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: McDonald's or even like Chipotle or something. It's just Chinese version,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: the Chinese version of fast food.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like it. Apparently it's a family run business though,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: even though it's this huge chain, and in the seventies
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: they just had a few little sit down restaurants and
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: it kind of grew very naturally and organically as this
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: family business, which I never knew, which is pretty cool.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: And if you're a fan of orange Chicken, you can
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: thank your friends at Panda Express because they debuted it
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven and now you can find it
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: basically everywhere. But they were the ones who came up
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: with it.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's your order in a Chinese restaurant or for takeout?
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: I'm trying some hunan to know because I don't normally
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: eat that and I want to see what it's like.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: But typically a garlic chicken of some sort. I like
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: savory brown sauces, umami brown sauces, usually chicken. If I'm
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: really feeling crazy, maybe like a happy family or something
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Are you white rice or fried rice?
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: White steamed rice?
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: M boy, I gotta have that fried rice.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's too many peas and fried rice and
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: peas are one of my most hated things on the
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: entire planet.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Oh I love peas.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Eat.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta get that fried rice. I'll get a
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: lot of sweet and sour chicken or ses some me chicken.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Got to get the egg roll. I'll take a beef
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: and broccoli if people have ordered it, but that's not
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: my order. But I'll also try a lot of stuff.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: If I'm at a big group and someone's just ordering
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: a bunch of Chinese food, I'll eat almost all of it.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Do you ask them first?
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: What like what to order? No?
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Can I have some of your orders?
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: And then you know, if you're in a place not
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: all cities have this stuff. But if you're in a
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: place that has the really good, authentic stuff and you
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: get dim sum or some pork buns or soup dumplings,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: like all that stuff is great, but you can't find
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: that everywhere.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: No, I really want some Chinese food.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Now it's gonna happen. That's the first thing I ordered
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: after our week at the beach in South Carolina, after
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: eating you know, coastal seafood, American seafood, I was like,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: I can eat some Chinese food.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: So America is not the only place that took Chinese
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: food and said here you meat this orange and squeezed
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: it together and then fried it. That's like I said
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: at the outs, That's happened all over the world. And
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: apparently I'm not on TikTok much as an ever, but
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: there was a thing on TikTok a couple of years
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: ago where American people picked up on UK British Chinese
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: food and We're like, what are you guys doing over there?
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't see any of that either, but apparently
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: it was pretty funny. Apparently the food in the UK,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: the Chinese food is a lot different than here in America.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: It is very popular over there, maybe even one of
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: the top two, maybe even the top food in the country.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: I saw that. It definitely was by a long shot.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Oh really, Okay, so they love it over there. They
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: will have things like French fries, what they call chips,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of curry sauces, which is different than us
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of great Indian food obviously in
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: England and throughout the UK. And they also have something
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: called a chicken ball, and that's just what they call it.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: I looked it up. I tried to find any difference.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: It looks like the exact same thing we get here
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: in like a sweet and sour chicken. It's just a fried,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: little chunk of chicken.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which everybody loves. Even if you don't need chicken,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: you'll eat that.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I couldn't determine though from looking at first, if it
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: was ground like a meatball, but it's not. And they're
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: not even usually round. They're just you know, chicken chained. Yeah,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: like a little chicken finger kind of thing.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Man. So poor chicken meat has been like subjected to
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: so many different indignantities over the eat, you know, more
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: than any other meat.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: So India also has a version of Chinese food that's
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: so popular that some Indian restaurants in the US. I've
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: not seen this, but they'll sometimes have dishes there called
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Manchurian something or other. Yeah, and that I mean I
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: didn't either, I've never run across that. And then in
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: some cities, if the city's big enough, they might have
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: like full on Indian Chinese restaurants there where it's the
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Indian version of Chinese, just like if you had an
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: American version of the Chinese food in India, there's probably
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: some sort of cultural exchange, like they open one here,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: we have to open one there. It's got to be balanced.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: It's contractual, the same for Latin America. In the United States,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Chinese Cuban restaurants started opening in New York City, of course,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, and then what they call would
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: it be China Latino?
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: I'm going with Chino Latino.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, China Latino is what I want to say,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: because it sounds so great.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: Mm hm.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: I just wasn't sure if that was right. But they
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: started opening later on. They're in decline in New York now,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: but apparently, just like everywhere over the course of centuries,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Chinese workers were brought over to Latin America for a
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: lot of reasons, but usually servitude. Sadly, but again, they
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: brought their food with them, and their food existed alongside
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: stuff like Cuban food and Peruvian food, and then they
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: start to blend it together, and all of a sudden
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: you have these cool like sort of mix up dishes.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to try all of these.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: I do too.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: And then apparently also South Africa has Afro Cantonese and
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: that was again developed out of a Chinese community that
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: were brought there as indentured workers back all the way
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: back in the nineteenth century. Basically just like America, and
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: also just like America, as more and more Chinese immigrants
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: have come higher end, more Chinese authentic dishes have kind
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: of become more favorited than just the Afro Cantonese version.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Afro Cantonese just to my ear, sounds delicious.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah again, I said it before and I'll say
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: it again. I really want some Chinese food right now.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna happen, and we're recording earlier, so it's
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: like creeping onto lunchtime right now.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: Oh are you doing it for lunch? I'm gonna make
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: myself wait until dinner and really ttilate myself.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, I can't get it for lunch.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: I'll uh well, I'll probably do skip lunch and order
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: it for dinner.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: But this has inspired me to I've been wanting to
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: do an episode on Cajun food, but it was very intimidating,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: like Cajun sort of creole stuff because there's so many influences.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I was just like, we're gonna screw it up, but this,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: this is uh maybe more brave.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Well, if we do Cajun food, we have to consult
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: our good friend and friend of the show, Doug Shasherie.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, m hm, oh that's right Doug.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when he brought us a Boudine balls at our
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: New Orleans show and we ate him on stage.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what a guy. He's great.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, he's wonderful. So yeah, Plus his last name Sashery,
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: so he knows what he's talking about Cajun food. That's right. Well,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: since we talked about our friend Doug Shasherie here on
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: the episode, as was predicted back in two thousand and eight.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: By the way, Chuck, today's the seventeenth anniversary of stuff
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: you should know today. Yeah, happy anniversary, baby.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Wow, happy anniversary love.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, anyway, onto it, as was predicted back in
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. Since we said Doug Shasheri's name,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: we've unlocked listener mail boy.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: That's about as fan fairy as we get.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Huh, yeah, we don't. Yeah, we don't do that. Kind
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: of stuff, you know. I mean, we don't do media
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: tours or anything and say look at us, everybody, look
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: at us. You know, we do that every week anyway.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Who wants to do that? This is a correction. Hey, guys,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: heard your short stuff on Tulipmania and wanted to point
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: out that Tulipmania is now largely believed to be a myth.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I only found out about that a few years ago
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: myself when I heard an interview from the author Anne Goldgar.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: She discovered the historical reality when she dug into the
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: archives to research her book Tulipmania and Money, Honor and
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. The myth was largely
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: promulgated great word by Scottsman Charles Mackie in his book
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and he
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: sent along articles from Smithsonian and History dot Com and
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: even Wikipedia that said although McKay's I'm sorry Mackie's book
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: is a classic, citation needed, his account is contested citation needed.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Many modern scholars believe that the mania was not as
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: destructive as described A little behind on some of the
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: show's guys. Perhaps others have written in but no one
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: else has written in, Richard, so you're the only one.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: So way to go.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: I've seen that on the Internet's here there since we
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: released it. But I mean, honestly, Chuck, we used a
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: lot of different sources for that, and yeah, I mean, yes,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: you can make a case that it was exaggerated, but
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: the idea that it's a myth is I did not
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: run across that, but who knows, and if it was,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: then a lot of may that we released an episode
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: where we were catfished by.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: History by the tulipmaniacs.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: We'll have to get to the bottom of it. Who
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: wrote that, Richard? Thanks a lot, Richard. We appreciate that.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sending us straight publicly. And if you
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: want to be like Richard and set us straight publicly,
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: you can send us an email to send it off
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.