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Race/Related: What Is "American" Food?

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Hamburgers? Hot dogs? What about lo mein, or General Tso’s chicken? View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Sunday, November 19, 2017 [Join Race/Related »]( [] Anthony Cotsifas What do you picture when you think of “American” food? Hamburgers? Hot dogs? Turkey and mashed potatoes? What about lo mein, or General Tso’s chicken? Almost one-third of Americans have ordered Chinese takeout or eaten in a Chinese restaurant in the last month, the TED resident Katie Salisbury tells us, and there are more than 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States, nearly three times the number of McDonald’s franchises. This week we explore Asian-American cuisine and take a glimpse into the harsh realities of being a Chinese restaurant or takeout worker in New York. [Excerpts From “Asian-American Cuisine’s Rise, and Triumph”]( []( Anthony Cotsifas By [Ligaya Mishan]( The history of Asian-American cuisine goes back to the first tearooms and banquet halls set up by Chinese immigrants who came to seek their fortune in Gold Rush California in the 1850s. By the end of the 19th century, despite Congress’s passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and attempts to condemn San Francisco’s Chinatown as a threat to the American way of life — “in their quarters all civilization of the white race ceases,” declared a pamphlet published by the Workingmen’s Party of California in 1880 — Cantonese restaurants were all the rage in New York. The food was cheap and fast, swiftly stir-fried in woks, a technique that remained a mystery for decades to most in the West. (One journalist, touring a Chinatown kitchen in 1880, did wonder if “the funny little things we saw at the bottom of a deep earthen jar were rat’s-tails skinned.”) When outsiders came flocking in the 1890s, Chinese chefs altered and invented dishes to please them. This was less concession than calculation, capitalizing on opportunity. The work of immigrants — in food as in the arts — has always been dogged by accusations of impurity and inauthenticity, suggesting that there is one standard, preserved in amber, for what a dish should be or what a writer or artist with roots in another country should have to say. It’s a specious argument, as if being born into a culture were insufficient bona fides to speak of it. (Immigrants are always being asked to show their papers, in more ways than one.) The history of food, like the history of man, is a series of adaptations, to environment and circumstance. Recipes aren’t static. Immigrant cooks, often living in poverty, have always made do with what’s on hand, like the Japanese-Americans rounded up and shipped to internment camps during the Second World War, who improvised rice balls with rations of Spam, and the Korean and Filipino-Americans who, having survived on canned goods in the aftermath of war, eked out household budgets by deploying hot dogs in kimbap and banana-ketchup spaghetti. [] Anthony Cotsifas Almost every Asian-American chef I spoke to — most of whom are in their late 20s to early 40s — came to the U.S. as children or were born to parents who were immigrants. (In 1952, the last racial barriers to naturalization were lifted, and in 1965, immigration quotas based on national origin — for Asia, 100 visas per country per year — were abolished.) Almost all had stories of neighbors alarmed by the smells from their families’ kitchens or classmates recoiling from their lunchboxes. “I was that kid, with farty-smelling food,” said Jonathan Wu, the Chinese-American chef at [Nom Wah Tu]( in New York. “I still feel that, if I’m taking the train with garlic chives in my bag.” So these chefs’ cooking, born of shame, rebellion and reconciliation, is not some wistful ode to an imperfectly remembered or never-known, idealized country. It’s a mixture of nostalgia and resilience. It wasn’t taught — certainly not in the way other cuisines have been traditionally taught. Graduates of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., recalled that little time was devoted to Asian cooking; at Le Cordon Bleu in London and in Paris, none. One instructor took offense when Preeti Mistry, whose Indian-inflected restaurants include [Juhu Beach Club]( in Oakland, Calif., likened a French stew to curry. Another told David Chang that pork stock, essential to tonkotsu ramen, was “disgusting.” [] Anthony Cotsifas Any immigrant is an outsider at first. But for Asians in America, there is a starker sense of otherness. We don’t fit into the American binary of white and black. We have been the enemy; the subjugated; the “lesser” peoples whose scramble for a foothold in society was historically seen as a menace to the American order. And yet we’ve also been the “good” immigrants, proving ourselves worthy of American beneficence — polite, humble, grateful, willing to work 20-hour days running a grocery store or a laundry or a restaurant that will never be “authentic” enough, to spend every dime on our children’s test prep so that they get into the best schools, because we believe in the promise of America, that if you work hard, you can become anyone. If you try hard enough, you might even be mistaken for white. Among the children of immigrants, Asians in America seem most caught in a state of limbo: no longer beholden to their parents’ countries of origin but still grasping for a role in the American narrative. There is a unique foreignness that persists, despite the presence of Asians on American soil for more than two centuries; none of us, no matter how bald our American accent, has gone through life without being asked, “Where are you from? I mean, originally?” But while this can lead to alienation, it can also have a liberating effect. When you are raised in two cultures at once — when people see in you two heritages at odds, unresolved, in abeyance — you learn to shift at will between them. You may never feel like you quite belong in either, but neither are you fully constrained. The acute awareness of borders (culinary as well as cultural) that both enclose and exclude, allows, paradoxically, a claim to borderlessness, taking freely from both sides to forge something new. For Asian-American chefs, this seesaw between the obligations of inheritance and the thrill of go-it-aloneness, between respecting your ancestors and lighting out for the hills, manifests in dishes that arguably could come only from minds fluent in two ways of life. [Read the [full story]( As American as Chop Suey [] By [Katie Salisbury]( Chinese food is as American as apple pie. But the dishes and flavors conjured up by the words “Chinese food” in a given person’s mind often depend on where they live. Just like regional dialects, there are many varieties of what can be considered Chinese food. At Trey Yuan in Mandeville, La., it’s alligator stir-fry and crawfish with spicy lobster sauce. In the outer boroughs of New York City, Chinese takeout-lovers call it hood food: pork fried rice and egg rolls the size of burritos. In San Gabriel Valley, Calif., dim sum reigns supreme. How we like our Chinese food is not just a reflection of our palates, it’s an expression of who we are. That is why it’s fitting that Ligaya Mishan settles on the term “Asian-American Cuisine” for what’s happening now in the culinary scene with chefs like Diep Tran, Justin Yu, Niki Nakayama, and Chris Kajioka. This new generation of culinary stars is mining the nostalgic textures and tastes of their ethnic heritages and at the same time embracing elements of classic American cuisine. The result is food for Asian-Americans by Asian-Americans — a movement that is more revolutionary than it sounds. In my own work with Chinese restaurant workers in New York, I’ve come to realize that our beloved institution of Chinese takeout is little more than a means to an end for many Chinese immigrants, much less an expression of their identity or even of their dietary preferences. What surprised me most about the conversations I had with cooks was how little of themselves they put into the food they serve. Most of them are in the industry not because they love food, but because it’s a job they can do without speaking English or having a college degree. So they make the food we like to eat and keep what they like — king crab legs, delicate-skinned wontons, noodles in a fish-based broth, savory fried donuts flecked with scallions — off the menu, only to be eaten with their co-workers-cum-family in the back of a kitchen, between orders. [Watch Ms. Salisbury’s [TED Talk]( Connect With Us. [Marilyn Vann successfully sued the Cherokee Nation for citizenship rights.] Marilyn Vann successfully sued the Cherokee Nation for citizenship rights. Paul Hellstern for The New York Times We’d like to hear about a challenging conversation that you’ve had recently involving race and ethnicity. Was it a discussion about the recent protests over Confederate monuments, police shootings of African-Americans, our immigration policy, affirmative action or N.F.L. players kneeling during the national anthem? Or something else? Did you have these conversations with someone of a different race or ethnicity? Were they with family, friends, co-workers or strangers? Please let us know using [this form](. Our reporters may follow up with you to hear more about how you handled the conversation. Join us at 9 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays as we examine topics related to race and culture on The Times’s[Facebook page](. Last week, our correspondents John Eligon and Rachel Swarns discussed tribal identity and the legal battle between the Cherokee and the descendants of African-Americans who were once enslaved by the Cherokee. They were joined by Marilyn Vann, a descendant who successfully sued the Cherokee Nation for citizenship rights; Jon Velie, the lawyer who represented her and other descendants; and Chuck Hoskin Jr., Cherokee Nation secretary of state. [[Watch]( Like Race/Related? Tell us what you’d like to see by writing to racerelated@nytimes.com, and help us grow by forwarding our newsletter to five of your friends and have them sign up at:  [( ADVERTISEMENT We want to hear from you. We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [racerelated@nytimes.com](mailto:racerelated@nytimes.com?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback). Want more Race/Related? Follow us on Instagram, where we continue the conversation about race through stunning visuals. [Instagram]( [INSTAGRAM]( Around the Web Here are some of the stories that we recommend, beyond The Times. The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country [[Read]( After the N.A.A.C.P.  [[Read]( The Endangered Status of Latinos in Media [[Read]( Meet the Riders of the Sikh Motorcycle Club of the Northeast [[Read]( ADVERTISEMENT Editor’s Picks We publish many articles that touch on race. Here are a few you shouldn’t miss. [Running Through the Heart of Navajo]( By MICHAEL POWELL The Canyon de Chelly Ultra on the Navajo reservation tests hearts, minds and legs on a treacherous, 34-mile path up 1,000 feet, to finish “in beauty.” [Princeton Digs Deep Into Its Fraught Racial History]( By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER Two years after debate over Woodrow Wilson rocked campus, the Princeton and Slavery Project is unveiling new research into the university’s uncomfortable past. [In Brexit-Era London, a Mosque Sits Between Two Types of Hate]( By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Terrorism and shifting politics have left mainstream Muslims feeling wary in one of the Western cities that has been most open to them. [Rap Disrupted Music First. Now It’s TV and Film.]( By QUESTLOVE, SALAMISHAH TILLET AND JON CARAMANICA Questlove, Salamishah Tillet and Jon Caramanica discuss depictions of rap’s old-school days as well as new series and movies with hip-hop embedded into their frameworks. [David Dinkins Doesn’t Think He Failed. He Might Be Right.]( By JOHN LELAND He was a historic figure, New York’s first black mayor. At 90, he reflects on a city on the brink. Was it his fault? Or did he start the recovery? [Thomas Hudner, War Hero in a Civil Rights Milestone, Dies at 93]( By DAVID MARGOLICK Lieutenant Hudner defied expectations when he tried to rescue the Navy’s first black aviator during the Korean War. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. FOLLOW RACE/RELATED [Instagram] [racerelated]( Get more [NYTimes.com newsletters »]( | Get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps. [Subscribe »]( ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's Race/Related newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscriptions]( | [Change Your Email]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Contact]( | [Advertise]( Copyright 2017 The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

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