There are a number of stories, mostly apocryphal, about the name “chop suey,” what it means, and how the dish originated. So what is chop suey? Is it truly a Chinese dish, or an invention of Chinese-American restaurants? The second act of the documentary film The Search for General Tso traces how the Chinese who’d immigrated to America spread east after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which severely limited not only further Chinese immigration but even the types of work they could do, essentially giving birth to the ubiquitous Chinese laundries and Chop Suey restaurants across the United States. ![]() wUBjRZAuOX- Ben Collins JSo what is Chop Suey? They’re called chop suey sandwiches and they only exist in Salem, Massachusetts. "Boston was a hub of the sugar trade, which brought sugar up from the Caribbean to be processed into molasses in Boston, which was then sent to Europe, where it was distilled into rum," White says.Every year on the 4th of July, everyone in my family eats one of these monstrosities. The sauce gets its rich color and flavor from molasses - which was made in Boston. Oh, and one more thing: That dark, gloppy lobster sauce you'll only find at Boston's Chinese restaurants has a fascinating backstory as well. (Though White notes some would "go slumming" in Chinatown, unable to resist the lure of lo mein.) cities, Chinese immigrants and their food were both looked down upon. Meanwhile, respectable, middle and upper-class Bostonians generally stayed away from Chinese food. "These were nice, cheap portable meals for the working class," White says. The chow mein sandwich is a classic Bostonian treat.Ĭhow mein sandwiches and chop suey sandwiches followed, naturally. And so, unlike their counterparts in cities with big Chinese populations, Chinese restaurants in Boston couldn't stay in business by catering to Chinese patrons alone. More Chinese immigrants joined in subsequent years - but Boston's Chinese community never got as big as the Chinese communities in San Francisco or New York. About 200 Chinese laborers came in from the San Francisco area to work in Boston's leather industry. "The first Chinese arrivals in Boston were strikebreakers in the 1870s," White says. It turns out, Italians' influence on the Chinese food in Boston dates back much further than the 1950s. And we wanted to know more, so we called up White and asked her to explain a bit more: What's the deal with Boston Chinese food? We non-Bostonians here at The Salt found their discussion thoroughly intriguing. You can listen to the full conversation on WBUR's Radio Boston here. "If you're in the Boston area, you'll see the words Peking ravioli on menus." ![]() Joyce Chen opened her first Chinese restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., in 1958.Įd Maker/The Denver Post via Getty Imagesīack in 1958, when Joyce Chen - the celebrity chef and star of Joyce Chen Cooks on PBS - opened her first restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., she decided to call her dumplings "Peking ravioli" to appeal to her large Italian clientele, her son Stephen Chen tells WBUR's Meghna Chakrabarti. The first thing to know is that Chinese food in Boston is heavily influenced by not just Chinese immigration to the city, but also the large Italian and Irish immigrant population there. Over at WBUR, Merry White, a professor of anthropology at Boston University, and Stephen Chen, the owner of Joyce Chen Foods and son of celebrity chef and Boston restaurateur Joyce Chen, discussed the fascinating history of the city's own spin on Chinese food. There's chow mein sandwiches and Peking ravioli (aka dumplings). Bread often comes as a standard add-on with any takeout order. Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesĬhinese food has become ingrained in this country's culinary landscape over the years - giving rise to some uniquely Americanized dishes like General Tsao's chicken, beef and broccoli, and of course, the ubiquitous fortune cookie.īut some of the Chinese food you'll find in and around Boston is something else altogether. These shrimp "Peking ravioli" (aka dumplings) were featured at the third annual Festival of Dumplings in 2014 - honoring Bostonian and celebrity chef Joyce Chen.
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