Andrew Coe's Chop Suey.

[ratmmjess]

Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States is informative and entertaining. Coe's a professional food critic and knows his subject, and he spends a decent amount of time on the history of Chinese and American interaction, the evolution of Chinese cuisine, how Chinese writers have viewed Chinese food, and so on.

Comments

[immlass]

It was definitely a pop read, but my foundation in 19th c American (really urban) isn't strong enough to cope with much more. But yeah, it was fun and that's mostly what I'm looking for in pop histories. I don't expect them to be accurate--except when they're in MY AREA and then they damn well better be AWESOME and PERFECT, so I totally get your point

I also read the Jennifer 8. Lee book on Chinese food, which is similar and really different, and now I want a third book dealing with the rise of P.F. Chang's and Pei Wei and the like. I've been thinking about the Americanization of pan-Asian fusion (not really Chinese, even American Chinese, not really Thai, not really Japanese, etc.) like Pei Wei, and I wonder what it's going to do to neighborhood Chinese over time. The local Chinese places I've tried in Austin seem to be much lower quality in terms of ingredients and food quality than any of the chains, including the local Japanese chain Zen. It looks like there's going to be more economic and social stratification in Chinese food consumption than there was in the 80s and 90s in the future.

[ratmmjess]

I don't demand perfection, but I want at least one anecdote that makes me think, oh, you lucky bastard for having discovered that, I would have wanted to be the one to tell the world about it. (Because it's all about me, of course).

I take your point about stratification--same effect as places like Olive Garden on neighborhood eateries, unfortunately.