Narayan Venkatasubramanyan (that’s an awesome last name) sent me a link to a popular Indian company called Ching’s Secret, which sells Chinese dishes to prepare at home, including Schezwan dishes.

In English we spelled ?? as Szechwan or Szechuan, now Sichuan in pingyin. But in Indian the spelling went a bit awry. As he explains it,

When the taste of that province was introduced in India, some Indian decided that it was silly to add a “z” after an “s”, decided it was some horrible misspelling, and “corrected” the spelling to the more logical-looking “Schezwan.” and then proceeded to pronounce it as it was written. these days, India is full of restaurants with menus with “Schezwan sauce” and diners who loudly demand the “authentic” shay-zwan flavour.

The Los Angeles Times has a feature on David Chan  (@chandavkl)who has eaten in over 6,000 Chinese restaurants, and has a ginormous Excel spreadsheet to prove it. Though his list starts in 1955, which is decades before spreadsheets were even invented.

The coolest part is the time-step map over the years, which plots all the restaurants in the Los Angeles area he has eaten at. It which is made possible because he has kept such meticulous records (including the addresses). Data visualization + Chinese restaurants. One of my favorites.

I’m going to guess I might have eaten in Chinese restaurants in more countries than he has, but he certainly wins on the sheer numbers.

The famed Mission Chinese of San Francisco has opened a NYC outpost, which I visited this past Sunday. The outside is made to resemble a ghetto takeout joint. They even have the lightboard menus, but instead of having the boilerplate ones with the lavender background, they made their own custom ones, which are not cheap. Plus they also call it Lung Shang, the same name of the restaurant they occupied in San Francisco, which is fun.

But then you walk down the hallway and you find a full sit-down restaurant, with community tables and some small ones. Unlike the one in SF, this has a full-bar — though they serve wine in plastic water cups.

Menu is printed very similar to the one in Mission Chinese SF, with same fonts, and even similar cut out picture of the staff.  Dishes are slightly different. Crowd was very similar. Hipsters Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans. Foodies, etc.

Also when we visited, chef Danny Bowien was there himself! He was cooking in the kitchen and working hard.

Re menus. One thing they offer in NYC, that I hadn’t seen last time I was in SF (though they are on vacation for two weeks when I tried on Saturday) was Sichuan lamb dumplings!

Also a tofu in soy milk with beans. Liquid, solid, and bean forms.

Below are cucumbers and some rooty dish that were okay. Appetizery.Not to get too excited about.

Cucumbers.

And by the time we left, there was a long line — just like in San Francisco. It’s Mission Chinese Part Deux.

It’s high end. The New York space is 11,000 square feet and seats 200.

Most entrees are $22 to $88. But one dish is $888  for Japanese abalone with black truffle.

It’s located in Times Square, 311 West 43rd Street, (212) 776-1818.

MSG now regrets putting up a graphic of Jeremy Lin’s head over the broken fortune cookie. Almost inevitable. But still, I think someone must have thought this was a good idea. And no one thought maybe it wasn’t. On television is the strangest part.Â

On Nov. 13, 1894, in Chicago, the inventor Frederick Weeks Wilcox patented a version of what he called a “paper pail,” which was a single piece of paper, creased into segments and folded into a (more or less) leakproof container secured with a dainty wire handle on top.

Impressed that they dug that up. In my research, I did not stumble across that fun, fun fact.

The kata grills from Gary Ono, which were used to make superearly fortune cookies in the Japanese Tea Garden in the San Francisco Golden Gate Park.

What could be the oldest American fortune cookies still in existence (50 years old!), an unopened can of “fortune tea cakes” from Hong Kong Noodle in Los Angeles, donated by Merlin Lowe, and a hat to go with it.

Here is the little museumy write up that went below it, that makes it superreal.

The building:

And the little sign for the talk.

Update: The chief of research offered to pull up the Chinese Exclusion Act next time I’m in town. How cool is that?