{"id":792,"date":"2008-04-12T21:36:17","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T02:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/12\/fortune-cookie-chronicles-quoted-on-chop-suey-in-the-new-yorker-online\/"},"modified":"2008-04-13T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2008-04-13T05:13:08","slug":"fortune-cookie-chronicles-quoted-on-chop-suey-in-the-new-yorker-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/12\/fortune-cookie-chronicles-quoted-on-chop-suey-in-the-new-yorker-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortune Cookie Chronicles quoted on Chop Suey in the New Yorker Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few people had passed me this little item<\/a> by Andrea Thompson that ran on the New Yorker’s web site on chop suey a few weeks ago, where my book is mentioned and quoted. Exciting.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Born in the U.S.A.<\/h1>\n

In this week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tables for Two, Ligaya Mishan reviews Chop Suey<\/a>, whose tongue-in-cheek name has little to do with the actual menu: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not Chinese, and the eponymous dish isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t served here. But perhaps the restaurant, with its amalgam of Korean, French, and American influences, is aptly named after all. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chop suey,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to Jennifer 8. Lee in her new book, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Fortune Cookie Chronicles<\/a>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d means \u00e2\u20ac\u0153odds and ends,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and most likely came about as a way to offer Americans familiar ingredients dressed up as novelty.
\nAs Lee finds out, there are several origin myths: it was first served at a banquet for a Chinese diplomat; it began when a group of drunks demanding food after hours were served a dish made of kitchen scraps; it was the calculated creation of a Chinese cook whose boss asked for something that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153would pass as Chinese and gratify the public craze.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In a Talk of the Town piece<\/a> published in 1972, the author, Victor Chen, describes its beginnings thus:<\/p>\n

Chop suey originated in a legendary California mining camp, where a legendary Chinese cook found himself shorthanded one day and made do by giving his Occidental customers a mishmash of whatever was lying around. When asked what the dish was called, the man said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chop suey\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (or, in Mandarin, tsa sui<\/em>), which can be translated as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153miscellaneous broken pieces.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There is no such dish in China as tsa sui<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The American taste for chop suey has waned, but the dish lives on. Lee writes:<\/p>\n

Chop suey, I discovered, has become an American export. I have found it in Japan, Korea, Jamaica, Guyana, and the Caribbean. In India, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153American chop suey\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (often made with ketchup!) remains one of the most popular dishes on Chinese menus, a stalwart just across the border from China. In Los Angeles, a Chicano girl who worked at Avis confided to me that her family would sometimes drive four hours to Mexicali, the Chinese-restaurant capital of Mexico, to have chop suey. She added, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get it in the same way in the United States.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u201dAndrea Thompson<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few people had passed me this little item by Andrea Thompson that ran on the New Yorker’s web site on chop suey a few weeks ago, where my book is mentioned and quoted. Exciting. Born in the U.S.A. In this week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tables for Two, Ligaya Mishan reviews Chop Suey, whose tongue-in-cheek name has little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chop-suey","category-media-interviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-cM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}