Chinese Food Lovers

In the 19th century, Chinese restaurateurs developed American Chinese cuisine when they modified their food for American tastes. First catering to railroad workers, they opened restaurants in towns where Chinese food was completely unknown. These restaurant workers adapted to using local ingredients and catered to their customer's tastes. Dishes on the menu were often given numbers, and often a roll and butter was offered on the side.

In the process, chefs would invent numerous dishes such as chop suey and General Tso's Chicken. As a result, they developed a style of Chinese food not found in China. Restaurants (along with Chinese laundries which have since all but vanished) provided an ethnic niche for small businesses at a time when Chinese were often excluded from most jobs in the wage economy by discrimination or lack of language fluency. Wages tend to be low, and hours long as much of the labor is provided by immigrants or family members, but part of the attraction of Chinese restaurants is the quality and low cost of the food. In modern times, some professional Asians invest their savings into running restaurants.

Traditional "chop suey houses" catering primarily to non-Asian customers have become increasingly rare. More recent Chinese immigrants, who often prefer traditional cuisine, run most contemporary Chinese restaurants in the United States, and American tastes have changed accordingly.

Currently there are three types of American Chinese restaurants that exist in most areas.

Sit-down dining: These are restaurants that cater to customers who sit down in a dining room and order from a menu. They tend to serve more traditional dishes. Most of the lower-end restaurants have been replaced by buffets.
Take-out: These restaurants cater primarily to call-in and take-out orders. They sometimes feature small dining rooms. These restaurants serve the traditional American Chinese dishes seen in this article. Nearly all of them feature deliveries to customers' homes. The folding waxed cardboard take out box (which had a wire handle before the age of the microwave) has become a fixture of American culture along with the pizza box.
Buffets. These restaurants have increased in popularity in recent years. They are far from traditional cuisine and often advertise as Chinese-American or Chinese-Seafood. Most feature the dishes seen here and even more Americanized dishes along with anything else cheaply prepared that can do well on a heated buffet. Pizza, french fries, chicken nuggets, pre-packaged sushi and even a dessert bar with soft-serve ice cream are common at these buffets.

Moderated by Ryan Smith