Chop Suey

A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States

By: Andrew Coe

Narrated by: Eric Martin

In 1784, passengers on the ship Empress of China became the first Americans to land in China and the first to eat Chinese food. Today there are over 40,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States - by far the most plentiful among all our ethnic eateries. Now, in Chop Suey, Andrew Coe provides the authoritative history of the American infatuation with Chinese food, telling its fascinating story for the first time.

It's a tale that moves from curiosity to disgust and then desire. From China, Coe's story travels to the American West, where Chinese immigrants drawn by the 1848 Gold Rush struggled against racism and culinary prejudice but still established restaurants and farms and imported an array of Asian ingredients. He traces the Chinese migration to the East Coast, highlighting that crucial moment when New York "Bohemians" discovered Chinese cuisine - and for better or worse, chop suey. Along the way, Coe shows how the peasant food of an obscure part of China came to dominate Chinese-American restaurants; unravels the truth of chop suey's origins; reveals why American Jews fell in love with egg rolls and chow mein; shows how President Nixon's 1972 trip to China opened our palates to a new range of cuisine; and explains why we still can't get dishes like those served in Beijing or Shanghai. The book also explores how American tastes have been shaped by our relationship with the outside world, and how we've relentlessly changed foreign foods to adapt them to our own deep-down conservative culinary preferences.

Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States is a fascinating tour of America's centuries-long appetite for Chinese food. Always illuminating, often exploding long-held culinary myths, this book opens a new window into defining what is American cuisine.

©2009 Andrew Coe (P)2018 Tantor

Piques your appetite...but

There were a few wonderful sections of this book including references to further reading. I especially enjoyed the Nixon visit to China section and the earlier sections dealing with the problems the Chinese initially faced in the West. Well worth the read. But, you may be better off with the Kindle version. The narration although clear and competent at times felt like he was reading the minutes of a PTA meeting. There is a lot here for anyone interested in Chinese food...and who today isn't?

A Must Read if You Love Chinese Culture

I really enjoyed Andrew Coe's book, which allowed me to learn more about Chinese American culture as we as how the American Chinese culinary evolved over times. I grew up in Guang Zhou, China. I can tell you many things that Coe mentions in this book are true. I appreciate his research and intelligence putting this book together. I was intrigued by the history. I have to say the orator Eric Martin did a fabulous job on the pronunciation of Cantonese and Mandarin, so accurately. and his storytelling skills are phenomenal! Martin's performance made this book a must 'listen'.

Really Great

Excellent history of a very complex and dense subject. I was worried that it would have too much of a twentieth century focus but it turned out to be very thorough in scope.

An interesting read.

Definitely worth reading, even though it rambles on from time to time. If you have an interest in Chinese food, you should pick this up.

This book left me hungry for more

I enjoyed the thorough history lesson but was mo
st interested in finding out how every little city and town in America has an Asian restaurant or multiple restaurants. How does this happen? How do people coming from a China or Malaysia or Vietnam end up in Gary, Indiana or Plano, Texas?? Alas, I still don’t know.

Interesting if you like Asian food

This book held my interest. I will never view Chinese food the same way. I especially enjoyed tracking how Chinese cuisine changed over the course of the 20th century.

Heaping Platter of Cuisine and History

Fascinating look at the delicious interplay between Chinese and American food cultures over a backdrop of general Chinese-American history. Many interesting stories from the first American delegation to China not long after the founding and their subsequent dinner, the birth of the first American Chinatowns and their numerous eateries, teaching Richard Nixon to use chopsticks, all the way up to the present day. There are plenty of great references for further reading, namely the most famous Chinese and Chinese-American cookbooks, starting with one written in 1792.
Only downside is that the narrator was a bit robotic at times.

overall enjoyable

Learned a lot. Light, sweeping history of Chinese food in America. Very good use of primary sources.

great book

really enjoyed this book. one of the best books ive read in years. highly recommended.

Lack of Chinese knowledge apparent

The narrator butchered Chinese words! Really? The author only looked at English language sources so quite uneven.