Reddit reviews The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

Lord, the assumptions/priviledge that is in your post/responses...

The cuisine you're describing isn't an "old food fad" or "old food phenomenon." It's a multi-generation adaptation of a people's (the immigrant Chinese) cuisine in response to the to conditions, available ingredients, and demands of the people around them; in North America. To say that it isn't authentic, or calling it "fake crap," is condescending (and shows a lack of understanding) to the thousands of Chinese immigrants who have lived/worked/adapted/died in the U.S. and Canada for the past 200 hundred years. To think that this cuisine doesn't exist anymore (outside of of old menus) shows how sheltered/closed off you truly are. It is no greater/worse, nor is it less "authentic," than all the [regional] Chinese cuisine from China/Taiwan. It is a food style unto it's own; with it's own influences, responses, techniques and made by people who [usually] identify as Chinese.

If you want to try and know what you're talk about:

Books:

Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States by Andrew Coe

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee

Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants by John Jung

Wu: Globalization of Chinese Food by David Y.H. Wu and Sidney C.H. Cheung

China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West by J.A.G. Roberts

Ethnic Regional Foodways United States: Performance Of Group Identity by Linda Keller Brown

The Chinese Takeout Cookbook: Quick and Easy Dishes to Prepare at Home by Diana Kuan

American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods by Bonnie Tsui

Documentary:

Chinese Restaurants directed by Cheuk Kwan (IMDB Overview)

In regards to the Chinese Restaurant question. (I didn’t know the best way to make sure everyone who asked about it saw it, so I’m posting a link to this comment in response to everyone who asked me to elaborate.) Please note that there are always exceptions, and that I’m talking specifically about the China roll / wok / star / 88 / dragon strip-mall type places.

Part of it comes from this – note that I have not read the whole thing. Most of it comes from observation and logic: I’ve eaten in Chinese take out places all over Florida, as well as some in Georgia and Texas, and noticed that there are several key similarities; I’ve taken long, hard looks at what it takes to open a business (including specifically restaurant concepts); and as you’ll see, I am familiar and have done business with similarly arranged groups. Please consider these in aggregate:

1. The menus are printed by the same printers (I don’t remember the name of the company but it’s based in San Francisco, there’s another printer in NY – I have no idea if they’re related). Same paper, layout, trifold, stock photos, menu items (though one store’s Hunan beef isn’t the same as another’s), etc. Given the cost of printing and shipping, let alone the fact that there are thousands of print shops all over the country, the fact that the China roll / wok / star / 88 / dragon places all use one or two printers is surprising.
   
   
2. Nearly 100% of these places are staffed 100% by 1st generation Chinese families. If you are familiar with how difficult and expensive it is to move a family from China, secure living arrangements, develop credit, obtain a storefront, prep it, get all the necessary licenses and permits, decorations, supplies, stock, menus, and so on, there has to be some kind of arrangement. Most native-born Americans (who have the advantages of language, familiarity with the area and culture, and are more likely to secure credit/financial backing through regular sources) would find it difficult to move to some random area of the country and open a small restaurant. I mean, how does a Chinese native from the back of beyond develop the familiarity and financial resources to find, let alone move to and open a restaurant in, Alachua, Fl or Statesboro, GA?
   
   I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT THERE IS A SECRET HUMAN TRAFFICING CHINESE MAFAIA MSG THING GOING ON but I am suggesting that while there may be some well off Chinese families who can afford to pack up, move over, and open a restaurant in a big city, there’s no way that there are so many families with the resources, training, and connections to just pack up and move to every county, suburb, and podunk town in America (and then, in addition to magically procuring all the money, paperwork, and etc needed to open a restaurant, somehow magically knowing that they’re supposed to order their menus from Company X and their supplies from Company Y). China has a huge population which is almost entirely mind-numbingly poor – step outside your western context and try to imagine how the average Chinese family could pull this off with nothing more than word-of-mouth.
   
   
3. Parsing and placement. You see burger joints across the street from each other, pizza places, chain restaurants, etc. You never see that with China wok / roll / star / whatever places. So a random Chinese family just crosses their fingers hoping that when they move to Gainesville, Fl that there will be not only an available / affordable storefront, but one which is far enough away from all the other Chinese take out places that they don’t need to worry about overlapping markets/delivery areas? As my original post pointed out, most Americans don’t seem to have that foresight, and they’re not dealing with having to move from fucking communist China.
   
   
4. Because my company does business with them, I know that there is a Korean Dry Cleaning Association that operates the same way. Like the Chinese take out places, they operate on a Sole Proprietor model instead of a Franchise model (could be cultural, could be legal, could be financial – my guess is all three), and their business model is the same: recruit a family in Korea, take care of the (insane) paperwork and red-tape required to get them to America, train them, move them to an appropriate location, provide the financial backing to buy or lease the location, laundry equipment, etc., etc. It’s not like all Koreans are born laundry experts, or have access to super cheap laundry equipment, etc. The association even does collective bargaining on their behalf – they have accountants, lawyers, and account managers who procure their supplies (even things such as collective bargaining for their energy supplies, which is how I know about them).
   
   The same applies to nail salons – does anyone think that Asian women are just born with both the ability and the resources to perform French manicures (which, by the way, require cosmetology licenses in most American jurisdictions), so they just jump on their invisible jets, fly over, wave their magical “instant storefront and housing needs wand”, charm the inspectors and landlords and suppliers with their magical “expense and bureaucratic red tape elimination rays” with the end result of opening a nail salons in an almost perfect “one every five miles” grid across the entire country? How would a random Asian woman (remember, all these people are 1st generation – if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been in one of these places) even know that Americans want their nails did? (“Oh, but they already have family over here that tells them and helps them come over and do the research and get the training and secure the finances and…” Excatly.)
   
   
5. While there is something to be said about the homogeneity of culture, the fact that almost all these places have the same dozen or so names?
   
   Someone mentioned Occam’s razor. Let’s look at the two possible scenarios:
   
   1) Random Chinese family (in a communist country, no less) packs up their family of 5-10 people, moves to some random little town or suburb in America, and with their best broken English (or lack thereof) manages to find a place to live and open a restaurant (presumably using money from their Chinese money tree). Using their inborn research and networking skills, they contact one of two print shops and suppliers in America and have them send over everything needed to open a restaurant. And since all Chinese immigrants are geniuses, they manage to have no issues with all the local legal and regulatory paperwork and all the tax requirements. Also using their inborn abilities and despite the fact that China is a huge country that comprises some dozen distinct cuisines none of which come close to resembling the Americanized stuff served in American Chinese take out places, they manage to create a menu that is 100% identical to every other Chinese take out menu. It’s the American dream!
   
   2) There are one or two groups which specialize in helping Chinese families move to America and open restaurants, including all the setup and training, legal intricacies, financial and credit requirements, taxes and accounting, location research, equipment provision, housing, etc.
   
   When you take all of these things into consideration, and then remember the history of how the Chinese first came to the west (railroad workers and the like intentionally brought over for a specific purpose – that’s why there is such thing as Chinese Cubans, the most amazing people on the planet, and why the Cuban paella pan looks more like a wok than the flat-bottomed, shallow Spanish version), #2 is much more in line with Occam’s razor than the alternative.

this book goes into it in depth. Great read.

Fantastic read on the topic: Fortune Cookie Chronicles