Bruce Makoto Arnold - Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States

HARLEY J. SPILLER

Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States brings readers in and out of the kitchens of Chinese and Japanese restaurants. It portrays these inner sanctums, particularly the swinging doors that lead to and from dining rooms, as nuclei of transnational culture, interpersonal relations, and cuisine. The authors of these essays, insiders and outsiders alike, reveal histories that have spent decades under lock-and-key, drawing conclusions by comparing and contrasting primary historical documents, raw data, and art. The feelings and experiences of Asian restaurateurs in the United States are examined in these explorations of sensitive cultural matters. Careful readers will find that the deeper we delve into these cultures, the harder it is to exit unchanged.

In the past four decades, the United States has seen an explosion in food consciousness. In 1980, there were few cuisine-centric broadcasts, celebrity chefs, or food-studies programs. Collections of menus, cookbooks, and family histories were being assembled, but none had been digitized or made available online to the international public. Today, anyone anywhere can compare and contrast Asian restaurant menus via the impressive online collections at the New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles Public Libraries, and at Cornell University, the University of Michigan, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and at least one public collection focused exclusively on Chinese restaurants, the Harley J. Spiller Chinese Restaurant Archives at the University of Toronto, Scarborough (UTSC).

In 2015, UTSC acquired the archives I spent thirty-four years assembling, and simultaneously launched Culinaria Research Centre, a multidisciplinary initiative blending research, community engagement, and student/faculty initiative. Culinaria explores new insights into the place of food in cultural identity and expression;the relationship between food, diaspora, and interethnic/intercultural contact; commodity production and labor; and the links between food systems and family, gender, and health. Scholars in anthropology, cultural studies, East Asian studies, English, geography, history, human geography, library studies, museum studies, and other fields have begun to handle this archive of over 10,000 international Chinese restaurant menus and related artifacts dating back to the 1870s. The prospects for the advancement of understanding, particularly via advanced computer analysis and interdisciplinary pursuit, are bright.

Recently, exquisite culinary histories, such as Andrew Coes Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Anne Mendelsons Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey (Columbia University Press, 2016), have begun to revise long-held beliefs and set records straight. Moreover, legal scholar Gabriel J. Chins work on the racist efforts to suppress Chinese restaurants through discriminatory law enforcement and biased laws, such as prohibitions on white women working in or even entering them, is also a welcome addition to this growing body of research.

Culture can also be explained by artists like Arthur Dong, who in 1989 with his film Forbidden City, U.S.A., exposed the lives of Asian entertainers who worked in Chinese American restaurants and nightclubs between the 1930s and 1970s. Other eye-opening art has been created by Indigo Som, whose long-running Chinese Restaurant Project is a multifaceted investigation of the place of Chinese restaurants and Chinese food in the American imagination, and conceptual artist Javier Tllez, who explored how the material culture of Chinese cuisine changes when placed in a museum with his video titled after a 1960s board game, You Dont Have to Be Chinese to Play Chop Suey. In 20162017, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) advanced public understanding of Chinas regional cuisines with Sour, Sweet, Bitter, Spicy: Stories of Chinese Food and Identity in America, an exhibit featuring oral histories and treasured heirlooms of professional chefs and amateur cooks. MOCA deployed a commissioned suite of complex and richly-glazed ceramic artwork to depict archetypal Chinese foodstuffs in their environmental, architectural, and societal milieus.

Beyond the Americanized versions of Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese fare discussed in the essays ahead, there are Asian cuisines from Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Cyprus, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tibet, Timor-Leste, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen to delve into, not to mention Batak, Hakka, Newari, Okinawa, Yunnan, and untold numbers of other regional cuisines.

I had the opportunity to learn about one of these cuisines from scratch when, in 2014, New York City received its first Himalayan snooker hall, Weekender. This street-level space boasts five pool tables and a small kitchen offering twenty-five traditional dishes from the Kingdom of Bhutan (plus Chinese chow mein, Indian-Chinese chili chicken, and Tibetan shaptak). The social lubricant of Weekenders homespun fare, by masterful chef Norbu Gyeltshen, is vital to the ventures success. Gyeltshen prepares Bhutans national dish,