His family ran a grocery store in Hibbing, Minnesota. He delivered produce as a teenager. When he encountered a Japanese community in Minneapolis growing bean sprouts hydroponically, he didn’t see a cultural curiosity. He saw a crop he knew how to move.

Before Chun King was a canned food brand, it was a sprout operation. The Chinese food was what he figured out to do with the vegetables he already knew how to source. These clippings are from that earlier chapter.

The Building Changes Hands

Duluth News-Tribune, November 20, 1946

Bean Sprout Growers Association, Inc., purchases new building at 12 West Michigan Street. Jeno F. Paulucci, executive vice president, announces plans for Oriental food production under the Chun King name, soya sauce bottling, bean sprout expansion, and an experimental kitchen in the basement.

In November 1946, Paulucci’s company was still primarily a sprout operation. The Chun King name appears as one item among several planned uses for the new space. The experimental kitchen in the basement is the most telling detail. He was still testing recipes while already running national ads.

The Address

Duluth News-Tribune, January 1, 1946

Midwest Food Processors, formerly Midwest Dehydrating Co., announces itself as a new firm at 525 Lake Avenue South, Duluth. “In the future years we hope to establish ourselves as a permanent industry and part of your community.”

The Midwest Dehydrating Company had spent the war years processing 10,000 potatoes a day for soldiers and sailors at this address, winning a War Food Administration achievement award in 1945. By January 1946 it had rebranded as Midwest Food Processors. The same building, the same equipment, a new peacetime identity.

This is how the canned food industry got its infrastructure. Wartime food production built the facilities. When the war ended, those facilities needed a new product. Bean sprouts and chop suey were as good an answer as any.

The Growing Room

Duluth News-Tribune, 1947

Lenny’s Foods Inc., one of Duluth’s newest industries, grows a beansprout crop in five days. Workers inspect a crop just coming to maturity.

Lenny’s Foods at 525 Lake Avenue South ran on the same logic as Paulucci’s operation: grow it fast, process it, can it. Lennie Underdahl’s company produced Yu Sing Chinese food out of the same building where the bean sprouts were grown. The sprout room and the canning line were never far apart.

The Scientist

Duluth News-Tribune, February 16, 1952

Dr. Benjamin B. Stoller, Duluth biochemist, develops rootless bean sprouts using plant hormones. Formerly employed as research chemist for Lenny’s Foods Inc.

The people building this industry were not chefs. Dr. Stoller spent years developing a hormone that would eliminate the root hairs from bean sprouts, making them cleaner and easier to can. He developed it while working at Lenny’s Foods. By 1952 he had applied the process to Paulucci’s Chun King operation as well. The science of the sprout was being refined at the same address where the cans were packed.

The Celery

Duluth News-Tribune, October 3, 1950

Miss Joan Lien displays a 12-pound, 8-ounce celery stalk from the Weid brothers farm in Zim, sold to Chun King Sales Inc. Paulucci called it the largest stalk ever raised in the area.

Celery was the other ingredient Paulucci built Chun King around. His original chop suey recipe was bean sprouts and celery. By 1950, Chun King was already a national brand, and Paulucci was still personally tracking the size of his celery supply. He thought like a produce man, not a food manufacturer.

The Empire

Duluth News-Tribune, January 1, 1953

Jeno F. Paulucci, President of Chun King Sales Inc., thanks consumers and the food trade from coast to coast. The ad shows workers at steam kettles, canning lines, factory interiors, and open fields. Other companies listed: Wilderness Valley Farms, Northland Foods, Orient Express Inc.

By 1953 the full operation is visible in one image. Fields, kettles, canning lines, finished cans. Wilderness Valley Farms. Northland Foods. Orient Express. Chun King. The farm and the factory were never separate in Paulucci’s mind. They were the same business at different stages.

Bean sprouts and celery built a Chinese food empire.

This post is a companion to the episode A Rumor About Abandoned Steam Kettles Led Me to a $400 Million Origin Story, where I chase a Facebook claim about how Chun King really started. Watch that first if you want the full argument. This post goes somewhere different — back before the steam kettles, to the fields and growing rooms that made the whole operation possible.

If you can help

If you have old cookbooks or any leads, reply to this email. I read everything.

1950s

1960s

1970s

Here are the main ways to move through the work.

Follow history by era

Start with the Timeline Index by Era.

It groups episodes into time periods so you can see how Chinese restaurants shift from immigration and exclusion, to nightlife, to mall food courts, to chains and icon dishes.

Follow exhibitions

Exhibitions are curated paths through the collection. Think playlists, but organized like a museum: objects, places, and stories grouped under a single question.

Current and upcoming exhibitions include:

• Holidays, Rituals & Popular Culture

• Anatomy (table, dining room, takeout)

• Women of Chinese American Food History

Read the companions

Some posts are not collection entries. They are companions (mostly for episodes of The American Chinese Food Show): time capsules, origin hunts, and research notes. This is where you see the paper trail, the dead ends, and the corrections when better evidence shows up.

Documentaries

This section is where I publish notes from my documentary projects, including Chicago Cafe and Mee Heng Low. You will find trailers, reporting notes, sources, artifacts tied to specific scenes, and occasional updates as the films move through production and screenings.

Help build the archive

If you have menus, photos, packaging, placemats, family stories, or leads connected to anything here, reply to any post. I read everything.

How to use this

• Browse by era to see how Chinese restaurants and “Chinese food” change over time.

• Think of this as a map into future exhibitions and the deeper catalog that will live on a dedicated collection site.

Before 1880: first crossings and early tables

What Chinese Ate on the Months-long Boat Ride to the United States
Food as survival on a journey that comes before any restaurant.

Who were the Chinese that first went to the United States?
Who were the 60 something thousand people that went to the United States by 1870? Where were they from originally?

1880s–1900s: exclusion era, banquets, chop suey

Why America Needed Cheap Labor in the 1800s
The structural forces that shape who gets to stay, and on what terms.

One of the Oldest Chinese Restaurant Menus in America: Mon Lay Won from the 1890s
An early menu as evidence of taste, translation, and salesmanship.

Classic Chinese Dishes From a 1890s NY Restaurant You Can’t Find Anymore
A lost menu as a window into dishes that didn’t survive the century.

1900s–1920s: cookbooks, labor, and restaurant survival

The Immigration Waves That Built Chinese Restaurants in Canada
The restaurant as strategy, not just a business.

How Chinese Restaurants Grew During the Exclusion Era
Growth under hostile law, and the workaround logic restaurants had to master.

1930s–1940s: nightlife, war, and the restaurant as stage

New Year’s Eve 1938: The Dawn of San Francisco’s Nightclub Golden Age
Chinese restaurants as nightclubs, stages, and cross-cultural entertainment.

Cantonese Song for the 1930s Moon Cafe
Popular music and restaurant culture braided together.

Stepping Back in Time on New Year’s Eve at Chin’s Restaurant in 1944
Wartime celebration and what Chinese food signaled in the American imagination.

1950s–1970s: mandarin, peking, and “fine” chinese dining

From Diplomatic Kitchens to D.C.: Peking Restaurant’s Trailblazing Northern Chinese Cuisine
Northern dishes, diplomacy, and a new kind of authority.

Decoding Cecilia Chiang’s First Menu at the Mandarin
One menu that rewrites what “Chinese food” can mean in an American dining room.

How Shun Lee Dynasty Earned Four Stars and Redefined Chinese Cuisine in NYC
Chinese food made legible to the four-star system.

1970s–1990s: buffets, takeout, the mall, and chains

The Origin Story of Mall Chinese Food
How standardized “mall Chinese” emerges from local experiments.

Canada Claims the First Successful Mall Chinese Food Chain
The food court as a new kind of Chinese restaurant space.

How America Turned a Chinese Condiment into Billions of Packets
Packets as invisible infrastructure.

China Coast, a $200 Million Failure From GM
A corporate attempt to clone Chinese restaurant culture at scale.

How a Broke Music Student Built a Chinese Fast-Food Empire
The franchise builder as a character in the mall era.

2000s–present: globalization and branded “American Chinese”

Kung Pao Chicken at China State Dinner for Donald Trump
A classic dish in modern state performance.

Happy National Orange Chicken Day!
A fast-food dish turned holiday, and what that signals.

Pei Wei vs. Panda Express: The Battle of Orange Chicken
Competing versions of the same American Chinese icon.

That’s the timeline as it stands right now. I will keep updating it as I publish new artifacts, and as old episodes get new source pages, corrections, or better context.

Chinese soy sauce, first

Soy sauce in its current form was created about 2,200 years ago during the Western Han dynasty of ancient China. Those brands Chinese restaurants in America use today?

Koon Chun is made in Hong Kong. Pearl River Bridge is produced in Guangzhou. Kimlan is from Taiwan. Lee Kum Kee is the exception that complicates the “imported” story, because it has production in multiple places, including Los Angeles, as well as China, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. These brands are very popular and easy to find in most grocery stores. Restaurants can get them in 5 gallon buckets. But neither of them is the top selling soy sauce in America.

The most popular soy sauce in America is Japanese

It’s Kikkoman. As you know, Kikkoman is Japanese. Traditionally, Chinese-style soy sauces are made solely from soybeans, whereas Japanese-style soy sauces, shoyu, are typically a blend of soybeans and wheat, with a ratio of around 50/50. As a result, Japanese soy sauces tend to have a more nuanced taste with a sweeter note, while Chinese soy sauces are generally saltier and have a more assertive flavor profile.

Kikkoman first started exporting wooden kegs of its shoyu to California around the 1880s. Export destinations expanded to Honolulu, Portland, San Francisco, Tacoma, Denver, and Chicago in the early 1900s and it opened its office in San Francisco in 1957. Kikkoman eventually built its first overseas factory in Wisconsin in 1973. Since then, Americans have started enjoying “Made in USA” Kikkoman shoyu1. Though many people today swear the American one tastes far inferior than the Japanese brewed one. Kikkoman only took the market share lead in 1976. But before Kikkoman, a lot of America was not using brewed soy sauce at all.2

This is where La Choy comes in

La Choy’s soy sauce was first imported from China wholesale and packaged under the brand’s name. In the shift to domestic reliance, La Choy began manufacturing their own soy sauce. Let’s take a look at the difference in ingredients. La Choy soy sauce has water, HVP, salt, corn syrup, caramel color, and the preservative potassium sorbate whereas naturally brewed soy sauce uses water, soybeans and salt, or in Japanese shoyu’s case, also wheat.

What is HVP?

It’s hydrolyzed vegetable protein, a substance found in bouillon. HVP soy sauce can be manufactured quickly because there’s no fermentation. The tastes are substantially different. Naturally brewed soy sauce can have over 250 different flavor compounds. With something that is not even soy sauce, you might be surprised to find that even today, La Choy is the second best selling soy sauce in the United States.

I don’t know how many people are using La Choy products to cook Chinese food at home nowadays. I would argue the taste of those soy sauce packets you get from Chinese takeout places probably have a bigger impact on what the majority of Americans associate soy sauce with. Chinese restaurant patrons might not notice the taste profile of Chinese soy sauce in the food in their takeout box, but they sure can taste the difference before and after they our what’s in their soy sauce packets on the food, which, in case you didn’t know, brings out an inner scream from every Chinese person, just like that famous scene from Joy Luck Club.

While Kikkoman and Lee Kum Kee both sell soy sauce packets to restaurants, the biggest manufacturer of soy sauce packets used in American Chinese takeout restaurants today is Kari-Out from New York. What kind of soy sauce do they manufacture? No surprise here, HVP.

Therefore, for a lot of Americans, HVP packet soy sauce might be their primary soy sauce reference. Not brewed Chinese soy sauce. Not shoyu. Just packets.

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If you can help

If you have menus, photos, packaging, soy sauce packet brands, or any leads on early soy sauce marketing in the U.S., reply to this email. I read everything.

Source: Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio), April 19, 1967, p. 51.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup La Choy chow mein noodles, crushed (plus a little extra for garnish)

• 3 egg whites

• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 tsp vanilla

• 1/2 tsp lemon extract

• 1 cup chopped pecans

• 1 cup whipping cream

• 10 oz frozen sliced strawberries

Directions

1. Crush the chow mein noodles very finely.

2. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff.

3. Add sugar gradually (about a tablespoon at a time), beating well, until glossy stiff peaks form. Beat in vanilla and lemon extract.

4. Fold in the finely crushed noodles and chopped pecans.

5. Spoon into a buttered 9-inch pie plate. Shape it so there’s a crater in the center for filling.

6. Bake at 325°F for 30 minutes. Cool completely.

7. Fill the center with slightly thawed sliced strawberries. Top with sweetened whipped cream.

8. Finish with a sprinkle of more coarsely crushed chow mein noodles.

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If you can help

If you have other La Choy ads, recipe booklets, supermarket handouts, or photos of La Choy displays from the 1950s to 1970s, reply to this email. I read everything.

What is inside

• a chopstick tutorial, yes, but also a table setting diagram that immediately felt familiar to how I grew up eating

• a sample restaurant bill that lays out how a dinner is structured and what it cost

• a long list of dishes “most in favour amongst foreigners”

• “Useful Phrases” for the dining room, including things like turning on the electric fan and asking the cashier to write the total in English

• a list of principal Chinese and Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong

• a fold-out map

• a meal log page, so you can tell it was meant to be carried and used

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Scans

If you can help

If you have other Hong Kong dining guides from the 1930s to 1950s, I want to see them too. I read everything.

Synopsis

Chicago Cafe in Woodland, California is possibly the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the country. It still serves chow mein the way it was made in the early 20th century: crispy noodles topped with bean sprouts—the kind of dish that once defined Chinese American cooking but has nearly disappeared. Run by the same family for over a century, it’s also the last trace of the town’s former Chinatown—and the final business owned by the Fong family.

The restaurant went viral in 2024, landing on the front page of the Los Angeles Times and featured on PBS, BBC, and local TV. Customers came from across the country. In early 2025, Paul Fong, the third-generation owner, put it up for sale. But walking away isn’t simple: the building is aging, the permits are grandfathered, and the place holds a lifetime of meaning.

This short film follows Paul and his wife Nancy beyond the kitchen, capturing who they are outside of the headlines. With access to home videos and quiet moments away from the dining room, it offers a more intimate look at everyday immigrant life—at the edge of legacy and letting go.

Production Notes

I’ve spent years creating videos about Chinese American food history, but this was my first time making a film. I pulled together a small crew—a DP I’d met once in L.A. who happened to be back from Taiwan, and two film students I met while taking a class at a community college. We filmed during off-hours, when things were quiet and unhurried.

The question of “what happens now?” has been following me for a while, especially as historic Chinese restaurants close across the country. When I started filming at Chicago Cafe, I thought I was telling a history story. With generous help from the Yolo County Archives and local historians, we shot a lot of material about the broader past—but most of that footage never made it into the film. The story kept pulling me toward Paul and Nancy. Toward the texture of their daily life.

The dining room chairs in their home came from the restaurant. Nancy uses old soy sauce buckets in the garden; Paul uses them to hold his fishing rods. The lines between work and life, restaurant and home, past and present—none of them are clean.

I ended up making this film not to explain Chinese American food history, but to step back from it. To sit with two people at a moment of transition, and to try to understand what it means to let go of something that’s shaped you for so long.

Credits

DIRECTED BY

Kristie Chow & Jeffrey Wu

PRODUCED BY

Kristie Chow

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Jeffrey Wu

EDITOR

Kristie Chow

ADDITIONAL CAMERA

Terry Shieh

SOUND

David Gulbis

ORIGINAL SCORE BY

Orange Leung

FEATURING

Paul Fong

Nancy Fong

Dianna Olstad

Brandon Jew

Burke Fong

When it reopened in 1917 as the Grand Hotel de Peking, it was the most modern hotel in China. A five-story building with 150 rooms, imported Parisian porcelain and linens, American-made beds, and a French-trained kitchen staff. Its opening night drew over 700 diplomats and elite guests—French, American, Japanese, Cuban, Norwegian, Portuguese—so many that 200 had to be turned away. The lobby stretched 120 meters, lit by multicolored glass chandeliers. The elevators came from the American Trading Company. The dining rooms served French food.1

Then history happened.

In 1937, Japanese troops occupied Beijing and took control of the hotel. They turned it into military lodging, redecorated the rooms in Japanese style, and used it for political functions.

After the Japanese surrender, the Kuomintang moved in and turned it into a hostel for American troops. Then, in 1949, the PLA marched into Beijing and renamed it the Beijing Hotel.

The very first banquet of the new People’s Republic was held here, with Mao, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhu De all in attendance.

In the early 1950s, it became the main venue for state functions—until the Great Hall of the People opened in 1958. A new wing was added in 1954 with a banquet hall and 200 more rooms. In the 1970s, yet another expansion replaced the old red brick 1915 building with a towering new block, one of the only structures in central Beijing allowed to rise above the Forbidden City’s skyline. That’s the wing that still stands today as the Raffles Beijing Hotel.

The 1979 cookbook published by the hotel offers a glimpse into that last chapter.2 It’s 1,000 pages long and broken down by region—Szechuan, Cantonese, Huaiyang, and Tan family. They read like internal documents—meant for hotel staff.

Some were likely served to Pat Nixon in 1972. Others may have once been prepared for Mao. Below are a few selected recipes.

1. Crepe Silk Pigeon Eggs (绉纱鸽蛋)

Ingredients
Main:

• Pigeon eggs – 24

Secondary:

• Canned mushrooms – 2 liang (~75g)

• Winter bamboo shoots – 2 liang (~75g)

• Baby bok choy hearts – 10 whole stalks

• Chicken stock – 1 jin (~500g)

• Plain stock – 5 liang (~190g)

Seasonings:

• Lard

• Soy sauce

• Salt

• Sugar

• MSG

• Ground white pepper

• Cornstarch

• Cooking wine

• Water starch (slurry)

Preparation

1. Boil pigeon eggs until fully cooked, taking care not to crack the shells. Cool in cold water, then peel. Remove mushroom stems and slice the caps into rounds. Carve the bamboo shoots into floral shapes, then slice thickly. Trim and wash the bok choy hearts, removing fibrous outer layers.

2. Place the peeled pigeon eggs in a bowl. In a pot, bring the plain stock to a boil with salt and MSG, then pour it over the eggs to let them soak and absorb flavor.

3. Blanch the bamboo shoots and mushrooms briefly in boiling water and set aside.

4. Heat lard in a wok. Drain the pigeon eggs, brush them with soy sauce and cooking wine, then dust them with cornstarch. Deep-fry until golden, then drain.

5. In a clean wok, heat 2 liang of lard. Sauté mushrooms and bamboo shoots briefly, then deglaze with cooking wine. Add chicken stock, a small amount of soy sauce, salt, MSG, sugar, and ground white pepper. When it comes to a boil, taste and adjust. Thicken with water starch. Add the fried pigeon eggs, drizzle with a little lard, and plate.

6. In a separate wok, stir-fry bok choy hearts in hot lard briefly. Drain. Then simmer them in chicken stock with salt, MSG, and pepper. Once flavored, arrange around the pigeon eggs on the plate.

Notes:

• The name “Crepe Silk” comes from the crinkled appearance of the fried egg coating.

• Cook the pigeon eggs and bok choy at the same time so both are served hot.

Dish Characteristics:
Golden red color, savory and light, with delicate flavor.

2. Stuffed Cucumber (酿黄瓜)

Ingredients
Main:

• Young cucumbers – 2 jin (~1 kg)

Secondary:

• Apple – 3 liang (~110g)

• Pear – 3 liang (~110g)

• White radish – 3 liang (~110g)

Seasonings:

• Scallions

• Garlic

• Chili flakes

• Dried chili

• Salt

• MSG

• Cold beef broth

Preparation

1. Scrub cucumbers clean. Cut into 5 cm sections. From one end, make 4–6 vertical slits per piece (do not cut all the way through—leave ~1 cm intact at the base). Place slit-side up in a container and sprinkle with salt. Let sit for 3 hours.

2. Julienne the radish finely, salt lightly, and drain after 30 minutes. Julienne apple, pear, scallion, and dried chili. Mince the garlic.

3. Mix the julienned apple, pear, radish, scallion, garlic, and chili with salt, chili flakes, and MSG.

4. Stuff the mixture into the cucumber slits. Arrange slit-side up in a ceramic jar. Combine the leftover stuffing juice with cold beef broth and pour over the cucumbers until fully submerged. Place a round plate directly on top to weigh them down. Let ferment at around 20°C (68°F) for 48 hours.

5. To serve, remove from brine, arrange on a plate, and pour the broth over.

If you haven’t watched the latest episode on the American Chinese Food Show, it’s up now on YouTube. It breaks down what Pat Nixon actually ate—and what the press claimed she ate—during her 1972 visit to the Peking Hotel. You can find it here.

—Kristie

A Sanborn fire insurance map sheet of Woodland that labels the Chinatown area.

Chicago Cafe

Other Chinese restaurants that shared the same pages

Woodland Daily Democrat mentions of Chicago Cafe (through 1936)

• 1910: earliest ad found so far for “The Chicago.”

• 1911: Hop Gee purchased the business. (as reported/advertised)

• 1911: earliest ad found so far for “Chicago Restaurant.”

• 1911: proprietor listed as Wah Ying.

• 1915: Fong Yu (head chef) sues Byrns Hotel.

• 1919: moved to the Byrns Hotel dining room (Main + College). The paper says they had to vacate prior quarters to make room for a new implement company.

• 1923: fire on Main causes $25,000 damage across six businesses.

• 1926: “Shorty Brown” wrecks the restaurant while drunk (horse trader).

• 1929: a car plunges into the restaurant.

• 1929: dishwasher severs a tendon from broken glass.

• 1931: remodeling mentioned: new flooring, long row of curtained booths, mural and ceiling decorations, updated electrical fixtures.

• 1932: arrest reported after a man “roughed up” Chinese attached to the restaurant (wording in the paper is unclear; needs careful transcription).

• 1935: co-owner Fong You attacked while walking home with about $50 in a sack.

• 1936: employee suffers body burns from a kettle of hot water.

• 1936: stove fire damages kitchen.

• 1936: wanted ad: “Good cook with references.” Name included: Yee Yick.

• 1936: dishwasher alleged to possess an opium pipe.

• 1936: Paul Fong’s grandfather, Harry Young (dishwasher at Chicago), jailed for lottery.

• 1936: Fong Yew, described as owner of Chicago Cafe, buys Rainbow Cafe.

• 1940: “Chicago Cafe is modernized.” (note: outside the “through 1936” bucket, but grouped here for continuity)

John Fong + Paul Fong timeline (secondary source)

Based on: Beth Wettergreen, “Historic Survivor of the Restaurant Wars: The Chicago Café,” Yolo County Historical Society newsletter (2013).

• 1949: John Fong (date appears as a marker in the timeline; needs clarification of what event it refers to).

• 1973: John purchased another Chinese male’s papers under a different name and hired a lawyer to plead his case.

• 1973: Paul arrives in Woodland from Hong Kong.

• 1989: John hands the restaurant over to Paul.

The Fongs and Woodland restaurants (context notes)

• The Fongs are from Taishan (Guangdong). Long-standing ties in Woodland.

• Fong Hing Bah (d. 1922) described as “mayor of Chinatown” in Woodland (needs source line saved for citation).

• 1934: 18 Woodland Chinese listed as members of the Fong tong. (needs exact source reference captured)

Name variants and “paper names” (working list)

• Paul Fong’s grandfather: Harry Gao Fong (1888–1940), in U.S. records under the name Harry Young.

• Paul’s father John came to the U.S. under the name Yee Chong Pang.

• Fong Yeu (1889–1969) appears as owner of Chicago Cafe by at least 1935. Name also appears as Fong Yu / Fong You / Fong Yew (likely the same person across records, but keep an open flag until cross-checked).

City directories and WWII draft card cross-references (selected)

• 1938 city directories: Fong Yeu and Fong Fook associated with Chicago Cafe.

• 1942 WWII draft cards:

  • Fong You (spelled “You”) lists Gee Hing (Woodland Produce Co., 405 Main St.) as a contact.

  • Fong Ngook Dor lists Fong Yeu (Chicago Cafe) as employer.

• 1948 city directories:

  • Fong Ngook Dor listed as waiter at Chicago Cafe.

  • Fong Foo listed as restaurant worker.

  • Fong Yeu also listed.

• 1953: Fong Fook listed as assistant manager.

• 1954: Fong Yeu opens “Fong’s” at 525 Main St while maintaining ownership of Chicago Cafe.

• 1966 city directories: Fong Gar H and Fong Ben (Yee) listed as helpers.

• 1968: Fong Gar H listed for Chicago Cafe; Fong Bing Gay listed as waitress.

• 1971: Fong John listed for Chicago Cafe.

• Note: a joint newspaper advertisement suggests ongoing ties among Fong’s, Chicago Cafe, and Woodland Produce into the 1960s. (needs citation saved)

Woodland restaurant field (phone directory snapshot)

From Yolo County White Pages + Yellow Pages (Sept 1959 through Sept 1963), four American/Chinese restaurants listed:

• Canton Restaurant (417 Main)

• Chicago Restaurant (411 Main)

• Fong’s Cafe (525 Main)

• Hong Kong Cafe (537 Main)

Together they show how “Chinese food” was defined, misunderstood, and slowly claimed by Chinese and mixed‑Chinese writers themselves.

Why these early cookbooks matter

As a longtime collector of menus and food ephemera, I finally got my hands on Jacqueline M. Newman’s Annotated English-language Compendium (1987), the only serious attempt to catalog Chinese cookbooks published in English. I cross-referenced her work with OCLC WorldCat, the world’s largest database of library holdings, to assemble a working list of the earliest Chinese cookbooks available to American readers.

What emerged was not just a list of books, but a record of how Chinese food was studied, explained, translated, and framed for American audiences—often before Chinese Americans had much control over how their food was represented.

Cookbooks, in this context, are not just about cooking. They are tools of interpretation. They tell us who Chinese food was for, who was allowed to speak for it, and what kinds of knowledge were considered legitimate.

Before the cookbook: science, not recipes (1899)

The earliest English-language publication Newman identifies dates to 1899. It is not a cookbook in the conventional sense.

A Description of Some Chinese Vegetable Food Materials and Their Nutritive and Economic Value was published by the U.S. government at the request of the Department of Agriculture. Written by Walter C. Blasdale, a chemistry instructor at the University of California, the booklet runs just 48 pages.

Instead of recipes, it offers chemical analysis.

Blasdale catalogued Chinese foodstuffs available in San Francisco’s Chinatown markets—roots and tubers, leafy greens, fruits, fungi, and algae—evaluating them for nutritional and economic value. Arrowhead, taro, water chestnut, lotus root, lily bulb, cassava. Bok choy, Chinese mustard, amaranth (莧菜), bitter melon, luffa, winter melon. Lychee, longan, jujube, gingko nuts, dried daylily.

Occasionally, food slips out of the lab and into lived culture. Of lotus root, Blasdale notes: “In China they are used in soups and also as a remedy for indigestion.” But most entries read like this description of water chestnut:

“Most of the protein consists of soluble albumin which coagulates at 70° C…”

This publication reflects a moment when Chinese food entered American print not through kitchens, but through institutions—measured, classified, and stripped of context. And yet, unintentionally, it also documents something remarkable: by the 1870s, San Francisco’s Chinatown markets already carried the full foundation of Cantonese cuisine.

Early cookbooks, scarce and scattered (1907–1917)

The first known Chinese cookbook written “in plain English” now dates to 1907:
Chinese Cook Book in Plain English by Vernon Galster. This earlier edition surfaced only in recent years and does not appear in Newman’s original bibliography. It now holds the distinction of being the earliest known Chinese cookbook published in America.

From there, the record fills in slowly.

• 1911: Chinese Cookery in the Home Kitchen by Jessie Louise Nolton

• 1914: Chinese–Japanese Cook Book by Sara Bosse and Onoto Watanna, two Eurasian sisters born to a British father and a Chinese mother

• 1914: Reliable Recipes for Making Chinese Dishes by W. E. Garner (now held by only six East Coast libraries)

• 1917: The Chinese Cook Book by Chan Shiu Wong

• 1917: Galster’s later edition of Chinese Cook Book in Plain English

That’s it. Five Chinese cookbooks before 1920, if we exclude the 1899 chemistry pamphlet.

Of those five:

• two was written by women

• one was written by a Chinese author

Scarcity matters. So does authorship.

These early cookbooks were not simply teaching Americans how to cook Chinese food. They were negotiating identity, respectability, and access at a time when Chinese immigrants were excluded by law and marginalized by design.

A working checklist: Chinese cookbooks in English

What follows is a working list of early English-language Chinese cookbooks, compiled from Newman’s bibliography, WorldCat records, and more recent discoveries. This list will continue to evolve.

1899
Blasdale, Walter Charles. A Description of Some Chinese Vegetable Food Materials and Their Nutritive and Economic Value.

1907
Galster, Vernon. Chinese Cook Book in Plain English.

1911
Nolton, Jessie Louise. Chinese Cookery in the Home Kitchen.

1914
Bosse, Sara & Onoto Watanna. Chinese–Japanese Cook Book.
Garner, W. E. Reliable Recipes for Making Chinese Dishes.

1917
Chan, Shiu Wong. The Chinese Cook Book.
Galster, Vernon. Chinese Cook Book in Plain English.

1918
Presbyterian Mission Press. The American Red Cross Book of Recipes for the Use of Chinese Foodstuffs.

1923–1939
(Alice Moore; How Long & Co.; Nellie C. Wong; Chin’s & Chin Lee; La Choy; Henry Low; Dolly Liu; and others)

Why this exhibition exists

This exhibition is part of Eating Chinese America, a curatorial project powered by the Chinese American Foodways Archive.

There are still books missing. Some are inaccessible. Some survive only as library records. Others will surface unexpectedly, the way Galster’s 1907 edition did.

That, too, is part of the story.

If you can help

If you have old cookbooks or any leads, reply to this email. I read everything.