China Just Discovered American Chinese Food, and It’s Not Laughing at Us Anymore

America didn’t ruin Chinese food. It built its own version, and China wants a taste.

The same food snobs mocked as fake is now being imported back as a real cuisine.

The American palate gets laughed at until the rest of the world starts copying it.

Jett here. For years, food snobs have treated American Chinese food like some greasy little crime scene, as if General Tso’s chicken and beef with broccoli were culinary vandalism. My eyes are rolling back in my head right now because American-style Chinese food is freaking amazing. And now, it’s becoming really popular inside China, and suddenly the “fake” stuff doesn’t look so crappy anymore. Let’s get into it.

Everybody loves to clown on us for remixing and redoing other people’s food. We take Chinese food and make it sweeter, crispier, saucier, heavier, and built for takeout cartons. We take Italian food and turn it into spaghetti and meatballs, chicken parm, baked ziti, garlic knots, and enough red sauce to make any nonna clutch her rosary.

Because yes, America has a food culture. It’s not always ancient, delicate, or dressed up like it’s in some museum. Sure, sometimes it’s loud, messy, saucy, oversized, and served in a cardboard box with two packets of duck sauce and a plastic fork that will 100 percent snap under pressure.

But it works. And it’s delicious. And screw anybody who doesn’t feel the same way.

In many ways, American food culture is a remix machine. We take flavors from everywhere, run them through the American appetite, and create something new. No, it’s rarely authentic to the old country, but it’s delicious, memorable, and weirdly perfect for the way people here actually eat.

That’s what makes this story so fun and why I was so excited to stumble on it.

American-style Chinese food wasn’t created in Beijing or Shanghai. It was built mostly by Chinese immigrants in the United States, who adapted their cooking to American ingredients, customers, neighborhoods, and our cravings. And over time, it became its own thing. Not traditional Chinese food. Not fake food. It’s all American Chinese food.

And now that version is making its way back to China... and they’re lovin’ it.

Your answer will probably depend on where you live in the world. Those inside China would probably argue that none of those dishes resemble anything from a traditional Chinese menu.

For them, the idea of "western Chinese food" isn't an oxymoron, it's a genuine style of cuisine primarily developed by generations of Chinese immigrants to the United States.

Now, one restaurant in Shanghai is trying to bring American Chinese food back to China.

One of the biggest challenges was finding the right ingredients to use in the kitchen.

"As weird as it sounds, we actually import a lot of ingredients to make authentic American Chinese food in China," Fung says

Items like Philadelphia cream cheese, Skippy peanut butter, cornflakes and English mustard powder must all be brought in from outside China. Even the soy sauce must be imported from Hong Kong, because that's what the first Chinese immigrants to the US used in their cooking.

The extra effort appears to be worth the trouble. The restaurant is usually packed on week nights and on the weekends, long lines of customers can stretch out of the door.

Dave and Fung have learned to predict whether first-time customers will approve of their food.

"If you're an expat, 99% of the time you're going to be happy. When it's a younger local person, we have maybe a 70% success rate," Fung explains.

Some locals come into the restaurant and ask for their food to be served in American-style white cardboard takeaway containers, mimicking meals they've seen on sitcoms like Friends and the Big Bang Theory.

This is a real cuisine with its own ingredients, texture, flavor profile, memory, and identity.

And the Chinese customers actually get it. Chinese locals are curious about this remix. Some even want the whole American takeout-carton experience because they’ve seen it on shows like Friends and The Big Bang Theory.

American Chinese food in China? #greenscreen #china #generaltsoschicken #chinese

China gave America the roots of its food culture, so thank you for that. But America built the remix, and when the Chinese students tasted it here, they craved it back home.

We’re not “ruining” other people’s food. We’re doing what we do best: taking something really good, making it bigger, louder, more accessible, and more addictive, and turning it into its own amazing thing.

Good food has a way of winning arguments... and American Chinese food just won it all.

So, what to do when meal prep become a real chore for one who actually loves to cook?

I have concluded that to relieve the chef of some of her burden, Chinese delivered for free is a valid solution.

A typical take out/delivery order for one dish, with rice, is considerably more than one can eat. That is, two orders easily provide food for at least four meals.

To prepare that food would include unprepared ingredients necessary to be purchased but not used.

Any way, that is two nights of cooking relief with good even very good and nourishing food at hand with little or no prep effort.

It is a rational solution

Yes, indeed. I had some of the best meals of my life in California.

Everything was fine😀

And I agree with your opinion, both on American/Californian cuisine - and on the utter havoc which the politicians in California have wreaked upon this state, which has always looked like Heaven on earth to these humble eyes…😞

This is true for many, yes, but others don’t need to skimp on good food🙂

It’s just so that steak is not a traditional German dish, so I quite believe that it usually won’t be as tasty as it is „at home“.

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