![]() “They were supposed to have everything,” she says. Whitaker says they were supposed to project an image of opulence, abundance and customer-pleasing service. While most of the dishes would seem at home on big steakhouse menus today, others like croquettes, turtle soup, pickled lamb’s tongue, canned sardines and a whole section for wild game wouldn’t anymore. Tables would have been decked out in linen tablecloths, China and silver, and the menu would have featured hundreds of items. These restaurants would have been filled with politicians, magnates, business people and middle-class folks celebrating special occasions. ![]() “They had money so they could hire a chef from Europe if they wanted to. “Hotels were like corporations at the time,” says restaurant historian Jan Whitaker. Many of the fanciest restaurants were in hotels like the Palmer House, Sherman House and The Drake. Some of these restaurants were large, handsome eateries run by European immigrants, like Viennese pastry chef Philip Henrici, who owned Henrici’s on Randolph. ![]() Īt the turn of the century, Chicago’s finest dining rooms featured enormous menus, with steaks, chops, seafood and many European-influenced dishes, also known as continental fare. Chinese-American restaurants thrived for at least another century - even if chop suey itself would eventually fall out of favor for more “authentic” Chinese fare.įor an old-fashioned chop suey restaurant today check out Chicago’s oldest continuously running chop suey house, Orange Garden. But the boycotts eventually failed, the license proposal never passed, and a 1915 court case added “restaurateurs ” to the slim list of Chinese professionals allowed to enter the U.S. The restaurants faced union boycotts, City Council proposals to deny them restaurant licenses, and federal laws that already sharply limited Chinese immigration. The slave wives of Chinamen or drag them down into lives of more open shame.” Introduced to cigarette smoking, drinking and other evils destined to make them “CHINESE MIX SIN WITH CHOP SUEY … Young girls with braids down theirīack daily are escorted into many of these oriental places … and are being Others (but not all) offered controversial amenities like music, dancing and private booths.īut the controversy was also fueled by xenophobia, as illustrated by this investigation published in the Chicago Tribune in 1911: This is partly because some of Chicago’s Chinese restaurants were located near the vice district. "So, we actually thought as the United States, for a long time, that, like, chop suey was, like, the national dish of China.Many were seen as risque, counterculture venues where customers could try “oriental” delicacies and briefly escape the more rigid societal norms of the time. For instance, chop suey: "The word chop suey in Mandarin is zasui, which means basically odds and ends," said Lee. To cater to local tastes, Chinese restaurants in America created a cuisine quite distinct from the food in China. Today, there are more Chinese restaurants than McDonalds. ![]() From 1910 to 1930, the number of Chinese restaurants quadrupled. One of the ways Chinese immigrants got around the law was the so-called "lo mein loophole," which allowed restaurant workers into the country. "It was the first time actually in American history that the concept of illegal immigration was introduced," said Lee. The hatred culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. You know, there were shootings, there were beatings, there was lynchings." But they weren't always so welcome, according to author Jennifer 8 Lee: "Starting in, like, the 1870s and onward, there's huge waves of anti-Chinese violence. In the 19th century, tens of thousands of Chinese, mostly men, came to work on the railroads, or in mining. The history of Chinese-Americans in the West is almost as old as the American West itself. Technically, it was more than just one man, going back generations of Tam's family and extended family. "… Stems from one man, his vision to come to America," Tam said. ![]()
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