Well, of course. SF's Chinatown, mentioned in the article, is stuck in the 1950s. Where's today's China? A mini-Huaqiangbei would be more useful. Offices of Shenzhen companies looking for products to make and connections to US markets. 24 hour PC fabs. Dev kits for the latest SOICs. Co-working spaces for hardware. More drones, less dim sum.
> “These people (Chinese immigrants) did not come to be chefs; they came to be immigrants, and cooking was the way they made a living.”
> “These people came to cook so their children wouldn’t have to, and now their children don’t have to.”
Basically, a story of the American dream, not too dissimilar to my own (european) family's story. Immigrants take on difficult work and long hours to provide their kids with opportunities they themselves didn't have. The natural result is they age out and their kids take on different occupations, the line of work they did changes to accommodate fewer people doing it.
Yeah, sounds like this is basically by design. It's interesting that new immigrants aren't opening new restaurants to make up for the closures, but even that's not too surprising given the current state of things.
There has been an explosion of Authentic regional Chinese restaurants in the U.S. in the last 10 years or so. Even if that can't replace the Americanized Chinese takeaways that are closing it is much easier to find high quality Chinese cooking these days than ever before. Heck, take a place like Minneapolis that's not a particular hot spot for Chinese-Americans and there are probably 4-5 pretty decent Sichuan restaurants.
Yeah, the older polynesian themed chinese scorpian bowl places are closing here in Massachusetts, but those were always lounge/bars with food to get around local liquor laws.
Minneapolis/St.Paul has (or had - my info may be as much as 10yrs old) the largest population of PRC national college & university students in the United States.
I suspect that it is much harder and more expensive to open a new restaurant now than it was a few decades ago; the article does also mention a few things around some modern challenges (delivery app companies, online reviews, etc).
New immigrants have more safety nets but fewer overall opportunities, I think, in particular if they came without professional skills. I recall the story of my grandfather and his brother who- during the great depression- drove halfway across the country on a small motorbike with nothing but a box of tools, trading a bit of mechanical work for some food and a night in a barn's hay loft along the way. They eventually stopped and worked as mechanics until they could open their own shop.
That is the sort of thing that just seems unthinkable nowadays.
Perhaps the skills just changed. Driving halfway across the country on a motorbike with nothing but a macbook and a phone to tether to, freelancing or remote working along the way doesn't sound so unrealistic.
I think it’s the direct exchange of labor for room and board that’s the unrealistic part these days.
Now with a MacBook, you work in a comfy coffee shop to earn enough to stay at a regular motel for the night and get a regular meal.
Also, MacBook freelancing is a higher bar than handyman mechanical work. It requires literacy and training on some skill on the computer that puts you above the Mechanical Turk workforces in much cheaper countries.
For full context, "more" was a comparison to what is available now versus when my grandparents came over.
The department of health and human services runs 31 social benefit / welfare programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Medicaid, though they are not immediately available (5 years residence or 40 quarters employed).
26 states run their own programs as well which may or may not have different time requirements for accessing them.
Per the most recent census, a majority of non-citizen households utilize some public benefit (most often medicaid and food assistance) likely due to the difference in education (63% at 10 years living here).
If my grandparents had come here today, they would also certainly be making use of these programs. Since they came over roughly 20 years before the New Deal was passed, local community support was the best they had.
FFS, re-read the thread. The conversation was literally about how little there was for immigrants way back then in terms of safety nets but there was more opportunity for unskilled labor.
That reminds me of something John Adams, second President of the United States, wrote in a letter to his wife in May, 1780:
> The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
The problem with that mindset is that once all of the experts in government die off, then the ignorant descendants run into a mass Chesterton’ fence problem and start removing important bits.
"There is a huge cast of well-paid people, from management consultants to economic advisers, whose entire salaries are earned by ripping out Chesterton’s fences. Interestingly, these are mostly male-dominated industries (men are more prone to narrow systematising than women). Silicon Valley, which is overwhelmingly male, is possibly the worst offender of all. The very fact that a fence is over ten years old, requires atoms in its manufacture or creates employment for human beings is reason enough for them to want to get rid of it."
And of course the fence he's talking about is print advertising. He's pretty selective about what he calls fences, though fences are a universal argument against change.
Wealth lasts three generations. The failure of the last generation, which is entirely disconnected from its original creation, is what causes the success to end.
Yes, because it's not that much more difficult to blow through a billion dollars than a million. Just ask Jefri Bolkiah, whose bill of amusements came to somewhere between $15 and $40 billion depending on who you ask:
Yes, it is that much more difficult to blow through a billion dollars than a million. The fact that one moron managed to waste a vast sum of money to amuse himself isn't proof of anything other than one moron was stupid enough to do it.
I remember blowing my first billion. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to be poor.
The article correctly calls out the long hours (and weekends) worked by many restaurant owners, many of whom prefer their offspring get well-paid office jobs and avoid the life the parents had to live to make the restaurant business work.
However, I would like to posit that there are a couple of other points that make it impossible to operate a profitable restaurant today, especially in large cities: (a) ridiculously high rents (b) increased regulation.
It's impossible to operate a profitable restaurant? I mean, that's obviously false.
But let's say you meant difficult rather than impossible. Rising rents make things more expensive for sure, but regulation? Which regulation? I worked in a restaurant for years and I can't think of a regulation I had to deal with that wasn't about food safety and employee protections...
It's not obviously false. If an old first-generation immigrant running a hole-in-the-wall downtown somewhere cannot attract the number of people at the prices they need them to pay in order to cover the bills, their business folds and there's nothing they can do about it. Maybe you can call on your buddies to front you a few million to make the necessary upgrades to stay competitive as downtown gentrifies, but not everyone can.
> there are a couple of other points that make it impossible to operate a profitable restaurant today,
This says there are zero profitable restaurants today, which, yes, is obviously false. I can think of several restaurants that do, in fact, turn a profit.
Long hours: for 15 years I have frequented the same tiny strip center Chinese restaurant. No matter the time of day, lunch to just before 10pm, any day of the week, the same lady has been there working. That’s hundreds of samples with a 100% hit rate. It appears to be an 80 hour a week job without time off. The cooks may be the same, I don’t get a good look at them, but she runs the front of the store and takes my order.
Could it also have to do with a more health conscious population? Many people actively try to avoid sugar, tons of carbs, and tons of unhealthy fats. Chinese food is loaded with all of these.
Even in the medium to high end, the biggest trend for restaurants in the last decades is the dominance of the burger, not exactly a health food.
To be honest, most Chinese restaurants probably serve more vegetables (and roughly the same amount of fat and carbs) than a meal at a non-Chinese restaurant at the same price point.
I saw a Burger King go out of business recently. Was there for years, the shuttered. It was uniquely memorable but I hope the first of many. Mainly because the food is bad and the workers inside seem to me that they are sadder than other restaurants. For comparison, Chick-fil-a is like walking into Santa’s workshop with its joyfulness, even though they don’t pay more.
The Chinese-food we get around here has always in my mind looked and tasted healthier than any of the other fast-food options (even if it wasn't actually). So by that theory, it would be the other way around from my perspective.
Chinese-American restaurants are declining as Americans get more adventurous with their eating. There are more choices beyond a burger, pizza, and Egg Foo Young these days.
From just personal experience over the last two decades, the number of "authentic" Chinese restaurants has increased a lot in most of the places I've lived. So has the number of Thai/Korean/Japanese restaurants run by Chinese owners, as more savvy Chinese restauranteurs seek out higher margins.
From what I understand, the Chinese Exclusion Act is one of the big reasons why Chinese food is more Americanized compared to other Asian cuisine.
The Chinese in the US at the time had to tailor their dishes for American tastebuds.
Previous Chinese immigrants were mainly from Southern China, where the cuisine is more rice based. The more recent Chinese immigrants come from everywhere, so you’ll get people from Northern China, where the cuisine is more wheat based. There’s even some Chinese dishes that uses goat milk and cheese in their dishes.
This might be a bit off topic now, but after watching Watchmen recently and learning about the Tulsa race riots, I was surprised by how much of US history I wasn’t taught. For example, I was surprised by how involved Chinese immigrants were in American history and learned of some of the more tragic events like the 1871 Chinese massacre in Los Angeles.
IMHO, as a new Chinese immigrant, I don't like those old Chinese restaurants, as they are not authentic but more Americanized. And now as more and more new Chinese immigrants, which are not living in Chinatown any more, they are prefer more authentic Chinese dishes, which demands new restaurants operated by new owners from China.
IMHO, as an American native, I like the cultural experience of americanized Chinese cuisine as adapted to locally available ingredients, especially in the southwest US (with it's subtle leavening of Chinese culture dating from the railroad era). We often make hot chile oil with dried chile pequin or dried chile negro (minus the seeds). Achiote is a great addition to the 5 spice, and with no Sichuan peppercorn available I often just add whatever dry spicy chili I have available (i.e. the pequinos) rather than substitute the ubiquitously mediocre black pepper. The bay leaves I get in the Chinese market are from the same source as the Mexican grocery.
I enjoyed Western Chinese food growing up as a kid. Sadly it seems for me that a specific dish can really taste different depending on which restaurant you pick for the day. It can actually be disappointing when ordering a certain dish and the taste isn't similar as another restaurant.
In this town of 200k we went out for sushi yesterday. From what I could see from the street corner, it may have been the only thing open in that whole neighborhood. This morning I was wondering about the religious cross-section among the employees. There are other faiths besides Judaism that don't celebrate little baby Jesus.
The old people buffet and the movie theater were the only things open in the mall.
another interesting thing: NYT mentioned the Chinese Exclusion Act...apparently around 300 MILLION Chinese were in China in the 1850's...and just 23 million "Americans" in USA.
Would America had looked more like China if no check were placed on immigration from one particularly huge country? Sure travel costs, but as long as fees were paid via labor, people would have financed it. And the word would have spread that there's money to be made in USA...
Note that the US is a much more "German" country than English or even UKish, by numbers. Ben Franklin even wrote about it, wishing that the German and Swedish immigrant numbers were decreased in favor of UKish immigrants, noting that their numbers were eclipsing the English.
Before world war 1, lots of the USA spoke German, some places much more than English. Then sentiments... changed, towards anglicizing the country.
I recently learned (from a Ken Liu short story) that in the gold rush era before the Chinese Exclusion Act, 28% of Idaho's population was actually Chinese. Link below describes in more detail.
Same in Australia, but they're clearly a dying breed. They still putter on in the countryside and in far-flung suburbs where they and fast food are the only choice in town, but they're already extinct in the city centers (which have plenty of "real" Chinese options) and disappearing from gentrifying suburbs as well. The rise of food delivery has also likely been a net negative for them, since suddenly there are so many other options for delivery.
Not wholly related, but interesting: Szechuan (Sichuan) food, which is probably one of the more popular Chinese varieties in the US, has been decidedly non-authentic for decades due to the omission of huajiao (Sichuan peppercorns), which were illegal to import for decades up to 2004 and restricted until 2017. Only since 2017 have they been fully unrestricted; imports will likely rise over the next while.
Huajiao is very unique among Chinese food ingredients. It is the so-called "numbing pepper", which produces a mild numbing feel on the lips and (in my opinion) enhances the spiciness considerably. It's really unfortunate that Americanized Sichuan food has had to do without this spice for nearly 50 years.
If you're a fan of spicy food, give real Sichuan food (with the huajiao peppercorns) a try sometime - you might be very surprised at the difference.
Interesting. UK Chinese restaurants used to be mainly Cantonese and spiciness wasn't something I associated with Chinese food. (I'm talking about the 90's or so - I'm in my late 40s)
I've recently become enamoured of Szechuan food and the places near to me seem reasonably authentic judging my the unfamiliar ingredients and the predominantly Chinese clientele.
And the food is spicy and numbing. I believe the combination is called "Mala" meaning "Hot + cold" which describes it well. Szechuan peppers don't provide heat - they do something very strange to one's taste receptors. Chewing on one is a very peculiar experience a bit like eating something akin to savoury popping candy with a kind of menthol cooling plus a kind of "citrus on steroids" feeling.
Yes..it’s called neuralogical dissonance. It tricks the brain into thinking that the red chilies are spicier than they really are..usually there is a ratio to red Chilli
Pepper and Sichuan pepper for the Mala effect.
It is a numbing or tingling effect. It makes us think that the tingling/numbing is due to spice/heat scoville level. This in turn starts a cascade of other symptoms that is involuntary and usually associated with too much spicy heat in the food..like sweating or increased heart rate or eyes watering etc. in pale skinned diners, it makes them really red in the cheeks and fully flushed as tho they are eating Chilli peppers at a very high scoville rating.
The interesting thing is that the numbing sensation ‘hijacks’ the neural feedback to the brain which releases a flood of endorphins because there is a cognitive dissonance..because heat/spice level is translated as pain in the brain.
It’s the neatest culinary hack. I used to be a chef before I drifted into farming. I take great pleasure in demonstrating this. Another one is Japanese Sansho pepper tree. Also from South America, spilanthese ..these button like flowers(they look like buds..they lack petals). do the same thing. It is also known as toothache plant as its used by herbalists for numbing of the mouth for dental pain/toothaches. I grew them in my farm for some years (I was selling to herbalists) and it was always a hit with school kids on farm tour.
But it’s not true that it was banned. Growing Sichuan pepper tree was banned for some years due to quarantine rules. At least here in CA, as an Ag state grossing 45 billion/year, it was a risk. Sichuan pepper isn’t a true pepper but it’s of the citrus family. The Asian Psyllid and citrus greening is devastating to CA’s citrus crop and they clamped down hard on citrus crops.
The ban was lifted some years ago. Altho the quarantine still exists between counties in CA. Example: I can’t buy a citrus plant from Sonoma county and plant it in my garden in Solano county. And this is even more significant because our vineyards would be devastated and they bring in a lot of $$ even though citrus is relatively small in CA. Only 250k acres. It’s tiny compared to lettuce, strawberries, almonds and pistachios etc. each one of 3-5 billion dollars in state ag income.
Japanese sansho is similar. There are many Asian cultivars that give the numbing effect. But Sichuan peppers are my favourite.
Importing it was banned for several decades from 1968 to 2005, and then until 2017 it had to be heated to a high temperature to be importable (which could damage the culinary properties). Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/why-its-so-hard-...
Yes, it was due to a concern over the huajiao’s potential to carry citrus diseases into the US. I think it’s fair to say it was banned for quite a long time and restricted thereafter.
Yes. You are right. But I think there was a loophole where it could be imported if it’s part of a paste or chili oil mixture. Restaurants were able to procure it but not in the form they liked.
I was approached by a restaurant group to grow it for them and I couldn’t. I suggested Japanese Sansho to which I had access..but it was just one tree..and it wasn’t an acceptable substitute. And then I tried with spilanthes/toothache plant which is an annual. And they didn’t like it either. But the herbalists co op said that they will take it all and so it wasn’t a complete loss for me. And I grew it for a few years.
Sichuan pepper is really an unique taste profile. I would very much like to grow it if possible in the future.
it's not used even in some Sichuanese restaurants in China, depends on dish not all Sichuanese dishes require it
plus even if they use it sometimes it's completely burned not producing the buzz on lips, so you need to find good restaurant which won't burn it for that unique buzz on lips
Huajiao are actually of the citrus family (they aren’t true peppercorns), and for a long time it was feared that they could harbour citrus canker. Since the US has a huge citrus farming industry, an imported disease could be devastating.
My parents' generation came to the west and ran restaurants. Several of my aunts and uncles have been doing this for years. I grew up in these sorts of shops. You can't do it anymore.
The 1980s don't seem that long ago, but back then there was not nearly the variety of foreign cuisines that there are now in the west. At the time you could still conceivably go to a Chinese restaurant for an "experience meal" where you would either enjoy some slightly different cooking, or bring a date or business connection. It even felt right that the owner's kids were running around, and there were kitsch pictures from China on the walls.
Back then the entry cost was very very low. You had either only family or other recent immigrant staff. You'd spend nearly nothing on the interior.
Nowadays that style of restaurant serves a very small segment of the market. Basically, it's the people in the area - not the town centre - that don't want to cook that night and didn't have Chinese the night before. They don't care about the decor, many of them do takeaway. They don't care about authenticity either. And they are well aware that this style of food is unhealthy in large quantities.
If you're going to open a restaurant these days, it needs a degree of slickness. People expect it, heck even I expect it. You can't have a bunch of spelling mistakes on your self-printed menus. You can't be showing tourist quality photos of the food, with plastic place mats and different cobbled together chairs. Plus people now care not only about general healthiness but also specific things like allergies and intolerances that your foreign chef might find hard to communicate about.
The competitive landscape is also changed completely. You're not competing with just other mom and pop stores. There's not only McDonald's, which was always a thing, but actual Chinese food chains that do what you do, better.
Finally, I don't know anyone who actively desired for their kids to take over. If the family business was a global shipping company, sure. But not the bottom-of-the-pile restaurant, surely. Having said that, one of my cousins did build and sell a restaurant, having made the observations I've written about here.
The last place in the US that I've seen where you can still soundly do that type of Chinese restaurant, is in small towns / cities, under 10k-15k people roughly. The expectations are much lower there and people are happy to have variety in most any form.
You have to get under the Chipotle line approximately in terms of population required to support that type of chain. The trade-off of course is potentially less volume (although also less competition).
I ate in a little Italian place in Brussels two weeks ago. The food was amazing. After finishing taking our orders the lady (2nd generation) took some time with the strange foreign characters and explained that the restaurant was started by her mom, who still made all their pasta, except for some of the kind for people with gluten issues.
Back in the 70s and 80s, we got a lot of refugees and immigrants from the middle-east and south Asia. A ton of these basically did what the Chinese did - opened up restaurants (Kebab shops), barber shops, ethnic supermarkets, etc. Or they took on the jobs they could find, and stuck with 'em.
Modern immigrants and refugees, however, seem to have more education from their home countries. We got a wave of Syrian immigrants a couple of years ago, and many of these had degrees and careers before having to leave.
Now, a couple of years later, it seems that many of these are getting settled in with professional careers here.
It obviously depends on the country you come from, and your background, but I think the days of the classic immigrants are starting to end. 30-40 years ago some poor teacher or engineer pretty much HAD to start their own shop, to make a decent living - but now they can relatively fluidly continue with their careers - and thus get more freedom to pursue their own things, rather than getting pigeonholed into something else.
Where I live (which is in NY but not near NYC), there seem to be increasing numbers of Chinese restaurants which are more upscale, have regional cuisine, and generally don't resemble the stereotype of an American Chinese restaurant. It probably is a result of an influx of Chinese students and tech workers, and another thing that seems to be a trend is several of the Indian restaurants have added Indian-Chinese fusion dishes.
78 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] thread> “These people (Chinese immigrants) did not come to be chefs; they came to be immigrants, and cooking was the way they made a living.”
> “These people came to cook so their children wouldn’t have to, and now their children don’t have to.”
Basically, a story of the American dream, not too dissimilar to my own (european) family's story. Immigrants take on difficult work and long hours to provide their kids with opportunities they themselves didn't have. The natural result is they age out and their kids take on different occupations, the line of work they did changes to accommodate fewer people doing it.
New immigrants have more safety nets but fewer overall opportunities, I think, in particular if they came without professional skills. I recall the story of my grandfather and his brother who- during the great depression- drove halfway across the country on a small motorbike with nothing but a box of tools, trading a bit of mechanical work for some food and a night in a barn's hay loft along the way. They eventually stopped and worked as mechanics until they could open their own shop. That is the sort of thing that just seems unthinkable nowadays.
Now with a MacBook, you work in a comfy coffee shop to earn enough to stay at a regular motel for the night and get a regular meal.
Also, MacBook freelancing is a higher bar than handyman mechanical work. It requires literacy and training on some skill on the computer that puts you above the Mechanical Turk workforces in much cheaper countries.
Please elaborate.
26 states run their own programs as well which may or may not have different time requirements for accessing them.
Per the most recent census, a majority of non-citizen households utilize some public benefit (most often medicaid and food assistance) likely due to the difference in education (63% at 10 years living here).
If my grandparents had come here today, they would also certainly be making use of these programs. Since they came over roughly 20 years before the New Deal was passed, local community support was the best they had.
> The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
That is truly inspiring, I really like it.
"There is a huge cast of well-paid people, from management consultants to economic advisers, whose entire salaries are earned by ripping out Chesterton’s fences. Interestingly, these are mostly male-dominated industries (men are more prone to narrow systematising than women). Silicon Valley, which is overwhelmingly male, is possibly the worst offender of all. The very fact that a fence is over ten years old, requires atoms in its manufacture or creates employment for human beings is reason enough for them to want to get rid of it."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/chestertons-fence-and-th...
Each generation has it better than the last but at some point the knowledge of the fundamentals of life and success is lost and the process restarts.
Not a hard and fast rule of course, but an interesting concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefri_Bolkiah,_Prince_of_Brune...
Look, if you need a second moron stupid enough to do it, I'm just letting you know, I'm available.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_...
Say more, please. Interested in hearing your stories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU7Ga7qTLDU
However, I would like to posit that there are a couple of other points that make it impossible to operate a profitable restaurant today, especially in large cities: (a) ridiculously high rents (b) increased regulation.
But let's say you meant difficult rather than impossible. Rising rents make things more expensive for sure, but regulation? Which regulation? I worked in a restaurant for years and I can't think of a regulation I had to deal with that wasn't about food safety and employee protections...
This says there are zero profitable restaurants today, which, yes, is obviously false. I can think of several restaurants that do, in fact, turn a profit.
To be honest, most Chinese restaurants probably serve more vegetables (and roughly the same amount of fat and carbs) than a meal at a non-Chinese restaurant at the same price point.
From just personal experience over the last two decades, the number of "authentic" Chinese restaurants has increased a lot in most of the places I've lived. So has the number of Thai/Korean/Japanese restaurants run by Chinese owners, as more savvy Chinese restauranteurs seek out higher margins.
The Chinese in the US at the time had to tailor their dishes for American tastebuds.
Previous Chinese immigrants were mainly from Southern China, where the cuisine is more rice based. The more recent Chinese immigrants come from everywhere, so you’ll get people from Northern China, where the cuisine is more wheat based. There’s even some Chinese dishes that uses goat milk and cheese in their dishes.
This might be a bit off topic now, but after watching Watchmen recently and learning about the Tulsa race riots, I was surprised by how much of US history I wasn’t taught. For example, I was surprised by how involved Chinese immigrants were in American history and learned of some of the more tragic events like the 1871 Chinese massacre in Los Angeles.
The old people buffet and the movie theater were the only things open in the mall.
Would America had looked more like China if no check were placed on immigration from one particularly huge country? Sure travel costs, but as long as fees were paid via labor, people would have financed it. And the word would have spread that there's money to be made in USA...
You mean, like the United Kingdom?
Before world war 1, lots of the USA spoke German, some places much more than English. Then sentiments... changed, towards anglicizing the country.
A nation of 22 million was well advised to be careful
http://nwasianweekly.com/2009/07/historians-track-chinese-hi...
By establishment numbers alone I'd say it's the most popular food group.
Huajiao is very unique among Chinese food ingredients. It is the so-called "numbing pepper", which produces a mild numbing feel on the lips and (in my opinion) enhances the spiciness considerably. It's really unfortunate that Americanized Sichuan food has had to do without this spice for nearly 50 years.
If you're a fan of spicy food, give real Sichuan food (with the huajiao peppercorns) a try sometime - you might be very surprised at the difference.
I've recently become enamoured of Szechuan food and the places near to me seem reasonably authentic judging my the unfamiliar ingredients and the predominantly Chinese clientele.
And the food is spicy and numbing. I believe the combination is called "Mala" meaning "Hot + cold" which describes it well. Szechuan peppers don't provide heat - they do something very strange to one's taste receptors. Chewing on one is a very peculiar experience a bit like eating something akin to savoury popping candy with a kind of menthol cooling plus a kind of "citrus on steroids" feeling.
It is a numbing or tingling effect. It makes us think that the tingling/numbing is due to spice/heat scoville level. This in turn starts a cascade of other symptoms that is involuntary and usually associated with too much spicy heat in the food..like sweating or increased heart rate or eyes watering etc. in pale skinned diners, it makes them really red in the cheeks and fully flushed as tho they are eating Chilli peppers at a very high scoville rating.
The interesting thing is that the numbing sensation ‘hijacks’ the neural feedback to the brain which releases a flood of endorphins because there is a cognitive dissonance..because heat/spice level is translated as pain in the brain.
It’s the neatest culinary hack. I used to be a chef before I drifted into farming. I take great pleasure in demonstrating this. Another one is Japanese Sansho pepper tree. Also from South America, spilanthese ..these button like flowers(they look like buds..they lack petals). do the same thing. It is also known as toothache plant as its used by herbalists for numbing of the mouth for dental pain/toothaches. I grew them in my farm for some years (I was selling to herbalists) and it was always a hit with school kids on farm tour.
But it’s not true that it was banned. Growing Sichuan pepper tree was banned for some years due to quarantine rules. At least here in CA, as an Ag state grossing 45 billion/year, it was a risk. Sichuan pepper isn’t a true pepper but it’s of the citrus family. The Asian Psyllid and citrus greening is devastating to CA’s citrus crop and they clamped down hard on citrus crops.
The ban was lifted some years ago. Altho the quarantine still exists between counties in CA. Example: I can’t buy a citrus plant from Sonoma county and plant it in my garden in Solano county. And this is even more significant because our vineyards would be devastated and they bring in a lot of $$ even though citrus is relatively small in CA. Only 250k acres. It’s tiny compared to lettuce, strawberries, almonds and pistachios etc. each one of 3-5 billion dollars in state ag income.
Japanese sansho is similar. There are many Asian cultivars that give the numbing effect. But Sichuan peppers are my favourite.
Yes, it was due to a concern over the huajiao’s potential to carry citrus diseases into the US. I think it’s fair to say it was banned for quite a long time and restricted thereafter.
I was approached by a restaurant group to grow it for them and I couldn’t. I suggested Japanese Sansho to which I had access..but it was just one tree..and it wasn’t an acceptable substitute. And then I tried with spilanthes/toothache plant which is an annual. And they didn’t like it either. But the herbalists co op said that they will take it all and so it wasn’t a complete loss for me. And I grew it for a few years.
Sichuan pepper is really an unique taste profile. I would very much like to grow it if possible in the future.
plus even if they use it sometimes it's completely burned not producing the buzz on lips, so you need to find good restaurant which won't burn it for that unique buzz on lips
The 1980s don't seem that long ago, but back then there was not nearly the variety of foreign cuisines that there are now in the west. At the time you could still conceivably go to a Chinese restaurant for an "experience meal" where you would either enjoy some slightly different cooking, or bring a date or business connection. It even felt right that the owner's kids were running around, and there were kitsch pictures from China on the walls.
Back then the entry cost was very very low. You had either only family or other recent immigrant staff. You'd spend nearly nothing on the interior.
Nowadays that style of restaurant serves a very small segment of the market. Basically, it's the people in the area - not the town centre - that don't want to cook that night and didn't have Chinese the night before. They don't care about the decor, many of them do takeaway. They don't care about authenticity either. And they are well aware that this style of food is unhealthy in large quantities.
If you're going to open a restaurant these days, it needs a degree of slickness. People expect it, heck even I expect it. You can't have a bunch of spelling mistakes on your self-printed menus. You can't be showing tourist quality photos of the food, with plastic place mats and different cobbled together chairs. Plus people now care not only about general healthiness but also specific things like allergies and intolerances that your foreign chef might find hard to communicate about.
The competitive landscape is also changed completely. You're not competing with just other mom and pop stores. There's not only McDonald's, which was always a thing, but actual Chinese food chains that do what you do, better.
Finally, I don't know anyone who actively desired for their kids to take over. If the family business was a global shipping company, sure. But not the bottom-of-the-pile restaurant, surely. Having said that, one of my cousins did build and sell a restaurant, having made the observations I've written about here.
You have to get under the Chipotle line approximately in terms of population required to support that type of chain. The trade-off of course is potentially less volume (although also less competition).
Pasta Divina, Brussels. Highly recommended.
Modern immigrants and refugees, however, seem to have more education from their home countries. We got a wave of Syrian immigrants a couple of years ago, and many of these had degrees and careers before having to leave.
Now, a couple of years later, it seems that many of these are getting settled in with professional careers here.
It obviously depends on the country you come from, and your background, but I think the days of the classic immigrants are starting to end. 30-40 years ago some poor teacher or engineer pretty much HAD to start their own shop, to make a decent living - but now they can relatively fluidly continue with their careers - and thus get more freedom to pursue their own things, rather than getting pigeonholed into something else.