From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express: A History of Chinese Food in the United States (Asian American Studies Today)

The story of Chinese food in America has been told several times now, by Andrew Coe, Erica Peters, and others, but Haiming Liu finds plenty of good new material. He tells the fairly familiar story of the coming of Chinese food, rise of chop suey, and so on, but manages to find a lot of previously unused documentation. He then goes on to chronicle some recent developments: the rise to glory of the San Gabriel Valley in California (where I now eat almost every week), the rise of the Dintaifung dumpling chain in Taiwan (and they are GOOD), the development of P. F. Chang's chain of bistros, and many more case studies. The book tells a straight story without undue laments about the biased past or praise of the glorious present. All in all a wonderful read--well written, authoritative. One minor correction I have to make--he explains "chop suey" as "animal intestines." It actually means "miscellaneous leftovers," which does indeed include animal intestines, but the original chop suey was made from the "miscellaneous leftovers" of vegetables left unsold after a day of sale by vegetable farmers in Guangdong Province (I knew some of them...).

I found the book to be well written, well researched, and full of interesting historical detail. I came to the book looking for a specific item and found it so interesting that I read the entire book. There is much of Chinese history in the United States incorporated into the telling of the story. I learned a lot reading this book. As a matter of curiosity, I looked up some of his 19th century references online and found that he had summarized them well. The only complaint was that the book could be indexed better.

A great beginning in understanding of the migration of the styles of cooking in China being introduced to United States.Wish the author did a personal development of Chinese influenced dishes found throughout this country and its effect with the contemporary taste with third or fourth generations of Chinese American as well as its influence with Asian Fusion dishes being created throughout this country.

Very solid book detailing the history of Chinese and Chinese-American food in the U.S. I assign the chapter "Who Owns Culture" for my food studies class as an excellent segue into thinking about authenticity, immigration, and fusion foods.

Very well written and accurate.

Enjoyed the book, but it was obviously first a collection of journal articles. Some of the transitions between chapters could be explored more.Also, it needs a chapter on boba.