Whatever Happened to Chinese Food?

I have flashes of memory from my childhood of eating out with my family. Sometimes we’d go to the Hunan Restaurant somewhere in suburban NJ, where I grew up, but I’m having trouble remembering where it was or what it looked like. Back then, Chinese food was a relatively big deal. I don’t remember what I ate. I am known these days for my bizarre memory patterns. In particular I seem to be able to remember phone numbers, so I’m sure I could dial up the Hunan and get an address or a description, but I often can’t remember important life events. I’m just returning to Florida from a family reunion. The last one was 13 years ago; I was 21 years old then, so a fully sentient adult, and have no excuse for my inability to remember much of any of it. This unique foible can both impress – people frequently ask me for phone numbers rather than looking them up – and get me into hot water – like not remembering basic facts about my fiancée, or the names of the children of my good friends, let alone how many children they have. I cover this last problem up with Sam and Jorge by issuing a running joke: “How many kids are you up to now, 7?” Jorge’s at 3, Sam 2.

But in the ‘80s, when I grew up, Chinese food was a staple food for office workers. I remember flashes from movies where co-workers would talk about ordering takeout. I’m sure the number of Chinese restaurants must have exploded between the period of, say, 1970-1990. As a new blogger, who frankly hasn’t read a lot of other blogs, I’m curious what the rules of the game are. I want to make this blog wiki-esque (proper usage?), in that there are certain matters I want to toss into the public domain to solicit responses from the blogosphere. In short, I want to try to get others to do my research. Honestly, I’m pretty busy these days. Is this how wiki works? If not, I’ll have to do the research myself.

Here’s what we need to know. How many Chinese restaurants were there in America every 5 years from 1950 to the present? Has the number declined? Can we discern any spatial patterns? Let’s get the data and we’ll analyze it. In the meantime, on to the main point.

There has been a remarkable reversal of fortune for Chinese food in America. It has gone from top of the food chain to bottom barrel. I have run this notion by six or seven people in the past week, and most, save the populists, have agreed. Assuming we’re correct, a number of possible explanations come to mind.

Oversaturation

There simply became too much Chinese food in the marketplace of food choices. As quantity increased, perhaps quality declined, but consumers became decreasingly excited about this type of food. This theory might explain the economics of Chinese food, for example why stores began to close, but it really doesn’t get at why Chinese food seems to have declined in quality overall.

The Natural Food Cycle

There is obviously a natural trajectory in American society where new experiences, in this case Chinese food, take hold, achieve fad status, and then decline over time. This is clearly the case with many types of food, nothing particular to Chinese food.

Supplantation

The rise of new types of Asian food, particularly Thai and Japanese/sushi, has shown Americans that Chinese food is not all that novel, nor necessarily as interesting as Thai, which is certainly my favorite now. I’ve been on a multi-year quest to find the best Chicken Pad Thai in America. It just occurs to me that when I was in my mid- to late-teens, I went to dinner with my parents in Alexandria, VA at a Vietnamese restaurant. I had some sort of steak cubes (this is a long time ago) that were fantastic. At the time, I called it the best meal I’ve ever had. Because I burned that into my brain at the time, I still remember it as being the best meal I’ve had, and because I haven’t tried to recall any other such meals, it seems to be the last candidate standing.

MSG Killed the Golden Goose

Speaking of my memory loss, there was some whole concern that arose about MSG. I really don’t know what MSG was, other than it was bad and Chinese food got hit with an MSG stigma. In Chicago in the mid-90’s, or maybe Oakland later, I remember Chinese restaurants had hand-written “NO MSG” signs in the window, trying to reassure an unsteady public. I saw the current issue of Men’s Health yesterday, which had a section on how to find healthy Chinese food. It basically said eat the vegetables.

Class Status and Culinary Status

Another possible explanation is one of the class ladder. This theory holds that Chinese food in its early years and heydey had a certain cultural cache among middle- and upper-class consumers, but that as it lost its novelty, it became more of a workingman’s food. If the numbers of Chinese food establishments has in fact increased in recent years, contrary to my supposition, then this theory could also raise a critique against me. Maybe its just my class-tinted lenses that lead me to believe Chinese food is less popular, when in fact it remains as popular as ever, just among certain groups. But maybe the numbers will bear this one out.

Has anyone examined the constituency for Chinese food in America over the past 30 years? Has there been a gravitation away from middle- and upper-income consumers towards lower-income and working class consumers? What are the race or ethnic dynamics of any such gravitation?

The Populists

My informal inquiries among friends found a couple of populists who argued that my whole premise is elitist, and that Chinese food is as popular as ever in small towns, rural areas, etc. They argued that my experience is strictly urban (which is mostly true). And in truth, since a spate of sicknesses caused by bad Chinese food in Oakland in the late ‘90’s, I really haven’t had much Chinese in recent years, with the exception of those airport fast food places. So what do I know?

Personal Biography/Geography

This whole thing may say more about me than about Chinese food. By the way, for its defenders, I should state for the record that I like it and that I am more interested in the cultural patterns than anything else. In the 1980’s, I lived in suburban New Jersey in a Gordon Gecko-like community. Since college, I’ve lived and worked in working class or low-income urban communities in Chicago, Oakland, Sacramento, St. Petersburg, FL, Orlando, Hollywood, FL, and Miami. At work I encounter a fair number of Chinese restaurants in low-income, mostly African-American neighborhoods. These often have bullet-proof windows, sparse to no restaurant itself, and most are strictly takeout oriented. Oakland and Chicago had larger Chinese and Chinese American communities, so a wider variety of Chinese restaurants, and some good ones, one in Oakland was our regular place when I was there. Maybe this is a all about the sparseness of good restaurants of most kinds (Latin and pizza excepted) in south Florida. We’ve only found two Thai restaurants in Miami and Miami beach so far, pretty shabby.