The Plan to Kill Chinese Restaurants in America

Between @chandavkl’s recent blog post on how chinese food has defied the odds and sundowning laws and the discussion regarding the use of the term rascism regarding pricing of “ethnic” food, I listened to a fascinating podcast from America’s Test Kitchen this morning on the coordinated efforts (unions, government, media) to kill off the chinese restaurant. I learned about all the anti-chinese/asian immigration laws in this country in Asian american studies in college and how it affected the communities (picture brides etc) but never have heard it presented in relation to chinese restaurants in such a coherent and fascinating way as this podcast did today. In 2019 all of this sounds pretty preposterous, but as @Haeldaur mentions, the roots of these racist practice runs deep.

America’s test kitchen Proof podcast, well worth a listen.

As an aside, the French Laundry’s name is rooted in this as it was an attempt allow unions to boycott Chinese laundry’s.

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I don’t think it had much to do with unions.

Thanks for the link. 50 years ago I too first learned about the Chinese Exclusion Laws and anti-Asian discrimination as a college student, so from the moment I started writing about Chinese food I have purposely woven these kinds of themes into my Chinese restaurant topics. Fortunately, along with such things as the movie documentary “The Search For General Tso” and other projects during the past decade, there has been such an increase of awareness of what Asian Americans have endured, and how it even extends to the food we eat, and I’m thrilled to see all this happening.

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