A friend in Brooklyn posted this photo of some ribs he ate at a since-closed place. He says it’s a common dish at old-school Americanized Szechuan places there. I remember having had some that looked just like that years ago.
Possibly this? Sichuan Spareribs With Mala BBQ Sauce (Mala Pai Gu): Cooking With Grace Young | The Mala Market
That looks like an original recipe, but it mentions Cantonese ribs, and Googling I find some char siu ribs that look like that.
In the 70s, “Szechuan” Chinese-American places had some different dishes, some with chiles, but they bore little resemblance to the real Sichuan food that arrived later.
That’s quite a different message than what I got from the article in the link.
Indeed, but that"s how the old-school Chinese-American places all spelled it before real Sichuan food arrived.
Yes, agree.
That’s quite different from “not acknowledged by anyone in the modern era,” since my parents (and I would argue a lot of other Chinese-identifying immigrants in their 70s) would definitely recognize and acknowledge the old spellings.
No offense, but don’t flatter yourself.
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That’s an example of what I refer to as “faux Sichuan” and Hunan food of the 1970s. When Chinese Exclusion was ended for practical purposes by the 1965 immigration act we saw the first significant arrival of non-Cantonese migrants in the United States from Taiwan. Note that non-Cantonese from the mainland would not arrive here until the 1980s as Mainland China had no diplomatic relations with us. The food that Taiwanese chefs brought to New York was wildly different from the Cantonese food that every one here knew and quickly spread in the US. But it wasn’t authentic because (1) the Taiwanese themselves were a generation removed from Mainland China having fled in the fall of the Nationalist regime and (2) the food was adapted to the tastes of the American public. A lot of those dishes have stuck on Americanized Chinese menus, such as General Tso’s chicken, hot and sour soup, mushu pork and Kung paid chicken, while others have faded away.
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Which is some of us, esp those of us who have relatives who arrived in the 1970s and who recall why things were spelled using one system and why it changed, may bristle at the older spellings being called irrelevant.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure the answer to my question is that it’s a variation on char siu.
My favorite place in San Francisco in the 70s called its food “Mandarin” but it also said “Szechuan” on the sign. The kung pao chicken was closer to a generic Chinese-American Cantonese stir-fry with dried hot peppers and peanuts added than to the traditional Sichuan dish.
It’s still a Chinese restaurant.
From the 1960s to maybe the 1990s we classified Chinese food as being either Cantonese and “Mandarin” or “Northern.”
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Actually that looks just like old time Cantonese pork spare ribs. Nothing Sichuan about them if you’re going back to the 70s.
Yep. Though so far I haven’t found anyplace that still makes them.
Not sure why erasure is so important to you. Care to explain? This seems to be strangely personal to you, and it’s also clear that this isn’t just about “incorrect spelling.”
Using phonetic pronunciation of some Pinyin (j, q, zh, and ch) doesn’t result in anything closer to the actual pronunciation in Mandarin of those sounds.
If you’re upset w/ Wade-Giles b/c you think it represents some form of colonialism and orientalism, perhaps this blog entry (and the following comments, which indicate that “Szechuan,” along w/ Peking and Nanking, aren’t actually from Wade Giles) would be of interest to you:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=32434
Trigger warning for all: Clarissa Wei isn’t popular among American sinologist when she wanders into academic territory.
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Where to get those Ribs? They look good!
Best bet would probably be a stuck-in-the-past Cantonese-founded Chinese-American place, or a place that used to be one of those that keeps old-school dishes on the menu to make longtime customers happy.
Warrior: I think “Sichuan” is better because the natural way an English speaker would say that is correct except for the tones. Sze is not a good spelling for the sound Si, so most people now pronounce sichuan “zhehshuan” for no good reason.
That’s a totally valid point. And that is quite a diff argument from what has been presented previous.
Cannot confirm, but supposedly the roast meat sections at the Sam Woo branch in Rosemead and Sham Tseng and Capital Seafood in Monterey Park still carry these.
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