U.S.A.
March 3, 2014
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 9
Cecilia Chiang: The root of Chinese food in the U.S.
By Suzette Laboy
AUTHENTIC CUISINE. Cecilia Chiang poses by a 1950s painting
showing her in Japan, at her home in San Francisco. It’s hard to believe
there was a time before there was authentic Chinese food in America, but
the tipping point was 1961, when the now-94-year-old Chiang opened
the famed Mandarin restaurant in San Francisco. Her story is featured
in the new movie, Soul of a Banquet. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
The Associated Press
IAMI BEACH, Fla. — Cecilia Chiang is credited
with introducing Americans to the taste of
authentic Chinese food, though that wasn’t her
initial plan.
Chiang wasn’t a chef and hadn’t intended to be an
American restaurateur. It was a case of an investment
falling apart. As the story goes, in the early ’60s she loaned
friends some money to open a restaurant in San
Francisco. Except they backed out at the last minute and
in order to save the deal, Chiang decided to do it herself.
“Maybe it was my destiny,” she said during a recent inter-
view.
In time, that business grew into the city’s famed
Mandarin restaurant, forever changing Chinese food in
America. It’s a story few Americans know, but many more
soon will. Chiang’s life is the subject of a new documentary
film, Soul of a Banquet, directed by Wayne Wang (who
also directed The Joy Luck Club).
The film follows Chiang as she prepares a banquet to
honor the 40th anniversary of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse
restaurant. The film — an unfinished version of which
was screened at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival
— weaves in details of Chiang’s life in China before she
came to the U.S., as well as her family’s struggles while
she was running the Mandarin restaurant.
Chiang, 94, grew up in China at a time when servants
did the cooking. She attended college in Beijing, but
thought she’d never need to work. When the communists
came to power, Chiang and her family fled to Japan.
A few years later, around 1960, she visited her sister in
the U.S. She had no plans to stay, but while there made a
loan to friends looking to open a restaurant. When the
deal fell apart, she couldn’t get her money back on the
lease, so she went into business on her own.
Meanwhile, she was eating at the restaurants in San
Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood and noticed
something strange: They were serving dishes she had
never heard of, things like chop suey and egg foo
young.
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“I thought it was really funny. You call this Chinese
food?” she recalled. “This is something really ridiculous, so
I thought if I’m going to open a restaurant, I really want to
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introduce Americans to real Chinese food.”
Not that this was easy. She’d never cooked in a
professional kitchen before and she spoke Mandarin, not
English or Cantonese (the language of most of her San
Francisco suppliers). And then there were the customers.
She refused to serve American-style Chinese food, instead
creating the menu from her memories of what she ate as a
child. For many American diners at the time, this was new
and strange.
“It’s not easy when I first opened the first year because
all the dishes on the menu, people were not very familiar
with that,” said Chiang. “Hot and sour soup? All these
funny names, but then they tasted and after years I
educated them to eat my food.”
Chiang retired and sold the restaurant in 1991 (it closed
down about 15 years later). But the legacy continues. Her
son, Philip, is a co-founder of the restaurant chain P.F.
Chang’s. And Chiang still enjoys cooking authentic
Chinese food for herself, as well as teaching the cuisine to
young chefs.
“The most important thing, I just want to educate
America about the Chinese food. And I think I did it,” she
said.
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