"Chi?" "Chi?" "Chi?" "Hello?" "Chi?" "Yeah." "Are you ready?" "Yeah." "Hi!" "Give me that dish and for the oil I need water." "Oil." "Water." "Give me the brush." "I need a brush." "1 2" "What is General Tso's chicken?" "General Tso's chicken is usually... chicken legs." "Dark meat of the chicken." "Best made from dark meat." "uh.." "Inch square." "Marinade that was thick white." "Deep fried in a wok." "And is quickly tossed in the sauce." " Garlicky." " Tangy." "Intensive heat." "With sweet intensive taste." " Salty." " Outside little crisp." "Inside still tender." "fried chicken dish." "I don't think that General Tso's chicken's" "The most popular ethnic dish in the country" "Only because there's pizza." "Restaurant after restaurant almost." "they come here 7 times a week." "Unbelievable." "I can't wait to start chowing down on this." "I don't know that there was a manual but you'll find" "A random Chinese restaurant in the middle of nowhere" "And all of a sudden selling General Tso's chicken." "How did that happen?" "walnut chicken which is boneless chicken sesame chicken." "$10.95." "I was new to New York City" "And I was alone in an apartment on the upper westside." "And I heard a riffle at the door" "I've been here three days and I'm about to get robbed." "And I peeked out from around the corner and saw something slide under the front door and few minutes later I got up the nerve and went and looked at it and it was from" "Hunan Royal Restaurant." "A Chinese takeout menu." "what's now a quarter century of" "Collecting Chinese restaurant memorabilia." "This is my Chinese restaurant memorabilia archive." "It starts up here with large format menus." "It fills these shelves." "And these shelves." "000 restaurant menus" "From all 50 United States" "From over a 100 nations around the world." "This is my Guinness World Record" "For the world's largest collection of restaurant menus." "a Chinese roast shop." "For some reason in Italy" "Chinese takeout menus are squares." "Lucky 8 Chinese Restaurant" "With Bruce Lee on the cover." "I don't think they're paying the Bruce Lee family but I don't know." "postcards magnets t-shirts." "Wooden stir fry slicing play set." "Our son was given this when he was born" "And I stole it immediately from him" "And leave it in the package." "You can just throw pins at this menu" "And get great stuff like fresh snake stem with bean curd slice." "you see these little pen ticks." "most people don't see those" "But I'm a menu professional." "A pen tick around a dish means that the waiter" "Has recommended it many times." "Menus are like mystery books." "You know th... they answer a lot of questions" "And they are a lot of fun to read" "But they end up asking more questions." "The mysteries of the Orient." "I must have 15 different spellings of Tso" "In my menu collection." "so it's Tso." "How do I pronounce it again?" "I don't know if you say the t or not." "and that way no one really knows if I'm saying it right or not." "But I get mine over brown rice." "It's my healthy thing for the day." "up in Chico they call it General Chicken." "General Toes" "It's been called..." "I think the Naval Academy calls it Admiral Toes." "I feel like no matter what restaurant you go to so.." "So there's a lot to find about him." "I haven't a clue who he is." "I guess he must've came up with the recipe himself." "I think he was a..." "a General in the Chinese army" "Who died during the time of Chairman Mao or something" "And that was his favorite dish and they named it after him." "you know?" "even when he went to battle." "I don't think it was a dish that was made for that General." "Maybe it was made in honor of him a 100 years after his death." "I think they just named it because it sounds exotic" "After somebody nobody's ever heard of." "I imagine General Tso as almost who's on a horse for sure" "Riding wildly." "so he obviously has a hat." "And he has a military uniform." "But maybe it's bulging a little bit" "Because he's so chubby from eating all that chicken." "with jade maybe and gold pieces." "He probably looks kind of fancy" "With an army of thousands." "Did he love chicken?" "We don't know." "Nobody knows." "I know that the General's name is a Chinese name." "I can say it if I knew what it was." ""Zuo Zong Ji"" "Or they also say it "Zuo Zongtang Ji."" "I've only eaten it when I would have" "American-Chinese takeout when I was little." "I have to say" "That I haven't seen it directly on a menu in China." "General Tso was a 19th century General" "In the Qing Dynasty." "And helped put down the Taiping Rebellion which was a great peasant rebellion." "He was a great patriot." "He had tremendous loyalty from his men." "He was obviously a very intelligent and strategically sophisticated person." "ruthless." "Zuo Zongtang was very much part of that mentality" "Of trying to strengthen China and maintain Chinese values." "General Tso played a critical role in keeping together what is now modern-day China." "there was truly a threat during the age of colonization." "And he always wanted to keep the Westerners out of China." "So if you told General Tso that this dish was named after him" "I think he'd raise his eyebrows." "it's a very sweet dish." "And the Hunanese although they have some sweet dishes they don't really like mixing sweet and savory foods." "So not only have people not really heard of it it's not really the kind of flavor they'd like to eat anyway." "I have no idea." "We don't have a file on General Tso" "At the Chinese Historical Society." "It's amazing to me how a pattern developed." "Did several people have the same idea at the same time?" "it cropped up in different places." "you know." "So this map gives you the number according to the 2010 census of Chinese in every state of the union." "Chinese are 1% of the US population which is a drop in the bucket." "probably most americans have eaten Chinese food." "So how do you explain that?" "And how many have eaten General Tso's chicken?" "Even though there's now General Tso's chicken in restaurants coast to coast there was a time when Chinese food was completely new to America." "The biggest reason Chinese began to come to the US" "Was the California gold rush of the 1850s." "The early Chinese are primarily Cantonese." "Chinese in the Guangdong area" "Started coming to California in droves through the port of San Francisco." "And the Chinese Quarter got more and more crowded." "the Chinese were the space aliens." "They had their hair in long braids called queues." "not with forks." "And americans were sort of amazed by Chinese food but also little bit repulsed by it." "The mainstream audience saw Chinese food you know." "they thought of..." "they had ideas in their head about Chinese people eating rats and things like that and so you really were risking something when you went into Chinatown." "The white authorities saw it as a quarter of vice and slums and prostitution and opium dens you know" "San Francisco of its Chinatown." "They saw the Chinese as the competition." "was the slogan that a lot of them used." "There were laws that were put in place that would make it legal to prosecute violence of course this culminated in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act." "the law was passed and it made it difficult for anyone except for few people come to this country." "made it particularly difficult for women to arrive." "The whole idea of these laws is to somehow stave off this generation." "tossing their stuff out on to streets." "it said but they mean extermination." "The exclusion act basically forced them out of labor." "And so they have to be self-employed." "And this is where two very important professions came in being." "One is providing laundry and one is providing food." "Restaurant work was one of the few jobs that the Chinese could find." "And Chinese restaurant owners discovered that if they adapted simple dishes to American taste that they could make money." "how you doin' today?" "Is it wet and cold out there?" "man." "Wish it would have rained a little while earlier." "she says she doesn't eat it." "So.." "we are at" "Arizona." "this is my mother." "She is the senior partner of Sing High." "uh..." "Ella Lee." "in 1928 in downtown Phoenix." "Chinese food was not that popular here yet." "if you looked at our business we've changed our menus based on the demands and the tastes of the people around us." "This awareness of having to make yourself acceptable to a wider world was very much on the minds of Chinese restaurants." "at that early time they had experienced outrageous racism." "And to deal with it they got pretty savvy all kinds of dishes frying up that would appeal to white audiences." "you know just bits and pieces of different things." "very obvious that it caters to the more Americanized palate." "Chop Suey is basically two things." "like pork or chicken or beef." "So all meats that Americans recognize accompanied by sort of these exotic vegetables but very much flavorless." "I..." "I don't come in my collection every day." "And... and look and... and.." "This is from the age of Chop Suey." "it's from 1916." "and I don't handle the original 'cause it's crump... crink.." "It's falling apart." "very old." "25 cents." "I don't think the General was part of that scene." "was 40 cents." "But how you know that a menu is from 1916?" "where people" "Had this quote-unquote "exotic meal"" "And saved the menu as a souvenir." "menus steaks or whatever potatoes." "And yet they would have Chop Suey on the menu." "And so it's this mash up of being kind of exotic and kind of unfamiliar but not too different." "it's that foreign yet familiar thing that was the real beginning of what" "Chinese-American cuisine was." "It was a way in for people." "I do vividly recall I was 18 years old" "Ohio." "saw the neon signs." "The first thing I ordered when I got off the bus" "Was Chop Suey." "since the '50s." "Quite frankly I didn't know what I was eating." "They've served this food forever." "It's just been very popular in Flagstaff." "I knew Fred's dad and his uncles." "Gina." "Haven't seen you in a long time." "I know." "This right here is a postcard of the restaurant you know." "My dad started the restaurant." "Half of my orders is Chinese food fried chicken." "This is clubhouse sandwich." "Big sandwich." "in Chinatowns all over you would find these huge neon signs advertising Chop Suey." "Chop Suey became a national phenomenon." "It basically allowed for the proliferation of Chinese restaurants all across the United States into little towns." "And in a way it sort of laid the groundwork for what was yet to come." "Chinese are very enterprising people." "So.." "I think anywhere in the world where they can find a place to put a restaurant they will do it." "If you were to look at a map of the us in 1850 you would find all of the Chinese in California." "Then over time the exclusion era they began a very pronounced migration into sparsely populated counties all across the country." "east and even the south." "One of the motivations for the dispersion was to escape persecution on the west coast and earn a living in a safer environment." "But the major reason was an effort to find employment in a way that didn't compete with other Chinese." "My restaurant's name's Golden Dragon." "We are the only Chinese restaurant in town." "We are the only Chinese family in town." "to stay in a small town." "A lot of people think I'm crazy." "my family." "But I like it in this town." "this restaurant want to sell." "and we think you know." "And then we have kids." "4." "We got 4 kids." "But for me it's okay." "Tammy" "I always travel from New York to San Francisco." "You are the best!" "you know." "Hmm." "I am David R. Chan." "I am a tax attorney and certified public accountant." "I like to eat at different Chinese restaurants." "I've managed to eat at over 6000 different Chinese restaurants." "Rice noodle in clay pot." "I'm not sure if that's enough for us." "Maybe we should add a couple more items." "Steamed chicken buns?" "I never thought of that as a dessert." "curry fish balls." "Rice pancakes with minced beef stuffing." "if somebody asks me why I travel all over" "seeking of an identity." "how how that fits in with the overall American culture." "I started to notice most Americanized Chinese restaurants they have names that would be not threatening like Golden Palace or China Inn." "I don't know how many China Inns there are." "Some restaurant names people just don't quite understand what the words mean." "in New York Chinatown there's a restaurant called Strange Taste." "would you really wanna go to the Strange Taste restaurant?" "I noticed even when I was a kid whenever we traveled anywhere in the country there was one Chinese restaurant at least one Chinese restaurant in any city of any particular size." "Actually what happened is the regional Chinese association basically assigned territories." "if you go to Chinatowns you'll see a lot of buildings that say" "Wong Association" "Fujian Association." "All the takeout restaurants sell these dishes." "Everywhere." "Everywhere." "I know." "I'm in charge of this organization." "This is one of the oldest organization in Chinatown." "We are 130 years here." "you know." "A lot of the new immigrant they just come here and if the organization can help them to set up the business in a proper way." "register them." "They teach you how to cook step by step." "to a great extent relied on the traditional Chinese networks." "district associations." "They would get information about the popular dishes to help each other in a strange place." "It's not easy to settle here in Chinatown." "Because the rent is high." "The organization gives you some information which state or which town is better." "That's why they spread out." "All over in the country." "it's very lonely." "no entertainment there." "No place to go." "They don't understand." "They don't speak English that well." "And then sometimes they have some trouble." "I'm not exactly sure where General Tso's chicken but I do know where cashew chicken came from." "Florida." "China in 1940." "A famous physician tried my dad's cooking and loved it and asked him if he'd be willing" "Missouri." "During that time my dad opened up his own restaurant and he was not very accepted." "He had people picketing his restaurant protesting his restaurant." "go back to China." things like that." "Actually our restaurant was blown up before we opened." "It was bombed." "There was a lot of prejudice about a Chinese person" "Missouri." "the people over though was once they started eating the food they loved it." "people like comfort food." "They love their food fried." "uh took off the bones on a fried chicken deep fried it and put a brown gravy sauce over it." "that's how he came up with cashew chicken." "And it just took off like wild fire." "There's over a couple of hundred restaurants just in the Springfield area now that serve cashew chicken." "There's a little story about the cashew chicken." "McDonald's corporation actually came to see how the technique was to bread and fry the chicken nuggets and they wanted my dad's recipes and.." "But they didn't wanna pay for it." "I'm not gonna give it to you." "Chicken McNuggets come out." "tell me is that a coincidence or what?" "they owe me royalty." "I'll show you" "The General Tso's chicken that we do." "We use the same chicken nuggets we use on the cashew chicken." "do you think you'll be frying chicken till the end of your life?" "I probably will." "Even when I'm dead I'll be frying chicken." "Cashew chicken really hit upon this formula." "and there was sauce." "Interesting thing about Springfield cashew chicken is the fact that it's kind of mind boggling to find popular in an area which has virtually no Chinese population of its own." "Springfield cashew chicken it's not a traditional Chinese food." "It's something that's Americanized." "And one thing that most of the immigrants from China have learned is to adapt." "My brothers and I were born in Hong Kong." "We are a family of 5 boys and my father passed away when I was 5 years old." "So my mom was widowed with 5 boys in Hong Kong." "She didn't see much future there." "When we first opened up in Hammond we were the only Chinese family there." "And it's a smaller town." "It was kinda.." "it was kinda unique." "I'm gonna get to that because Dr. Fanning who's with us today is here from Albuquerque." "I was givin' him the history." "What they did was blend the best of Louisiana with the best of Chinese." "It is divine." "It is divine." "Wherever you go you know you not cook for yourself." "You gotta cook for what the local people like." "It's alligator leg." "This is a baby alligator." "So it's sweet and sour." "alligator." "Chinese gumbo!" "Louisiana Chinese gumbo." "Eve... every Sunday my dad used to take us after church and eat Chinese food." "just tell me what it was."" "I walked back by the table and she had the biggest smile on her face." "this is just like I remember with my dad on sundays." "ain't this ironic that Chinese food has become comfort food?" "it replaced meatloaf and fried chicken?" "New York." "And we were an orthodox Jewish family." "a couple of times a year to a restaurant in Schenectady a Chinese restaurant." "I remember my mother would always order shrimp with lobster sauce." "My father would look at this as just abominable." "he's 95 would never eat pork or shellfish." "Then we get these egg rolls and I'd say what are these little brown bits in it?" "it's okay to eat." "safe-treif." ""Treif" meaning forbidden." "I thought that was actually rabbinical statement." "no absolutely don't eat it." "when I open." " Wow!" " Yeah." "Over 90% of Jewish people." "Jewish people either Christmas or Thanksgiving." "yeah." "Only-only Chinese food and the movie." "There's an old joke that.." "000 years" "500 years that Jews had to survive without Chinese food." "Lot of Jews just wanted to become Americanized." "Part of that is going out to Chinese restaurants." "We ate Chinese food growing up once a month on a Sunday night." "My mom's from Brooklyn." "And we're Jewish and that was a Jewish thing." "I..." "I met Sandy Koufax this past summer." "He liked Chinese food too." "I ate two ethnic foods as a child." "I ate some Jewish food from my grandmother." "But clearly when we wanted to go out for something different." "Chinese food was at the top of the list." "It's part of the American tradition now to go to Chinese restaurants." "Montana." "you know the pink and the red boots white takeout boxes with the fortune cookies." "it was called "Wai-Wai." "W-A-I. "Wai-Wai." "maybe about a mile?" " From... from the house." " Not even." "yeah." "They had the best Chinese buffet you ever had." "let's call in for Chinese." "it's easy and you don't have to do any dishes." "'Cause everything is right there for you." "They even throw in the plastic forks." "So.." "For Americans this small restaurant where the lone Chinese family lives is their invitation into the world... of Chinese culture." "Even though it is.." "As american as anything else." "This is one of the tradition." "That lasted for more than 100 years in.." "In United States." "People when they go to a Chinese restaurant they'll have dessert." "And also they can see the fortunes." "some students help us to write." "000 pieces of message in our database." "in China." "It's a product of a America." "despite the fact that there is this prohibition for Chinese immigration" "Chinese food becomes one of the ways in which Chinese and Chinese-Americans gain social acceptance and cultural acceptance in the United States." "as the United States enters the second world war an ally of the United States." "the Congress is persuaded" "To abrogate the Chinese exclusion acts." "So the kind of really virulent and violent" "and Chinese restaurants becomes ubiquitous." "Wherever you go." "there's sunshine..." "sunshine on the land there's a Chinese restaurant." "My favorite fortune.." "will be paid off soon." "no gain." "One of the interesting things about Chinese food it's always been linked with international relations between China and the United States." "particularly after the Chinese communist revolution in the United States begins to change quite dramatically." "anxiety about the rise of... of Communism." "Particularly in Asia." "So many Chinese families feel very vulnerable." "particularly during Korean war." "so everything about China was negative." "including Chinese food." "1950s there was Chinese food in the USA." "same menu." "It just taste so... pretty bad." "Bland." "no flavor." " No spice." "nothing." "I..." "I tried to introduce the real Chinese food to Americans." "I opened the Mandarin Restaurant in 1959 in San Francisco." "Polk Street." "It was food that she grew up with." "served at the Mandarin." "you know." "I really had a tough time." "a lot of a... what you call "discrimination." "They didn't give me any credit." "Everything I have to pay cash." "We try to rent.." "A apartment in a good location." "American won't rent for me." "Because they said that Chinese person is very dirty." "they were marginalized." "very long time." "After Mao took over China the same time Chop Suey was being forgotten." "There was nothing new in Chinese food." "It was in the doldrums." "It's really hard for me to date menus you can just tell these are... are '50s." "Let's see if General Tso appears." ""Chef special chicken salad."" ""Hacked chicken."" "This is gotta be '60s." "Let's see what kind of chicken they had here." "curry chicken"" "and "steamed chicken and sausage."" "I don't believe General Tso has reared his armor at this point in history." "Premier Zhou Enlai on behalf of the government of the People's Republic of China. before May 1972." "President Nixon has accepted the invitation with pleasure." "There can be no stable and enduring peace without the People's Republic of China." "the bamboo curtain lifted." "1972" "Nixon was hosted at a banquet by Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing's Great Hall of the People." "Americans saw him eat real Chinese food." "And they salivated." "Raising a toast he drank that very powerful" "Chinese wine called the Maotai." "if you ever.." "It's like jet fuel." "in terms of all things Chinese." "Right after Nixon visit China" "I got so many phone calls." "Can you duplicate Nixon's dinner." "Suddenly all these Chinese restaurants had lines outside the door." "kind of the golden age" "Of fine Chinese cooking in the United States." "the first Hunan restaurants" "Fujian styled restaurants." "well-seasoned food and this stuff tasted great to us." "But this one dish just stuck out." "The renaissance in Chinese food in New York began" "the pre-eminent Chinese restaurateur in America." "Shun Lee Palace." "sort of opened the door to the Szechuan and Hunanese food." "late '60s and the '70s they urged for something different." "Shun Lee Palace." "we opened Hunan." "Hunan become a superstar." "Chef T.T. Wang of the Shun Lee restaurants" "Devised a dish that he called General Tso's chicken." "it was fried a little garlicky and spicy." "And the restaurant got a 4 star review from the New York Times." "Shun Lee and Hunan were a great great success." "We are the first one who has General Tso's chicken in the US." "Because we opened the first Hunanese restaurant in 1972." "Before anybody else and we do have General Tso's chicken on the menu." "I have to confess" "Taiwan do have General Tso's chicken in the '60s." "right man in the right place with the right dish." "But whose dish was it?" "Chef T.T. Wang was really inspired" "By this restaurant in Taiwan which was this.." "The most famous Hunan-style restaurant there." "businessmen from the Shun Lee restaurants went to Taiwan looking to do something new and interesting and came back with dishes from this particular restaurant called.." "Chef Peng's Hunan Yuan." "p-e-n-g" "Emigrated to Taiwan from China." "Peng Chang-Kuei as a young boy was taken on as an apprentice by one of the great Hunanese chefs." "He was very talented." "He quickly rose to the position of chef to the nationalist government who are fighting the Communists in the Chinese civil war." "There is this association in Hunan between eating chilies and having a fiery military spirit." "you know he was really regarded as one of the great Hunanese chefs." "when Chairman Mao's Communists finally conquered the mainland with the army." "He cooked for the government there." "His inspiration was the sour and hot flavors of his much missed home province Hunan." "Which he had to leave." "Hunan was the home province of many leading figures in Chinese military and politics like General Tso." "He is one of the famous people of Hunan province." "People are very proud of him." "Peng Chang-Kuei invented many dishes and one of the dishes that he invented.." "Was General Tso's chicken." "Chef Peng understood very early that a couple of restaurateurs from New York had come and seen his restaurant and went back to New York and copied it." "And Whef Peng was.." "Hey." "you know.." "The real goods." "the Eyewitness News team decided.." "it'll be called The Eyewitness News Gourmet."" "once a week and would film the preparation of one of their signature dishes." "And I've heard that there was this hot new Chinese chef in town." "He had come to New York from Taiwan." "Chef Peng and film the dish." "Eyewitness News." "long skinny fellow." "Spoke not a word of English." "He knew precisely what he was there to do which was to cook." "He came out into the dining room where we'd wheeled this display cart full of pre-chopped ingredients bing-bing-bing." "the cloud of steam rising that you could smell." "He just whipped through that dish in the wok with all sorts of elements and colors and textures." "We put it on the air and it was over a thousand requests for that particular recipe." "Americans didn't get the whole story." "People thought that Chef Peng was coming and copying Chef Wang." "in fact it was the other way around." "But Chef Peng never really convinced everyone that he was the original." "It would be great to have the 16 millimeter film that was shot of Chef Peng but that stuff was just thrown out." "sorry to to say." "I never spent enough... quality time with Chef Peng." "primarily Chinese" "And spoke not much English." "because chefs and restaurateurs shall we call it "poetic license to rename or recreate things that when Chef Wang came to making General Tso's chicken" "He felt the american palate was a sweeter palate than the Chinese palate." "So he gave it a touch of sugar." "Everybody have their own sauce." "Our General Tso's chicken this is the most american people like that taste." "Little vinegar and little sugar is little sweet." "little bit sugar." "They've got some honey in it." "That's the most secret in here." "in many cases has become sweeter than it was originally." "per say." "I think it is a simple matter of people playing copy cat." "let's do it."" "And in the end it becomes an entirely different affair." "Crispy chicken is a national dishes for Americans." "You can buy chicken nuggets and adding soya and sour spicy sauce" "You can make your own General Tso's chicken today." "there was this infrastructure of Chinese restaurants and Chinese associations" "And Chinese chefs and Chinese menus." "The dish spread just all over the place." "And places where you wouldn't expect to find it at all." "Here's General Tso marching at the door." "000 Chinese restaurants in the United States." "The killer combination is to find an item that everyone likes." "And keeps ordering time after time." "it's something that we could produce for a relative price." "How many orders does the average restaurant sell a day?" "Maybe 10?" "10 bucks an order?" "You start to talk about a business just in General Tso's chicken." "That's in the billions of dollars." "General Tso's chicken is an icon in the Chinese food." "cover the whole United States." "I think if Chef Peng were looking at the scene today" "I think he'd be amazed at the fact that this dish has become so iconic." "As I know when I was very young." "asked my father to prepare to present dinner." "My father tried to make something unique." "different." "He tried to make some name for it and then he find who's General Tso." "never lose the battle." "especially Hunanese people." "he personally... preferred chicken." "He liked the chicken." "My father is a very happy to name it as a General Tso's chicken." "is so famous." "This name of General Tso's chicken." "And he makes all kind of different version." "General Tso's chicken really did come from Hunan province" "Because Chef Peng himself was inspired by his own native cuisine." "But one of the ironies about General Tso's chicken is that the General himself" "Was very much about preserving Chinese culture and Chinese tradition." "become anything but authentic Chinese." "The world's most magnificent culinary culture and the world's most diverse cuisine has been represented in the west by such a narrow range of dishes." "And it's not just about eating and the pleasure of eating." "But also about the culture." "Because food is really at the heart of Chinese culture." "it's about the family." "It's how you stay connected with your living relatives." "And all your ancestors." "It's just particularly important in Chinese culture." "It's so integral that actually it's the greeting." "Um..." "You'll see all these old timers would say..." "Which means "Have you eaten yet?" "it's your hello." "Because it's so important" "But becomes a short hand for your well-being." "we learnt to pick the meat out of crab." "there's no way a child in America would sit down." "just to nibble a little piece of meat from a crab." "There's no way they do it." "I have some nephew's kids came here give them..." "and they said too much trouble." "everything pour it in the blender." "everything put in the blender" "Liquid diet." "they just drink it." "there is a downward appreciation of Chinese food." "If you want French food" "You have a lot of labor and you get charged for it." "but they can't get away charging a lot of money." "So that is a question of attitude." "China has a place." "Their currency worth nothing and their labor worth nothing." "Chinese restaurants still are the first job for immigrants coming to this country." "You don't speak the language." "You can't find a job." "You know how to cook." "You try to make it work." "in a place where another restaurant wouldn't stick." "These dishes are the economic necessity and would help you succeed and survive." "the General Tso's chicken and a different taste" "My personally it's kind of honor." "Is honor." "Is honor to have this people like to serve this dishes." "I'm proud of to be my father's son." "joke." "The most famous people in the world is Mr. Zuo Zongtang." "Zuo Zongtang." "This is the General Tso's chicken we serve." "about 20 years ago." "My mother's food.." "it was food of the courts." "We have Peking Duck." "more care." "I think was.." "I wanted something more casual." "it's one of our most popular dishes." "everybody has their version version of this dish and anyway this is our version here." "Americans embrace certain ideas about ethnic food." "whether it's the taco or french fries or.." "Swedish pancakes." "They make it their own." "There's nothing wrong with that." "it's a style." "it's a style of cooking." "I think." "we've created this value of authenticity." "But I don't there is such a thing as authenticity." "the idea that there is some original Chinese cuisine." "Chinese cuisine has changed everywhere." "You realize that every country has it's own version of authentic Chinese food." "that's the version of Chinese food which is a taste of home." "We are at Chinese mirch in Manhattan." "the first Indian-Chinese restaurant to open in New York." "but with Indian flavors." "the way we eat it in India." "This is western style Chinese vegetable fried rice." "Some of the Mexican restaurant and Italian restaurants think that this is a good idea and have fortune taco cookie and fortune cannoli cookie." "Nothing is authentic here in our restaurant we are not authentic Mexican." "And isn't that American?" "So this our General Tso's veal rib" "And Mission Chinese food." "I'm gonna make a General Tso's tofu sandwich." "I just order General Tso's soft boiled egg." "they had General Tso's snake" "At this restaurant." "you can now get General Tso's chicken in China." "I admit that I don't often look for it when I go to a restaurant." "I've never ordered it." "I did it have a four year General Tso's love affair." "this dish will disappear." "People will still like enjoying that sort of groovy sauce." "They like it." "And why not?"