I've been thinking a lot recently about how the names of Chinese foods vary so much between China and the US.

One example is lemon chicken. In Southern China, lemon chicken usually means a whole bone-in chicken, steamed, chopped up, and served with a light lemon sauce. In the US, you'd get perfect cubes or slices of breast meat that has been fried and coated with a thick lemon sauce. (In other words, more like this.) A few places, like this takeout spot in Park Slope, may serve you something that looks like a lemon chicken kit that you put together: breaded and fried chicken with little seasoning, on top of some iceberg lettuce, and a container of something that's more or less lemon simple syrup.

Another example is Mongolian beef. In Beijing, Mongolian-style lamb or beef is stir-fried with toasted cumin seeds and whole red chilis. In the US, what has become Mongolian beef lacks any whole spices, but is pretty tasty in its own right. The only thing similar to its mainland Chinese cousin is the thinly sliced steak and abundance of leeks. The sauce, when done well, is pretty terrific. The beauty of Mongolian beef sauce is that none of the flavors stand out on their own, but rather, come together (as the Chinese would say) "harmoniously".

Every once in a while I get an craving for greasy Chinese food that's different from what you can find at your everyday takeout stand.

Some of you may remember my Caribbean-Chinese party from two years ago. The theme had been inspired by the wee bit of my childhood that was spent in Puerto Rico and the hybrid dishes I remember eating at Chinese restaurants there, like chicharrones de pollo and pineapple shrimp. I had also added some Jamaican influences as well, including jerk chicken wings and a cocktail made with hibiscus tea. It was a fun event, but needless to say, Caribbean-Chinese food never became a steady part of my diet.

Flash forward to 2010. Today I found myself in Crown Heights at De Bamboo Express, one of the two or three Jamaican-Chinese restaurants I know of in the city. Objective: a cheap but filling lunch.

The place is pretty spartan, with a couple of wall-lined counters, a few tables, and enormous menus highlighting their $5 lunch specials. (The one cook in the kitchen appeared to be fully Chinese, not happa. You have to wonder whether he grew up cooking Chinese-Jamaican dishes, or switched over from more straightforward Chinese food.) I picked up a jerk chicken lo mein to go and a lime rickey soda. 

My electricity bill these past two months has been frightening. Living in a building with only two units that is considered a "house" by ConEdison's standards, my roommate and I have had to pay double the monthly amount of typical apartment tenants. And it doesn't help that we have three air conditioners. We try to use them a little as possible, but with July's record high temps and oppressive humidity, a little AC meant the difference between good night's rest and no sleep.

And of course, I can't not cook at home. As somewhat of a carb addict, 75% of my homecooked dinners, let's just be honest, involve noodles or pasta. But the noodle soups will have to wait until fall.

Cold noodles, on the other hand, are essential for the summer. They make great picnic food. They make great sides for cookouts. They are the same savory-sweet kind you get from the Chinese takeout, with less grease and no MSG. And they require very little prep time and don't even have to be reheated out of the fridge (within a reasonable number of days, of course.)

Lately I've been browsing through a lot of vintage restaurant ads and menus, for both fun and research. Here's one from 1968, for the China Clipper Cafe in Dallas, Texas. "The Chow is the Mein thing!" Adorable.

This photo comes courtesy of Waffle Whiffer, whose Flickr collection is loaded with other great old food advertisements. 

If anyone stumbles upon other interesting ads or menus, let me know!

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Related culinary history posts:

When Chinese Food was Glamorous in America

Chop Suey Casserole, California Ranch Edition

Top 5 Movies Starring Chinese Food

Chow Mein, an American Classic

Most sane people keep a drawer full of delivery menus for the sole purpose of...ordering delivery. I too have a menu drawer, but can count on two hands the number of times I have actually ordered delivery in the past few years.

Call me a bad New Yorker.  I'm pretty good with picking up takeout while out somewhere, but dialing from home is another story. Being so dangerously close to the kitchen, I usually wind up studying the menu for half an hour, choosing an entree, then deciding, screw this, I can make the same dish, except way better.

This hubris usually leads me to spend another couple of hours ransacking my cabinets, schlepping to the grocery store, figuring out a strategy, then executing it. Even if it is already past 9pm and I'm starving. Sure, it would have been easier and about 1 hour and 50 minutes faster to just call the damn Golden Panda Dynasty, but definitely not as satisfying. Or so I tell myself.

I wonder if delivery menu one-upmanship can be classified as a psychological disorder. 

Recently, while visiting Jacob's grandmother in California, I discovered a torn cookbook in her kitchen drawers. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "You found my bible!"  

Titled "Country Cookin'", the book was published in the 1970s by the Monterey County Cowbelles, otherwise known as the wives of Monterey's ranchers. Surprisingly, only a tenth of the book is devoted to red-meat-centric dishes. Most of the recipes are charmingly anachronistic, like Dove in Wine Sauce and Hot Russian Tea (with Tang!). But what really caught my attention were the handful of Chinese recipes. 

Zooming past the egg foo young and sweet and sour beef, I zeroed in on chop suey. After all, it was the page with the most food stains, the telltale sign of a beloved recipe.

(Photo by pointnshoot, CC)

Ed. - Say you're at your favorite Chinese take-out, feasting on moo goo gai pan and crab rangoon. "I bet they don't really eat this stuff in China," you think, recalling the Discovery Channel special on TV last month. You would be correct. But how did dishes like chow mein and the once ubiquitous chop suey, unrecognizable to anyone in China, become such so well-loved  in the US? Author Andrew Coe explores this and other mysteries of the Chinese-American culinary repertoire in his new book Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, which came out this week. In today's guest post, he gives a glimpse into the past and present life of chow mein.

Last summer when Jacob went to Budapest for a conference, he took an few hours to stroll around the city's "Chinatown." Except there wasn't much of one, at least not the kind with red-and-gold gates and tons of indistinguishable souvenir vendors - kitschy but telltale signs that a city at least tries to embrace its multicultural identity. 

With Hungary, the situation is a little more complicated. Through numerous conversations with Hungarians, many of them ultra-liberal on a range of political issues, there was an underlying resentment of recent Chinese immigrants. The country's Chinese population mostly consists of Fujianese who arrived starting in the 1980s, a good portion who may have entered illegally, and who have not really integrated into Hungarian society yet. It seems like an instance of vicious-cycle tension: newcomers keeping to themselves because of societal disdain, society feeling disdain because newcomers keep to themselves. Despite this, Chinese restaurants were doing okay business, though not nearly the lunch volume as their US counterparts

Now, America isn't the only country that adores fried Chinese food. In Japan, diners go wild for karaage, Chinese-style fried chicken. According to Maki from Just Hungry, "the word kara refers to China, meaning that this method of preparing chicken originated in Chinese cooking (age means deep-fried)". Like the Chinese, the Japanese also marinate their chicken with ginger "to get rid of any gaminess". (Check out Maki's recipe.)

If biting into the crispy shell of General Tso's chicken releases pent-up sugar, biting into karaage will unleash a dark and brooding mix of soy sauce and sake. Dark meat, skin on, is best. And this is a dish that begs to be washed down with cold sake or beer.