Chinese Food: Best Food?

Today on SYSK, the fellas get down to business with plenty of mouth-watering information on what Chuck dubs "the best food." See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:03Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:13Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and it's just us, but that's okay because we can keep all the Chinese food to ourself. I don't have to share with Jerry and this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  A lot of caveats on this. Can I list off a few?

• 1:30Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  All right. First of all, this is going to be a very broad overview of a cuisine that we could probably do like a 10-part at least episode series on.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  I would say 11.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe 11. So just, you know, have your expectations set going into this one. When you talk about Chinese food, there's a lot there. We are going to do our best to pronounce things correctly. I looked up a lot of stuff and I'm doing my best, but some of this stuff is hard for my dumb American mouth.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  And a lot of this is going to be, I mean, it's mainly about sort of, you know, Chinese food, although we're going to talk about origins and stuff like that, origin stories. It's mainly like what Chinese food has become here in the States, although we'll talk a little bit about other countries later, but it's through our lens.

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there you go. That was, that was great. Caveat City right there.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Caveat City. David Bowie, great song.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  So you said something that we're gonna largely focus on American Chinese cuisine. And Laura helped us with this, and she makes a really good point. The Chinese food is not just one thing.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38Josh Clark?

  And the reason why it's not just one thing, or one of the reasons why is because it's been exported all over the globe. Anywhere that Chinese people traveled, usually for work to immigrate, they brought their food with them and introduced it to wherever they were. And then over time, the local flavors and tastes and ingredients from that place melded with the Chinese food, and a new type of Chinese food was born. And America is no exception to that. So we have American Chinese food.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. And do you know what I love about that this whole story is like everywhere Chinese people went, they're like, get a load of this.

• 3:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  And everyone was like, oh, my God, that's amazing.

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and it took.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, big time. I mean, I'd have, I have no examples of places where Chinese immigrants have brought their food, and people are like, nah, no, thanks.

• 3:27Josh Clark?

  Right. The only one I could find was Belize.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I know you're kidding. I'm not gonna fall for it. And the reason why is because, I mean, I can live on many, many, many cuisines from Asia. I love Japanese food. I love Thai. I love Vietnamese. I love the Filipino. I like Korean food. I love it all. But at the end of the day, good old fashioned, like Chinese takeout is just one of my favorite all time things since I was a kid.

• 3:58Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Yeah, that's what I grew up on, too. It wasn't until I was an adult that I was like, there's other kinds of Asian food out there?

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz that's kind of what you, and if you grew up in the seventies and eighties, that was sort of the first, you know, probably one of the first, you know, cuisines from another country you ever ate.

• 4:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  You know, maybe, like, Mexican food wasn't that big back then. That's only become more popular, I think, in the eighties and nineties even.

• 4:24Josh Clark?

  Even still, as a kid, the Mexican food I was exposed to was Chi Chi's, for God's sake.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Or Del Taco.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  We didn't even have that. That was exotic. But I think maybe even before Chinese food, I was exposed to Japanese hibachi, because there was this nice restaurant in Toledo called N Japanese. And we would go to that. And I think I might have had that before Chinese food. But regardless, I love Chinese food, too. I would say my top two are Japanese, followed by Indian, but Chinese is definitely up there in top five or so.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm a simple guy, like pork fried rice and an egg roll. And I'm just now realizing we're not even going to talk about egg rolls in this, and I'm panicking all of a sudden.

• 5:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that didn't strike me until you just said that, too. And although my voice doesn't betray that, I'm definitely scared right now as well.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  All right, you know, hey, let's do, let's do a shorty on egg rolls. Maybe we'll pair it with this.

• 5:19Josh Clark?

  Good idea.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  All right.

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  So we said that Chinese food is not just one thing because it's been exported globally. But even in China, Chinese food is not just one thing. And they divide Chinese cuisine into eight different regions. Why don't you tell them what the regions are, Chuck?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  I'm just realizing I didn't look up a couple of these, so maybe you did. But the regions, as agreed upon right now, are, and they have different names for each one. So the first grouping is Sichuan, Sichuan, or I didn't look up C H U A N.

• 5:54Josh Clark?

  I mean, you're braver than me. I was just going to say the first ones that are they're mostly known by in the US.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Oh, we can do that, then. That's much easier. So let's go with Sichuan, Cantonese, Hunan, which is also Jiang.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Let me see here, we have Shandong, we have Jiangsu, we have, oh, I did look that one up, Zhuzhang.

• 6:18Josh Clark?

  Very nice.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Fujian.

• 6:21Josh Clark?

  I've always heard it's Fujian, but that sounds kind of like an American version.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Well, I heard it pronounced as if it had a Y in there, almost like few.

• 6:30Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Uh, Fugian?

• 6:33Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  And then what's the last one there? Uh, Anhui?

• 6:37Josh Clark?

  Yes, and some people added at least a ninth one with, uh, Shangji. Um, and they're all a little different. They're, they bear a lot of similarities. A lot of them love sweet and sour. A lot of them are heavy on the salt or umami. Some like sauces, but one of the big differences or some of the big differences is like where this, this area is located. Some of them are coastal.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 7:00Josh Clark?

  So they incorporate a lot of seafood.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:02Josh Clark?

  Some of them are colder, so there's like a lot of soups and heavy noodles and like really, really heavy flavors.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  And then others are like, hey, we love prancing around the wilderness and catching deer. So they incorporate like local, um, wildlife.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:17Josh Clark?

  Into it. And usually what I've seen is when they, when there's, um, a lot of wildlife involved or game involved in the, the recipes, they tend to let that flavor stand on its own. It's not like heavy with sauces. That kind of cuisine isn't.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they, um, how they achieve spice is kind of different depending where you are too. Sometimes it's those numbing Chinese peppercorns.

• 7:40Josh Clark?

  I can't.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  You can't do those?

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  No.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I've learned to eat a lot of spicy food over the last like five or six years and increase my spice level. But there's something about the numbing peppercorn that it's, I have a hard time with it.

• 7:53Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, I think that's natural.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  It's tough, but I can, you know, it depends on the cuisine. Other sort of like the chilies that they use, I can, I can handle that pretty well. It's hot, but I, I like it. And sometimes it's just the chili flakes.

• 8:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the, the little red chilies that they'll sometimes, uh, serve whole with the dish. Yes, I can handle those too.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Those numbing peppercorns.

• 8:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  It's tough.

• 8:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And what I mean by handling those, uh, little red chili peppers is that I eat around them.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Same here.

• 8:24Josh Clark?

  So the cuisine that most people in the United States are familiar with is Cantonese. That's definitely like the first kind of Chinese food that Americans adopted. And that has a lot to do with the first wave of migrants that came over to the United States. A lot of them were from Canton. And as a matter of fact, the first Chinese restaurant to open in all of North America, I'm including Canada and Mexico here, was called Canton, and it was in San Francisco.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, if you've ever had dim sum, that's Cantonese. If you've never had dim sum, I highly recommend it. It's, I hate to say like, because it used to annoy me when a certain person I knew used to say like, tortillas are like American bread. And I was like, no, they're just tortillas.

• 9:13Josh Clark?

  Who said that?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  I'm not going to tell you. I'll tell you offline. But I was going to say like, if you've ever had tapas, dim sum is kind of like the Chinese version of tapas. But it really is just dim sum. But it's like shared, small plates, a lot of steamed stuff, but also fried stuff, baked stuff.

• 9:31Josh Clark?

  Lot of dumplings, right?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Lot of dumplings. You know, just go to New York, go to Hopkey, get some dim sum, and thank me later.

• 9:40Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 9:41Josh Clark?

  I will thank you later. I've never really had dim sum, actually, now that I think about it.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Ooh, boy. I mean, I like all kinds of food in Chinatown in New York, but dim sum is definitely one of them. But I'll also go to just the, you know, because if you're staying in a hotel, you can't get these huge orders and just like take tons and tons of food with you.

• 10:01Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  So my move now is generally just to pop down there by myself and get a couple of gigantic egg rolls.

• 10:08Josh Clark?

  You and the egg rolls, huh? Wait, wait, we can't talk about that. We have to save it for short stuff. Forget I even said that.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  But you did mention San Francisco, and 1849 was the first operating restaurant in North America. And by 1851, when the population of San Francisco was but 34,000 and change, there were seven full-time Chinese restaurants open, which, you know, for that few people is pretty good for that time period.

• 10:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's not bad.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Like, people liked it, clearly.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  Yep. And there's a book that is going to come up or we're going to draw from a lot in this episode is called From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express: A History of Chinese Food in the United States by Hyung-Ming Leo. And Leo makes this, this point that a lot of, like, we tend to equate Chinese migrants in the 19th century, especially to California, with like railroad workers, maybe miners. We have like a certain idea of what the Chinese migrants were at the time. And that is a, I mean, it's pretty stereotypical. It's also pretty narrow. There were a lot of Chinese migrants who made their way over just to

• 11:17Josh Clark?

  feed the people in the gold rush of 1849 in California. They were like, people are going to need food and we're going to knock their socks off with Chinese food. And so they started to go and open Chinese restaurants. And apparently, you could pick out a Chinese restaurant pretty easily because they hung yellow flags outside.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this is also sort of the, kind of right away when, when racist feelings toward Chinese immigrants started, racist feelings toward their food even started arising right out of the gate. In Leo's book, there were some, a couple of examples that she cited. One was a criminal lawyer defending a white client following a race riot in 1865 and told the judge, "Why, sir, and I'm not going to say the racist Chinese name, but they live on rice and sir, they eat it with sticks." And then there was a pamphlet from American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers in 1902 titled, "Some Reasons for Chinese

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Exclusion: Meat Versus Rice, American Manhood Versus Asiatic Coolism." And apparently, "coolly" is a pejorative term for a low-wage worker.

• 12:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  So it's all happening early on.

• 12:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting because, and we'll talk about immigration and racism, but those two things definitely shaped Chinese food in America in some surprising ways, as a matter of fact.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 12:40Josh Clark?

  So it turns out that the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the United States is Peking, without a G, Noodle Parlour, in where else? Butte, Montana.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:53Josh Clark?

  And it started out as a general store back in 1909, but within two years, they added a noodle parlor, the very same noodle noodle parlor that's still open today. And I guess at some point they ran an illegal gambling parlor out of the basement, but that has since been turned into an Old Navy.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Is that true?

• 13:12Josh Clark?

  No.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Cause that I could believe, actually.

• 13:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, me too.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Uh, if you, if you, you know, I looked at that place to see what it looked like and it looks like a, you know, a Chinese restaurant in a, in a building of an old west town.

• 13:25Josh Clark?

  Man, I'll bet it's so good.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Exactly what you might think. And there's a big neon sign that says chop suey. And I realized that chop suey is not a dish I've ever had, but chop suey is sort of the, the beginning of, of Chinese food in America. That's the dish that first sort of captured young America's attention. And there's some debates on whether or not it's even American in origin. And we're going to talk about chop suey right now.

• 13:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I don't know if I've ever had it either, but I think anytime you've ever made like a vague Chinese stir fry with chicken and vegetables and maybe like a, some sort of thickish sauce, you basically made chop suey. Some people say that you can make it with egg, but those people are wrong. For the most part, it's a mixture of meat, vegetables, a thick sauce, usually with rice. And the name itself, not only where it originated, but the name itself is, um, is debatable, what it means. I remember, I think I might've learned this from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, that it meant leftovers in Chinese, so that people from China coming to America would see chop suey house and they would think it, it would say like leftovers house to them.

• 14:37Josh Clark?

  That's not exactly true, but it's not that far off.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  No, that's pretty close actually, because, uh, some people say the name came from Cantonese, uh, TSAP, uh, tsap suey, uh, SUI instead of SUI, that seems to be an Americanized spelling, uh, which is mixed bits or odds and ends, AKA probably leftovers.

• 14:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Liao, the author of the book, said that, um, it probably comes from chow chop suey, or chow chop suey, which some people call it, um, probably comes from the Cantonese pronouncing a Mandarin chow zazui, chow meaning stir fry and zazui meaning animal intestines. I tend to go with the tsap suey.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:22Josh Clark?

  That, I mean, that's just my take and it's almost meaningless, but that's what I'm gonna go with since it's up for debate.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  I'm with you. I'll be in your camp.

• 15:30Josh Clark?

  Okay, thanks.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  At least we can hang out and play cards.

• 15:33Josh Clark?

  What do you want to play?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know a lot of card games. I like gin rummy.

• 15:38Josh Clark?

  I was gonna say gin rummy too.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  I do love spades, but we need Emily and Yumi to come along.

• 15:43Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's fair enough. They probably will anyway if we end up in a camp together.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Cause that means a zombie apocalypse has happened.

• 15:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, or else the Russians have invaded all, um, Red Dawn and you and I are alone in a men's camp, which is really just a fenced off drive in.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, soon, soon to die.

• 16:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Anyway, that's a weird sidetrack. Uh, a quote that, and we're gonna explain the origins of this quote, but you may have heard that chop suey is an American, is as American as pork and beans. And that actually comes from a lawsuit, uh, from the early 1900s. In 1904, a guy named Lem Sen said, you know what? I invented chop suey. Uh, I made it for a Chinese diplomat who visited in 1886 and everybody making this dish owes me money.

• 16:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It's kind of a, a bold lawsuit.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:36Josh Clark?

  I don't even know who he sued. I couldn't find it.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Everybody.

• 16:40Josh Clark?

  I guess so. Lem Sen versus all chop suey chefs.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:45Josh Clark?

  So, um, he ended up dropping the suit, but the suit left a huge, um, mark on America. I mean, like it was reported on, it, it made the news for sure and people knew about it. And one reason why it became such a big deal is because at the time, as we saw, there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. So Lem Sen brought his lawsuit in 1904. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. It was the first time the United States had ever passed an immigration law specifically targeted at one nationality.

• 17:20Josh Clark?

  And it also basically laid the foundation for exclusionary immigration laws and much tighter immigration laws than we'd had before, that we still have today, but this was super tight. I read when they loosened it up, the quota for Chinese immigrants was 104 Chinese immigrants per year.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, really?

• 17:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And everybody was racist and against Chinese at the time, right?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:45Josh Clark?

  But people also loved chop suey by then. I mean, loved chop suey. So Lem Sen's lawsuit said, hey, you can keep loving chop suey. I invented this in America. It's really an American dish. So you can continue being racist against Chinese immigrants while still loving chop suey. You're welcome, America. And America said, thank you. Get out.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he's the one who had the quote, it's as an American as pork and beans.

• 18:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the lawsuit, I think he said it too. I couldn't find that quote. I couldn't find the lawsuit, but even if it's not specifically in the lawsuit, it definitely seems to have developed out of that.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's possible that it was Chinese in origin initially because apparently there are some dishes from the Pearl River Delta that are pretty similar. And some of the earliest Chinese migrants to the US were from that area. I can't parse out what's so different from chop suey than any stir fry.

• 18:41Josh Clark?

  I don't know either. There's a lot of overlap between Chinese dishes, including authentic cuisine.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:47Josh Clark?

  But especially American Chinese. I think, I think it was, it was one of the first. It was almost like an umbrella term for all Chinese dishes in America at the turn of the last century, kind of like smurf, but with Chinese food essentially. And I think because it was the first, a lot of dishes that we recognize as like American Chinese developed out of it.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Okay, that makes sense. I do know that when I was a kid going camping, growing up in Georgia, I loved nothing more than taking a can of La Choi. Uh, you know, it's like veggies and, and sauce, basically.

• 19:26Josh Clark?

  Just sipping on it the whole weekend?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Lot of water, just, yeah, put it in my canteen. Uh, and, you know, making some, some campfire rice and dumping that stuff on top, you know, heating it up and dumping it on top. I thought it was like the peak of, you know, fine cuisine in the woods.

• 19:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, I mean, that's definitely better than, you know, a human finger that you found.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they were, LaChoy was around since the 1930s, doing that, you know, canned vegetable sauce, uh, I was gonna say trick, but, you know, it's, it's a thing.

• 19:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but I mean, that's a great explanation of just how crazy people were in America for chop suey, that LaChoy could package and sell for decades, this stuff, and people were nuts for it. Um, I, another sign apparently was that by the turn of the last century, chop suey houses were so popular, they'd started to migrate out of Chinatown.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:16Josh Clark?

  Um, which was a huge deal in, I should say, in Manhattan specifically. That was a big deal because I'm, I think there were a lot of people who were like, I love chop suey, but I don't want to go to Chinatown. And these Chinese entrepreneurs said, hey, you don't need to anymore. Here we are at, I don't know, um, SoHo.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Right. Uh, another like pretty startling, um, factoid is that, uh, it was in, well, this, this part isn't, it was in the 1942 edition of the US Army Cookbook, but as a result, when US troops were stationed overseas in China and Japan in World War II, restaurants would put chop suey on the menu to cater to those American soldiers because they came in, were like, where's the chop suey?

• 21:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we want a hot dog, hamburger and chop suey.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 21:05Josh Clark?

  Um, you want to take a break? We're at like 20 minutes, basically.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and put in my order for pork fried rice and egg roll.

• 21:12Josh Clark?

  I'm definitely getting Chinese food for dinner.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 21:32Josh Clark?

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• 22:22Josh Clark?

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• 24:51Josh Clark?

  All right, Chuck, so we're back. And we talked about how immigration laws and racism against Chinese migrants helped shape Chinese food in America. And one of the first ways that it did was that 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act actually led to a plethora of much more upscale Chinese restaurants. And the reason why is because part of that Exclusion Act is that certain kinds of businesses could achieve merchant status, or the owners of certain kinds of businesses. They had to be legitimate businesses that were considered kind of higher-end.

• 25:32Josh Clark?

  And that if you had merchant status, you could sponsor relatives to come to the United States. And I guess in 1915, a court case got Chinese restaurants added to that merchant status clause.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this came from a historian named Heather Lee. And she makes a case, it's like, you know, this addition to that list basically meant you were going to get a lot of like, higher grade chop suey palaces. So the restaurants kind of got nicer. And you had to, in order to qualify, you also, if you were an investor or an owner, you had to spend a year managing the restaurant as the manager and not like, you know, working in the kitchen or something like that. And you've needed, of course, this had to be thrown in there, you needed two white witnesses to vouch for them. But because of these strict rules, you got, again, these nicer Chinese restaurants opening up that were qualifying for that merchant status. And then you would get investors getting together and saying,

• 26:30Speaker 02

  hey, let's start this restaurant, we'll take turns running it for a year and get our family members over here. And as a result, I mean, this is not the only reason, but this definitely helped. Chinese restaurants in the US doubled between 1910 and 1920, and again, between 1920 and 1930. And by 1930, they had overtaken laundries as the largest employers of Chinese workers in the United States.

• 26:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, so the first, like, third of the 20th century, there was a boom in Chinese restaurants, and in specifically, higher end Chinese restaurants. And then another boom happened after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which greatly loosened restrictions on immigration, particularly from China. And within a decade of that act, the Chinese-American population basically doubled, which sounds eye popping, but don't forget, there was only like 104 people coming in a year. So it went from like, I don't know, 3,000 to 6,000 in a decade.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  It was more than that.

• 27:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it definitely was, but the point is, is that now you had way more patrons of authentic Chinese restaurants, which meant there were more authentic Chinese restaurants. And then you also had more people who were ready to open and staff more Chinese restaurants. So you had a huge boom in Chinese restaurants, again in the 60s to the 70s.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And there was an article in 2014 in The New Yorker by Lauren Hilgers. And this was 11 years ago, but I imagine it's not, you know, completely different now. But how the labor arrangements worked then, and probably these days, is if there's a Chinese restaurant in the US, there's more than 40,000 back then, and there's probably a few more now, but that's a lot of restaurants, generally run by families, but staffed by new immigrants. A lot of them are undocumented. A lot of them apparently are coming from the Fujian province, and they're providing the labor. So what'll happen is they'll have a restaurant, a new immigrant will come to town, probably a hub city. I think they concentrated on New York,

• 28:41Speaker 02

  San Francisco, and Chicago for the article, but any major, you know, city in the US probably. And they'll go to a Chinese language employment agency and they'll say, all right, I got a job for you. They'll say this in Chinese, though. Go get on this bus. Here's the person's name. Here's their phone number. Go to this restaurant. And you can probably get a job there. And that's how they staff their restaurants.

• 29:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And Chuck, you mentioned, at least in 2014, 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:11Josh Clark?

  Which is impressive in and of itself. But if you compare it to McDonald's, which is, you know, the benchmark comparison for us.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:20Josh Clark?

  There are 13,622 McDonald's in the United States.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 29:24Josh Clark?

  Versus 40,000 Chinese restaurants.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  There's probably, well, there's not, because we know that number, too. I was gonna say there's probably 14,000 Panda Expresses, but we'll get to that later.

• 29:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's close.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  The, the long and short of it is, is with how the staffing arrangement works is These cooks are moving around a lot. They'll sometimes work at a place for just a few months and go to a different restaurant, maybe for better pay. Oftentimes, outside of city centers, you can get paid more, which sort of surprised me. I guess it makes sense, though. But if you're getting Chinese food for years and years from the same place, a lot of times, there will be a different cook every few months, and hopefully, you won't even notice.

• 30:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, a lot of the reason you won't notice is because the immigrants from Fujian, I could not find out why the largest waves of migration lately have been coming from Fujian, but they are. But they are coming and buying Cantonese, formerly Cantonese-owned restaurants from the Cantonese owners who founded them, and they're just keeping the menu the same. Because again, this is American-Chinese. Neither one's making the cuisine necessarily that you would find in their provinces. In China, they're making the American version. So if you have a set menu, you're probably, any chef's gonna be able to cook this stuff, I think.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, we're gonna talk a little bit about General Tso, another classic Chinese dish that I've never had.

• 30:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  No, I've never had it. I mean, maybe I've had it if someone else somewhere, and they ordered just a ton of food, and I was kind of just dumping all of it on the plate, which is the best way to eat Chinese food.

• 31:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  But that's something I've never ordered myself. I kind of just stick to my main order, and General Tso's chicken is not it.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  It's good. It's a Swedish sour, no, it's not even sour. It's like sweet and savory.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  It's kind of spicy, too, isn't it?

• 31:20Josh Clark?

  A little bit, but nothing anybody couldn't handle. I think there's usually sesame seeds on it, too. It's good stuff.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, not like kung pao is the real spicy one, right?

• 31:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we all know who likes his kung pao spicy.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  There's a funny Judge John Hodgman episode about that, too. There's a funny dad, or at least he thought it was funny. And his kids were trying to get him to stop making the same joke over and over. Wherever this guy goes, it could be like a toll booth worker will ask like, what kind of ticket he wants? And he'll say, I'll have the Kung Pao Chicken. And he'll just say that to answer any question asked by anyone ever.

• 31:58Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 31:59Speaker 02

  And the kids are really annoyed. I think it's hysterical.

• 32:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it is pretty funny, for sure. Unless you're in a rush, because then you have to ask the question twice.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I could also see all children of that dad might get really sick of that joke.

• 32:13Josh Clark?

  Totally. I mean, dads can be pretty embarrassing.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Uh, except for this one.

• 32:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, not you, of course.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  All right, so what are the origins of General Tso's Chicken?

• 32:23Josh Clark?

  Actually, Chuck, there was a guy named Peng Cheng Wei, K U E I. He was from Hunan. And he was living in Taiwan at the time as part of the nationalist government. He was a chef for the nationalist government, who was being visited in Taiwan by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. So he created a special dish that was in no way resembles what we think of General Tso's Chicken today. It was a very heavy dish, sour, hot, salty. It was just not American. It wasn't fried. But this dish was named after an actual, real Hunanese general from the Qing Dynasty.

• 33:05Josh Clark?

  His name was Zhou Zhongtang, or So Sun Tang. And you get General Tso from that. I think he was a minister of Taiwan for a little while. It made sense to Peng. And eventually it got exported to the United States, I think in the 70s, and it just got totally transformed.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, apparently if you're in the Boston area, it's going to be called General Gao, either G A U or G A O. Did not know that.

• 33:34Josh Clark?

  I didn't know that either, but that that doesn't sound totally foreign to me like I. Well, it sounds a little foreign. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I've heard that before somewhere.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like I have too. So it may exist outside of Boston, or maybe it's, you know, just more New England regional. But Chinese food is very popular as a delivery thing. I can't remember the last time I actually, I actually I can. Rarely, rarely do I eat in a Chinese restaurant, but I ate in Las Vegas. There's a very popular, very upscale Chinese restaurant in one of the casinos, the kind of place where like a week ahead of time, you tell them you want the duck, that kind of deal.

• 34:11Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  And our friend of the show and friend of ours, Adam Pranica, made that with Ben Harrison and our booking agent and friend Josh Lindgren and all the, our wives, we all went and had this beautiful, big, big meal. But almost always I'm ordering takeout or delivery Chinese food and Grubhub, and this was 10 years ago, but they said that General South Chicken was the most popular dish that they deliver, fourth most popular overall. And just last year, they reported Chinese takeout is the, or delivery, I guess, is the third most popular food overall, I guess, behind pizza. And I can't think of what else. I would figure Chinese would be second, but I don't know.

• 34:50Josh Clark?

  Pizza and takeout lasagna, maybe?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:55Josh Clark?

  People love that.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think this guy from Grubhub named Garfield was reporting on that.

• 35:01Josh Clark?

  Nice. That's a great joke.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 35:04Josh Clark?

  So back in 2023, Grubhub did say that there are two cities where a Chinese dish made the top 10, crab rangoon. And hold your emails, because we know crab rangoon is actually not a Chinese dish at all, but it is found in just about every American Chinese food place. It was, it was invented by an American, the restaurateur Victor Bergeron, or his Polynesian themed chain Trader Vix.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Love Trader Vix.

• 35:33Josh Clark?

  Named after a city in Burma, also known as Myanmar, and it has cream cheese, which is as American as chop suey.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I know I'm retelling this, but I'll have to just quickly say, one of the funniest things from when I was a kid was when I was like 12 years old in a restaurant, and there was a gentleman ordering takeout from the counter. And after like six dishes in a row, he asked if it had cheese on it. And the very kind restaurant owner kept saying, No, no, no. And at the very end, he said in his very sweet, broken English that no Chinese food has cheese on it. And I think the last time I told that story, you and I thought about like a slice of American cheese just on some stir fry. And then we were like, I think we might want to try that.

• 36:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it sounds like something we would try for sure.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, very funny childhood memory.

• 36:26Josh Clark?

  What else? Oh, hey, there's another reason that some Chinese food became Americanized.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Let's hear it.

• 36:33Josh Clark?

  Ingredients.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  That's right. You know, a lot of them were changed to fit our tastes, including the ingredients sometimes. And one example that Laura found, of course, is beef with broccoli. That is not, you know, they don't have that kind of, you know, as far as I know, they don't have that kind of broccoli in China. What they use is Chinese broccoli or gai lan, which if you look that up, it looks, it's more like bok choy than what we think of as broccoli.

• 37:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I was like, where's broccoli from? Turns out the Mediterranean.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:05Josh Clark?

  It was, according to legend, brought to America by Thomas Jefferson, who grew it experimentally in his garden.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  So he liked to fart?

• 37:14Josh Clark?

  Yep. He said, this is gonna make me blow. And then it was, it took off in popularity in the US in the 1920s. Didn't see why, but it did. Believe me.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Well, we got to talk a little bit about fortune cookies, because that is not Chinese either. That is originally adopted from something called the Japanese cracker, which is a savory thing. But in the early 20th century, Chinese restaurants were owned a lot of times by Japanese people. Japanese bakeries were making these cookies. And then after Japanese internment, a lot of Chinese Americans took over these cookie factories. And that got me down the road of like, well, who's writing the fortunes? There's a guy named Donald Lau, who's the CFO of Wanton Food Company, the largest fortune cookie maker in the world. And he was the sole writer, or has been for 30 years, of writing these fortune cookies.

• 38:09Josh Clark?

  I don't remember specifically talking about him or his name, but there's no way we didn't talk about him in our fortune cookie short stuff from 2022.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  If we missed him, I can't believe we would miss that guy.

• 38:20Josh Clark?

  There's no way.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  But as a recap, he wrote them for 30 years. He used to write two to three per day. Now it's two or three per month because they have just thousands of them. And he got that job by default because he spoke the best English at the company. And his quote is, "I am the most read author in the United States."

• 38:39Josh Clark?

  I believe it for sure.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  It's pretty great.

• 38:43Josh Clark?

  And then we got to talk about a couple of regional specialties. St. Louis, I remember when we went there, we, when we get back to touring again, I really want to go to St. Louis. Everyone there was crazy nice.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:56Josh Clark?

  They had really cool, like regional foods that you couldn't find anywhere else, like good stuff. It was just a good town. I want to go back, but I also want to try the St. Paul sandwich there. It's egg foo young, but a sandwich.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:15Josh Clark?

  So you've got an omelet with vegetables, a meat or seafood topped with brown gravy on a sandwich. So you've got mayo, pickle, lettuce, all that stuff.

• 39:27Josh Clark?

  It sounds just totally off the chain and I really want to try it.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  There's another one, and I don't know if you looked up a picture of this thing.

• 39:34Josh Clark?

  No, I didn't.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  But if you go to Fall River, Massachusetts, do you have your phone with you or a computer? Or a means of looking up a photo?

• 39:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, sure. Let me do that.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  While I'm doing this, you should check this out. It's called a chow mein sandwich. It's, it hails from Fall River, Massachusetts, but it's in surrounding towns there. And who knows, maybe elsewhere in New England, but it is exactly what it sounds like. It's chow mein on a sandwich on like a hamburger bun, but if you look this thing up. It's not a sandwich. It is, you can't see the bottom bun. It is just chow mein all over a plate. I guess there's a bun underneath and there's just a hamburger bun sitting on top. Like, it is a full plate of chow mein with just a bun in there somewhere. It's not the kind of thing you would ever pick up and eat as a sandwich.

• 40:18Josh Clark?

  It looks like Cousin Nitt wearing his hat.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  It does. It's actually a little Derby hamburger bun hat.

• 40:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's ostentatious to say the least, for sure.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, should we take another break?

• 40:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  All right, we'll take another break and we'll finish up with an ode to Panda Express and PF Chang's, right after this.

• 40:57Josh Clark?

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• 41:14Speaker 02

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• 41:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 41:42Speaker 02

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• 42:06Josh Clark?

  World Mental Health Day takes place in October and it's really meant to be more than just awareness. It's about actually taking the next step and getting support if you need it.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  But a lot of people still talk themselves out of therapy. They think it's too expensive. They're not sure if it'll actually work. They don't know how to find the right therapist or they just get overwhelmed trying to navigate the whole system.

• 42:25Josh Clark?

  And that's exactly what Rula is built to fix. Rula makes therapy feel a lot more approachable, a lot more human. You can find a therapist who actually fits your needs, not just whoever's available. And with insurance, sessions average around $15 copay.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can sign up in just a few minutes. You can get matched with the right provider and even book something as soon as the next day.

• 42:44Josh Clark?

  And it's not just about starting. Rula helps you stay consistent and actually make progress because taking care of your mental health isn't a one-time thing. So if you've been thinking about therapy, don't talk yourself out of it. This is a really easy way to take that first step.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula.com. That is R-U-L-A dot com to find a therapist the easy way.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  All right. So we're going to start off talking a little bit about how PF Chang's came about. A restaurant that I think I might've been to once. I definitely picked it up a lot as a P A in the film business to, for like big production meetings. So I can't speak to its quality. It's supposed to be pretty good, right?

• 43:36Josh Clark?

  PF Chang's?

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's, it's good. I mean, especially for, compared to typical, I would not call it a high-end chain, no more than you'd call Cheesecake Factory a high-end chain.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Well.

• 43:49Josh Clark?

  It's, it's virtually on the same level of dining.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 43:54Josh Clark?

  I'm not taking a shot at it. I'm just saying like it's not, it's not like the place that you went to in Vegas.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right.

• 44:02Josh Clark?

  Or Peking duck in Fall, I think Fall, Falls Church, Virginia, which is an amazing spot. It's just like you can go to a mall and it, there might be one attached to it if it's a nice mall. Regardless, it is tasty, especially compared to like Chinese takeout. It's definitely several steps up from that.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Okay, I got you.

• 44:24Josh Clark?

  It's just really hard to, like what high end restaurant has 300 locations?

• 44:30Speaker 02

  No.

• 44:30Josh Clark?

  Like when you have 300 locations, you're starting to work in economies of scale. It's really tough to keep like any kind of cuisine just top notch in that sense.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And I want to quickly plug, since you mentioned Cheesecake Factory are again friends of the show and friends in real life. Adam Pranica and Ben Harrison of the Greatest Generation Podcast have a side podcast called Factory Seconds, where they're working their way through the, the menu of the Cheesecake Factory, one item at a time.

• 44:57Josh Clark?

  Those two could not be any greater American treasures.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty great.

• 45:03Josh Clark?

  I love those guys.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Adam's uncle actually is the voice of the Memphis Grizzlies as the announcer, basketball team. And apparently Cheesecake Factory is huge with NBA players. And I was like, why? And his uncle, he was like, because there's one in every city. It's the same menu. It's a huge menu. The portions are huge and they, and the quality is always the same.

• 45:25Josh Clark?

  Economies of scale.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Well, I was wrong. Apparently they make all their stuff fresh. It's not like bagged food.

• 45:32Josh Clark?

  Oh, I.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  If you believe that.

• 45:34Josh Clark?

  Actually, no, I don't.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  It's, it's true.

• 45:38Josh Clark?

  That is a little surprising, but I mean, it's not like I'm hating on Cheesecake Factory. It's just.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  I've never been.

• 45:45Josh Clark?

  Oh, it's, it's, they have a really varied menu that's, yeah, the portions are gigantic. And their cheesecakes are pretty great.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  All right. Well, I'm going to be a guest on that show at some point. So next time in LA, we're going to go to one and then I'm going to be a guest and I can't wait.

• 45:59Josh Clark?

  Good.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Anyway, a long way around describing PF Chang's, there was a woman named Cecilia Chiang, with an I in there, from San Francisco. And she, in, I believe before 1965, before that immigration law, opened a high-end restaurant there called Mandarin. And she said, no chop suey in my menu, and no egg foo young. All this Chinatown stuff is a no-no. And she owned a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo, years ago. And her husband got a diplomatic post there. So that's why she was, you know, doing Chinese food there. And Mandarin opened in 1961. And that's where all of a sudden, people were exposed to like Kung Pao chicken, tea smoked duck, Moo Shu pork, pot stickers, like some of the really good stuff.

• 46:43Josh Clark?

  And authentic stuff.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. She sold the, her son Philip, the restaurant Mandarin in 1989. And he is one of the co-founders of PF Chang's.

• 46:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Philip F. Chang, but he dropped the I.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 46:59Josh Clark?

  So PF Chang's, pretty large chain, 300 restaurants. It's definitely nothing to sneeze at. But if you really want to talk economy of scales, let's talk Panda Express. They have 2,000 more restaurants than PF Chang's does, 2,300 in the United States, right?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, food court city. But yeah.

• 47:20Josh Clark?

  Have you had Panda Express?

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have. I used to eat it when I was younger. I'm not going to say it's like, not any good, but you know, it's Chinese fast food. And it's just not something I would eat now. I would in a pinch. It's not like I'd turn my nose up at it. But I have been there before. You?

• 47:40Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, a couple of times. And yeah, it is fast food. And it's, it's great for fast food. It's just such a, it's just different. It's not, you know, Taco Bell or McDonald's or even like Chipotle or something. It's just Chinese version, the Chinese version of fast food.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, apparently it's a family run business though, uh, even though it's this huge chain. And in the seventies, they just had a few little sit down restaurants and it kind of grew very naturally and organically as a family business, which I never knew, which is pretty cool.

• 48:12Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. And if you're a fan of orange chicken, you can thank the, your friends at Panda Express. Cause they debuted it in 1987 and now you can find it basically everywhere, but they were the ones who came up with it.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. What, what's your order in a Chinese restaurant or for takeout?

• 48:27Josh Clark?

  I'm trying some Hunan tonight because I don't normally eat that and I want to see what it's like. But typically a garlic chicken of some sort. I like savory brown sauces, umami brown sauces. Usually chicken, if I'm really feeling crazy, maybe like a happy family or something like that.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Are you white rice or fried rice?

• 48:46Josh Clark?

  White steamed rice.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Mmm, boy, I gotta have that fried rice.

• 48:51Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah. There's too many peas in fried rice and peas are one of my most hated things on the entire planet.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I love peas.

• 48:57Josh Clark?

  I hate peas.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I gotta get that fried rice. I'll get a lot of sweet and sour chicken or sesame chicken. Got to get the egg roll. I'll take a beef and broccoli if people have ordered it, but that's not my order. But I'll also try a lot of stuff. If I'm at a big group and someone's just ordering a bunch of Chinese food, I'll, I'll eat almost all of it.

• 49:14Josh Clark?

  Do you ask them first?

• 49:16Speaker 02

  What, like what to order?

• 49:18Josh Clark?

  No, can I have some of your order?

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, for sure. Uh, and then, you know, if you're in a place, uh, not all cities have this stuff, but if you're in a place that has the really good authentic stuff and you get dim sum or some pork buns or soup dumplings, like all that stuff is great, but you can't find that everywhere.

• 49:36Josh Clark?

  No. I really want some Chinese food now.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Uh, it's gonna happen. Um, that's the first thing I ordered after our week at the beach in South Carolina, after eating, you know, coastal seafood, American seafood. I was like, I can eat some Chinese food.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  So, um, America's not the only place that took Chinese food and said, here, eat meat this orange and squeezed it together and then fried it. Um, that's like I said at the outset, this happened all over the world. And apparently, I'm not on TikTok much, as in ever.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Same.

• 50:07Josh Clark?

  But there was a thing on TikTok a couple of years ago where American people picked up on UK, British, Chinese food and were like, what are you guys doing over there?

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't see any of that either, but apparently it was pretty funny. Uh, apparently the, the food in the UK, the Chinese food is a lot different than here in America. It is very popular over there. Um, maybe even the, one of the top two, uh, maybe even the top food in the country.

• 50:36Josh Clark?

  I saw that it definitely was by a long shot.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Oh, really? Okay. So they love it over there. Um, they will have things like french fries, what they call chips. Uh, a lot, a lot of curry sauces, which is different than us, uh, because there's a lot of great Indian food, obviously, in England and uh, throughout the UK. And they also have something, um, called a chicken ball. And that's just what they call it. It, I looked it up. I tried to find any difference. It looks like the exact same thing we get here in like a sweet and sour chicken. It's just a fried little chunk of chicken.

• 51:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which everybody loves. Even if you don't eat chicken, you'll eat that.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  I couldn't determine though, from looking at first, if it was ground, like a meatball. Uh, but it's not, and they're not even usually round. They're just, you know, chicken.

• 51:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Like a little chicken finger kind of thing.

• 51:22Josh Clark?

  Man, so poor chicken meat has been like subjected to so many different indignities over the years. More than any other meat.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:31Josh Clark?

  So India also has a version of Chinese food that's so popular that some Indian restaurants in the US, I've not seen this, but they'll sometimes have dishes there called Manchurian something or other.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't know that either.

• 51:44Josh Clark?

  I didn't either. I've never run across that. And then in some cities, if the city's big enough, they might have like full-on Indian-Chinese restaurants there where it's the Indian version of Chinese, just like if you had an American version of the Chinese food in India. There's probably some sort of cultural exchange, like they open one here, we have to open one there. It's gotta be balanced.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  It's contractual. The same for Latin America. In the United States, Chinese Cuban restaurants started opening in New York City, of course, in the 1970s. And then what they call, would it be Chino-Latino?

• 52:21Josh Clark?

  I'm going with Chino-Latino.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  I mean, Chino-Latino is what I want to say because it sounds so great. I just wasn't sure if that was right. But they started opening later on. They're in decline in New York now, but apparently, just like everywhere, over the course of centuries, Chinese workers were brought over to Latin America for a lot of reasons, but usually servitude, sadly. But again, they brought their food with them, and their food existed alongside stuff like Cuban food and Peruvian food, and then they start to blend it together. And all of a sudden, you have these cool, like, sort of mix-up dishes.

• 52:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I want to try all of these.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  I do, too.

• 52:58Josh Clark?

  And then apparently also, South Africa has Afro-Cantonese. And that was, again, developed out of a Chinese community that were brought there as indentured workers back, all the way back in the 19th century, basically just like America. But, and also just like America, as more and more Chinese immigrants have come, higher-end, more Chinese authentic dishes have kind of become more favorited than just the Afro-Cantonese version.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Afro Cantonese, just to my ear, sounds delicious.

• 53:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I, yeah, again, I said it, said it before and I'll say it again. I really want some Chinese food right now.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna happen and we're recording earlier, so it's like creeping onto lunchtime right now.

• 53:42Josh Clark?

  Are you doing it for lunch? I'm gonna make myself wait until dinner and really titillate myself.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, I can't get it for lunch. I'll, well, I'll probably do a skip lunch and order it for dinner.

• 53:51Josh Clark?

  There you go.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  Uh, but this has inspired me to, I've been wanting to do, uh, an episode on Cajun food, but it was very intimidating, like Cajun, sort of Creole stuff, because there's so many influences. I was just like, we're gonna screw it up, but this, this is, uh, maybe more brave.

• 54:08Josh Clark?

  Well, uh, if we do Cajun food, we have to consult our good friend and friend of the show, Doug Shashery.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah?

• 54:15Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right, Doug.

• 54:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, when he brought us a boudin balls at our New Orleans show and we ate them on stage.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, what a guy, he's great.

• 54:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, he's wonderful. So, yeah, plus his last name's Shashery, so he knows what he's talking about with Cajun food.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 54:31Josh Clark?

  Uh, well, since we talked about our friend Doug Shashery, uh, here on the episode, uh, as was predicted back in 2008. By the way, Chuck, today's the 17th anniversary of Stuff You Should Know.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Today?

• 54:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, happy anniversary, baby.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Wow, happy anniversary, love.

• 54:48Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, anyway, on to it. Uh, as was predicted back in 2008, since we said Doug Shashery's name, we've unlocked listener mail.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Boy, that's about as fan-fairy as we get, huh?

• 55:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we don't, yeah, we don't, we don't do that kind of stuff, you know? I mean, we don't do media tours or anything and say, look at us, everybody, look at us, you know? We do that every week, anyway.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Who wants to do that? Uh, this is a correction. Hey, guys, heard your short stuff on Tulip Mania and wanted to point out that Tulip Mania is now largely believed to be a myth. I only found out about that a few years ago myself when I heard an interview from the author Anne Goldgar. She discovered the historical reality when she dug into the archives to research her book Tulip Mania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age. The myth was largely promulgated, great word, by Scotsman Charles Mackey in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. And he sent along articles from Smithsonian and History.com and even Wikipedia that said, although Mackey's

• 55:50Speaker 02

  book is a classic, citation needed, his account is contested, citation needed. Many modern scholars believe that the mania was not as destructive as described. I'm a little behind on some of the shows, guys. Perhaps others have written in, but no one else has written in, Richard. So you're the only one. So way to go.

• 56:10Josh Clark?

  I've seen that on the internets here or there since we released it. But I mean, honestly, Chuck, we used a lot of different sources for that. And I mean, yes, you can make a case that it was exaggerated, but the idea that it's a myth is, I did not run across that. But who knows? And if it was, then I feel a lot of dismay that we released an episode where we were catfished by history.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  By the tulip maniacs?

• 56:35Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. We'll have to get to the bottom of it. Who wrote that?

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Richard.

• 56:39Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Richard. We appreciate that. Thank you for setting us straight publicly. And if you want to be like Richard and set us straight publicly, you can send us an email to, send it off to [email protected].

• 56:55Speaker 03

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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