26 Andrew Yuen
I think when we hear about a Chinese restaurant in America, I usually get images of Panda Express, of culturally appropriated food fragmented and adjusted for an American pallet. I think of American businessmen who have found the idea of “foreign eastern” food so appealing, and yet have had to rectify it to make it more digestible to a standard market. And yet, I don’t think that’s the whole story. When my uncle moved from Guangzhou to America and started his restaurant in the Sunset District of San Francisco, he found himself in a community that often had a lot more Western rather than Asian residents. When he found himself adjusting his dishes to match the community, it was not an act of appropriation, but rather an act of understanding, of settling into his environment and finding a way to spread his love of Chinese food to those around him.
