An article in The Illustrated American on Chinese cuisine in 1897, reproduces a menu from Ma Hung Low's restaurant on Mott Street in New York's Chinatown quarter which includes the dish 'Beef Chop Suey with Bean Sprouts, Water Chestnuts and Boiled Rice.' The dish itself, referred to as 'the standard Chinese dish of chop suey,' is described as 'a stew of beef, chicken, or pork, with bean sprouts, mushrooms, water-lily roots, sprouted grain and unknown flavorings.' In 1898, it is described as 'A Hash of Pork, with Celery, Onions, Bean Sprouts, etc.' ĭuring his travels in the United States, Liang Qichao, a Guangdong (Canton) native, wrote in 1903 that there existed in the United States a food item called chop suey which was popularly served by Chinese restaurateurs, but which local Chinese people do not eat, because the cooking technique is 'really awful'. Ĭhop suey appears in an 1884 article in the Brooklyn Eagle, by Wong Chin Foo, 'Chinese Cooking', which he says 'may justly be so-called the 'national dish of China'.' An 1888 description states it was a 'staple dish for the Chinese gourmand is chow chop svey, a mixture of chickens' livers and gizzards, fungi, bamboo buds, pigs' tripe, and bean sprouts stewed with spices.' An 1896 newspaper report states: 'Chow chop suey is a sort of stew made of chicken's livers and gizzards, calves' tripe, bean sprouts, celery and 'meu', which is a sort of Chinese first cousin to macaroni'. There is no good evidence for any of these stories. To avoid a beating, the cook threw leftover meat and vegetables into a wok and served it to the miners, who loved it and asked what dish it was-he replied 'chopped sui'. Coincidentally, both restaurants are now named Far East Café.Īnother myth is that, in the 1860s, a Chinese restaurant cook in San Francisco was forced to serve something to drunken miners after hours, when he had no fresh food. Restaurants like this are now rare, but were once a common sight in the United States. Yu speculates that shrewd Chinese American restaurant owners took advantage of the publicity surrounding his visit to promote chop suey as Li's favorite. Yet recent research by the scholar Renqui Yu led him to conclude that 'no evidence can be found in available historical records to support the story that Li Hung Chang ate chop suey in the United States.' Li brought three Chinese chefs with him, and would not have needed to eat in local restaurants or invent new dishes in any case. Another story is that Li wandered to a local Chinese restaurant after the hotel kitchen had closed, where the chef, embarrassed that he had nothing ready to offer, came up with the new dish using scraps of leftovers. Another tale is that it was created during Qing Dynasty premier Li Hongzhang's visit to the United States in 1896 by his chef, who tried to create a meal suitable for both Chinese and American palates. One account claims that it was invented by Chinese American cooks working on the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century. įilipino chop suey, introduced during the American colonial period of the Philippines The long list of conflicting stories about the origin of chop suey is, in the words of food historian Alan Davidson, 'a prime example of culinary mythology' and typical of popular foods.

Hong Kong doctor Li Shu-fan likewise reported that he knew it in Toisan in the 1890s.

Anderson, a scholar of Chinese food, traces the dish to tsap seui (杂碎, 'miscellaneous leftovers'), common in Taishan (Toisan), a county in Guangdong province, the home of many early Chinese immigrants to the United States. by Chinese Americans, but the anthropologist E. In Chinese Indonesian cuisine/Dutch Chinese Indonesian cuisine it is known as cap cai (tjap tjoi) (雜菜, 'mixed vegetables') and mainly consists of vegetables.Ĭhop suey is widely believed to have been developed in the U.S. It is typically served with rice but can become the Chinese-American form of chow mein with the substitution of stir-fried noodles for rice.Ĭhop sui has become a prominent part of American Chinese cuisine, Filipino cuisine, Canadian Chinese cuisine, German Chinese cuisine, Indian Chinese cuisine, and Polynesian cuisine. Chop sueyĬhop suey ( / ˈ tʃ ɒ p ˈ s uː i/) is a dish in American Chinese cuisine and other forms of overseas Chinese cuisine, consisting of meat (usually chicken, pork, beef, shrimp or fish) and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery and bound in a starch-thickened sauce. For the song by System of a Down, see Chop Suey! For other uses, see Chop suey (disambiguation).

For the New England dish, see American chop suey.

Chop suey restaurant det