China Doesn't Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food (2014)
munchies.vice.com
munchies.vice.com
There are two types of Chinese food you can get in America (well, more given all the regional variations, but I'm making a point...). If you went to a strip mall, walked into a P.F. Chang's, and had General Tso's Chicken, that's not Chinese food. But if you walked into an unmarked doorway in Chinatown, walked down a flight of stairs to a very dingy basement, held up a few fingers to tell the hostess how many people were in your party, and then ordered off a menu where nothing was in English and everything either had tendons or organ meat - you're probably getting something pretty close to what you would get in China.
You can get the latter experience in most major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and Canada, but you have to know where to look. Restaurants like that don't send out coupons with the normal advertising circular - basically anything that advertises in an English-language publication is American Chinese food.
To be a touch contrarian, I'd even argue that the kind of food served in some of the newer chain restaurants isn't even proper traditional American-Chinese food (which seems to have shown up sometime in the late 19th, early 20th century). One of the things I've come to appreciate after lots of travel and lots of <insertcountry>-Chinese food is how well developed and embedded American-Chinese food is as an American cuisine.
There's rough variants of it in Western Europe when you can find it, but it's a little different. But you can find an American-Chinese restaurant in almost every po-dunk country town across the entirety of America. I've been to places where the only places around to get prepared foods was a local gas station and a Chinese takeout. And the menu is both incredibly standardized, but quintessentially American.
P.F. Chang, Ka Pao, and a couple other of the new food places seem to be putting an effort to "de-ethnic" the food and make the preparation and presentation of it shift a bit more into familiar American diets. It's actually kind of hard to talk about without ending up confused with the words, but the nearest I can think of is a spectrum from:
<food somebody from China would recognize> - to - <food an American would routinely make for themselves>
These new Chinese dining places seem to shift a bit more to the American side, and lose some of that scrappy mom&pop Chinese takeout joint charm and replace it with fresh faced, often Caucasian college kids serving healthy optioned brown rice and not too spicy or oily (and not too tasty) variants of American-Chinese favorites.
America has a lot of very interesting quasi-ethnic cuisines that are no longer recognizable by the people from their origins, but also don't really exist outside of the U.S. in any meaningful way.
Some day, perhaps, we'll just think of it as "food" and it'll be solidly on the right of that weird spectrum, much in the way Ramen is thought of as "food" in Japan even though it's also Chinese-Japanese cuisine. P.F. Chang's is a step towards Ramenizing American-Chinese food, but it still makes me feel a bit sad.
My only hope is the more recent trend of more "authentic" regional and modern Chinese cuisine finally starting to show up as a new wave in the U.S. Non-scary (for Americans), high quality, and tasty Chinese foods are starting to appear in American cities, often with an American-Chinese section on the menu.
Haven't eaten there, but have passed the place plenty of times (girlfriend's Mom used to live in Indiantown).
At the Chino-Latino places, you would get toasted slices of italian bread and butter instead of fried noodles and duck sauce and you could get you favorite sides like mofongo or tostones.
I miss the experience. My mom would treat us to it when she could.
Here in AZ there's Chino Bandido that attempts this fusion, and many seem to like it. Personally I, a mexican, was not particularly impressed. On the other hand I thoroughly enjoy the Jap-Mex Sushirrito. Then again the whole of Mexican food here in the US is at least somewhat americanized too.
This is a relatively recent development, BTW. I grew up in small town Michigan. In the 70s, when we wanted Chinese food, we actually drove 30 minutes to Sarnia, Canada. (Or cooked it ourselves.) In the 80s, a place finally opened in town. As late as the early 90s we were still occasionally going for Chinese in Canada because they were still marginally better than the local places. But in the last 20 years only nostalgia would get me going to Sarnia primarily for Chinese food. (The dim sum place in Windsor is a different matter!)
I have nothing against those cuts, Chinese food just really doesn't need to be exoticized any more than it already is.
For that matter, there's plenty of great authentic Chinese restaurants with marked doorways, at ground level and with english menus.
The problem is that "Chinese food" as a category is really an enormous oversimplification, and even in China you can go to a place and be disappointed ordering something they don't know how to make. Furthermore, Chinese dish names are essentially the ingredients + main method of preparation, which while unambiguous in Chinese, sound quite mysterious and unappealing when literally translated (e.g, one of my favorite dishes, 'boiled fish'). So ordering in english is kind of a crapshoot.
Therefore, I always feel an obligation to defend the PF Chang's and Panda Expresses of the world when this topic comes up. To someone outside of China, what is Chinese food, other than something Chinese people like to eat? Perhaps it's illustrative to point out that in China, you go to "Western food" restaurants to eat anything perceived as coming from that general direction...
Oh, and there are "nice" restaurants that aren't in the basement too. Chinese immigrants are overall much wealthier than they used to be, and the restaurants that cater to them have gotten more upscale as well. The dingy basement thing has kind of become a second niche in big cities, for adventurous Americans in search of authenticity.
Just ask autochthonous Italians eating abroad - every single Italian restaurant serve plates that are too greasy, too flavored, too spicy or whatever. And you can't get a good cup of coffee almost anywhere around the world, because outside of Italy the burnt flavor is often praised as a brew having 'character'.
But that's fine, because Italian flavors are not really to the liking of Englishmen and vice versa. Carbonara being made with cream instead of egg is often done not because the places can't look a recipe off internet, but because that's what locals expect in term of flavor and consistency.
Likewise for the absurdly loaded pizzas with three dozen ingredients: it tastes great both ways and I'm not gonna tell the One Italian Way is superior, but Italians are more used to a single strong flavor per plate, while abroad that'd be just plain and boring. So everything adapts.
I dab in international dishes at home, but if a Mexican would eat my chili he'd have a stroke - but for other Italians? They all say it's super, because it's modulated to our taste.
In part, this is also a problem of not having enough names for things. I guess there would be much less arguments over pizza if the Italian and American versions just had completely different names.
In the end, if I order an "Italian" pizza I actually do expect it to be made according to the One Italian Way, and would be disappointed if it's not.
I don't think anyone could accuse for example American Italian food of being a "bland" copy of the original. Italian food tends to be more subtle in flavour and with more focus on accentuating a single ingredient. American Italian is much bigger bolder flavors often mixing several strong flavours. You can argue that it's simplistic, boring and perhaps even unrefined if you're in that sort of mood, but hardly bland.
I actually do expect it to be made according to the One Italian Way
Except I've had fair amount of pizza in Italy and there is no One Italian Way.
Also agree on the pizza, of course there is no single Italian way. But you would hardly expect e.g. a deep-dish pizza when there.
http://ricette.donnamoderna.com/torta-salata-in-rosso
http://lericettedisimona.blogspot.it/2013/09/torta-salata-ma...
now recipes usually call for a base which is different from pizza's, but that's mostly convenience because you can get good one out of common stores.
Most of the authentic Chinese resteraunts in the San Gabriel Valley are not in basements, but in strip malls. Heck, these days china town isn't the best place for Chinese food in most cities (seattle, San Francisco, Beijing, Vancouver), rather some suburb they has a large rich Chinese population is. Most of the authentic food you get in American china towns are very old school Cantonese, while Chinese food is much more diverse than that.
Pretty effective recipe for food poisoning you got there.
Whereof one knows not one must be silent.
However, China has a wide range of food stiles. And, there is plenty of back and forth. Much like how Pitza is not really Italian you can still find it in Italy.
My wife tells that me that in china, you get diversity even in north american chains: pizza hut there is apparently considered "fancy food" and you can get all sorts of interesting things from KFC or mcdonalds.
Ten years ago, but not so much now.
Off topic, I wish there was more Uighur food around the US - that stuff is fantastic.
Chinese food can also have fusion twists (e.g. there's a chinese indian restaurant a few miles away from where I live), but each regional cuisine also has rich local culturalism, and in addition, chinese cuisine can be surprisingly technical. It's downright impressive the number of different ways you can have beef noodles, for example.
New England: clam chowder, lobster rolls
Southeast: barbecue, cornbread, grits, sweet tea
Texas: steaks, Tex-Mex
Louisiana: Cajun and Creole cuisine
Southwest: similar to Mexican cuisine
California: avocados on everything
In China you can find pretty authentic[1] Italian, Japanese and Thai food, even bread, but also very localized versions [Americans would say they are not authentic]
What you describe is something I've seen with semi-indentured hands, people who paid lots of money to get here and have to work off their journey. They don't have a lot of spare money left and they go to these joints --it's cheap, it's fulfilling meal.
Is authentic Chinese the buffet served Richard Nixon, or is it the stall food? Is it what rich Chinese eat, or what your average low-skilled worker eats?
[1]by authentic I mean you can easily find these varieties in their home country although people in the home country can debate what the authentic version is (ex. ala Bolognese and spaghetti or tagliatelle)
Italian-American is a different kitchen. Just like British-Indian food. Or Tex-Mex.
Sometimes these adaptations are pretty good (the British Indian food, which is what everyone outside india thinks of as "Indian food" is pretty good!) but for some reason the US-chinese, US-Italian and US-Mexican (Tex-Mex) cuisine is an embarrassment to the originals.
I'm not really familiar with US-Chinese but you're wrong about Tex-Mex and at least one kind of Italian-American food. I'd be surprised if you were wrong about US-Chinese food because UK, DE and IE Chinese food are all awful.
In English an ethnie's way of cooking is a cuisine not a kitchen.
Cuisine in Italy is extremely regionalized. Pizza has only been a "national" food for perhaps 50 years. At home we cook pizza perhaps once every week or two, but when my grandparents were young, it wasn't even a word here in the North. 30 years ago pizza was never in my school's menu, while nowadays they have it.
On the other hand, I have never tried Chicago-style pizza, because it's just not a thing here. I am actually really curious about it, and would like to taste it---perhaps unlike most of my fellow countrymen.
This is exactly the same with all food, everywhere. Cultures appropriate and modify stuff they get from other cultures, continually. Americans did it with Chinese, sure. And also Italian as you point out. And Mexican. And Japanese (the modern conception of "fancy maki rolls" is mostly an American export). And the Italians did it too! And the Mexicans! And the Chinese!
The confusion of "authenticity" with "quality" in the comments here is really embarassing. Find good food. Eat it. Sometimes that's a traditional recipe and sometimes it's a recent synthesis.
There is another confounding variable, especially but not exclusively in the US, which is the industrialization of food production. In some ways quality is thus traded off against convenience and cost, but it has nothing to do with the specific origins of the dishes and techniques.
Cultures appropriate food, they always have and they always will. It's a good thing, not a bad thing, even if sometimes you personally don't like to eat the specific items. We should be celebrating the chalupa, not smearing it.
Agreed: maybe the problem though is that the most famous appropriation of international cuisine in the US is done by large chains of restaurants (Olive Garden, Taco Bell, ...) which is both not authentic and low quality - but that correlation is accidental.
As you point out there is tons of very good food in the US of all origins - and to be fair there are likely at least as meny very good (both excellen quality and "authentic", whatever that means) Italian Restaurants in New York than in Rome.
I don't necessarily disagree, but a lot of the time "authentic" can be a decent indicator of quality. In my experience, the best food comes from people who actually eat the food themselves and people who are making the food for motivations other than simple monetary motivations. That's the issue with a lot of "inauthentic" food - the people who make it don't necessarily like it or enjoy eating it, but and are often making it to appeal to what they view as the norm for the surrounding culture in an attempt to make more money.
It's not that non-authentic food can't be great, it's just that often times it's more of a cheap cash-grab. It's the same reason you wouldn't expect food at a movie theater or sports stadium to be great (though there are exceptions).
I don't think it's even about what country you're in. You have similar situations with American food in downtown Manhattan, Italian food in downtown Rome, Chinese food in Shanghai, etc., leading to a lot of low quality food in those places. I actually had more luck finding good, authentic Chinese food when I was traveling through the tourist areas of Italy than I did finding good authentic Italian food.
The linked article is literally about two american expats in china who started a restaurant to recreate the chinese-american comfort food of their youth.
...and people right here in this thread are smearing the whole concept of "chinese-american comfort food" with this crazy authenticity frame.
I mean, come on folks: orange chicken and chow mein are pretty decent food on occasion. Lots of people like them. Their existence has in some small way advanced the way people (not even just americans) think about food. Don't eat it if you don't like it, but don't dismiss it as a "cheap cash grab" either.
Also, all the weird sorts of things you can get on pizza in Japan that are utterly foreign to Americans (and even more so to Italians).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5dDMxJP_n1aVWFmby0ydlJfbW8...
Also, here's a video of Chinese people trying Panda Express (American Chinese fast food) for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4
Edit: wife has corrected me, it's a 馅饼 (xian bing) - roughly translated as a minced meat pancake/pie!
if it's completely sealed it's gonna be some of million kinds of bing
personally i consider everything inferior to donkey sandwich
And it is the second most popular "cuisine" in India after traditional Indian food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Chinese_cuisine
It is similar to the term Tex-Mex which a fusion of Mexican food with American tastes
Chilli Chicken
Gobi Manchurian and many more...
As an Indian who eats traditional Chinese food from various parts of China regularly, I can confirm that there literally isn't any sauce that tastes like Indo-Chinese cuisine's sauces. Indo-Chinese seems like Indian food with ingredients from Chinese food added which makes it a changed version of traditional Indian food rather than a changed version of traditional Chinese food.
One of my life's goals is to get one of my friend from NE China to eat Manchurian food in Mumbai. Results will be interesting.
Edit: Also, I remember a great Indian-Thai-Chinese restaurant in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Three items in particular (Chop Suey, Chow Mein and General Tso Chicken) receive very special ridicule and their appearance on a menu can effectively disqualify any restaurant from further consideration. As the spouse of the above-mentioned I consider it essential that I can avert any incipient noodle deficiency crisis; there are a very few joints - so few I can count them on two fingers - between SFO and San Jose that have received grudging consent and pre-approval for takeout.
(It probably doesn't help that we generally reach SFO or LAX via a layover in HKG or SIN)
But then again, rents are outrageous, so maybe it's just impossible to open a restaurant as an immigrant who is good at cooking.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley in LA is better than in China, since you can find a large number of regional cuisines all in one place, and the raw ingredient quality is higher when compared to mainland China.
BTW, I'm neither American nor Chinese, so I don't have any national pride involved either way. I just happen to have spent multiple years in both countries.
What's the difference between a snob and a connoisseur? You should taste the terrible coffee I make myself.
Many chinese people in the bay area who can't stand it don't like sweet dishes in general. If they're more from the west, they often complain about not being to find authentically spicy food.
- Is it healthy?
- Does it taste good to me?
If something is healthy and delights your taste buds, then why bother trying to find out whether it's authentic? Conversely, why force yourself to eat something you enjoy less, just because it happens to be "authentic" or because "other people like it"? Who cares if the stuff you're eating is highly evolved/bastardized from the original, as long as you like it?
Because food reflects culture, and is an interesting and often pleasurable way to connect with it. Exploring other cultures is important.
Because some tastes are acquired, and take effort. Diversity in experience is important.
Taken to its extreme, your attitude would have us all drinking flavored Soylent.
And besides, by educating your palate with tastes that do not exist in your country you can discover things that you would never have thought you would like.
Ironically enough, this very obsession with authenticity stunts the evolution, innovation and diversity of cuisines. As a foodie, I consider this to be the real tragedy.
There is also a degree related to it: while you can develop a taste for say, for example, some dish you found originally bland (it was the case for an Indian friend of mine who came to Europe from a place where spicy is the norm), I doubt it would happen for something you found utterly revolting.
I am personally all for fusion food and experimenting as long as the original meals are preserved. I am for enriching, but against replacing.
Surely this is worth making exceptions for when the situation demands it? I'm all in favour of eating healthily in general but you're missing out on some amazing experiences if you're sticking to this rule all the time.
How close a restaurants' dishes are to "authentic" ones depends largely on how many generations removed the chef is from their homeland.
Anyway, I'm of Chinese descent. First generation in my family born in Australia, but several more removed from China. So while the food that my family cooks retains Chineseness it also contains influences from the countries that my parents grew up in mixed in with ingredients that were sourceble in Melbourne, Australia in the 80s. That said, due to the relative distance of Australia to Asia during the mid to late 90s, more ingredients came in as the post-Vietnam war migrants settled here and had become further established in the community (so had capital to spend on luxuries like imported ingredients).
Some links that may be of interest: - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-21/humble-chinese-diner-m... - http://www.chia.chinesemuseum.com.au/biogs/CH01148b.htm - Chifa (Chinese Peruvian Cuisine) https://immigrationtalk.org/2013/07/17/chifa-the-story-behin... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean_Chinese_cuisine
You can think of the different versions of it outside China as regional variations as well.
Taco Bell, much like American-Chinese food, or McDonalds, accelerated past cultural escape velocity a long time ago.
See also the concept of American Lite-Beer-like-beverage vs German Beer.
The concept of cultural escape velocity applies to more aspects of culture than just food.
French food is great ... except in France it's very different (and outside of the center of Paris sucks pretty bad)
Turkish fast food, specifically Kebab, is as far as I know a German invention taken up by Turks, rather than something that historically existed in Turkey. Now you might say shaved roasted meat existed there, and you'd be right, but that existed pretty much anywhere, and was prepared very differently. Shish kabob are sticks with goat meat. Sucks that I can't find the typical bread they serve Kebab in in Western Europe anywhere here in Asia.
Chinese food in Asia is SO much better than Chinese food in Europe. Cheap Chinese food in Hong Kong is edible to great (esp. the vegetarian stuff is nice). Cheap Chinese food in Paris ... you'll be sick for days.
But there's very little French about French cuisine in SE Asia. Their idea of traditional French cooking: a steak, with a fat edge attached to it, medium rare, with "edges" (really thick fries thickly covered in spices). No sauce. Great French food in France: a clean steak (no fat or nerves or sinews), one of a few sauces made with cream, meat juice and pepper, bearnaise. Thinly cut (not mcdonalds thin, but still far thinner) fries, a good portion of mixed salad, and some cooked vegetable preparation.
The most authentic and best tasting Vietnamese restaurant in my area is also incidentally the least successful one because they don't know how to cater effectively American tastes.
There is a menu for the Americans and a secret one for Vietnamese people. The Vietnamese one has the really authentic stuff (coagulated pork blood, pork and chicken with bones, REALLY spicy dishes) etc.
The other two Vietnamese restaurants in town do a lot more business (nice decor, lighting, menu, everything is somewhat Americanized etc.) but they get lazy and put the wrong kind of broths in different soups because only Vietnamese people will notice.
Anyway, the best way I've found to get "authentic" food in the US is to try to find an urban center with a LOT of one kind of ethnic population and then just go wherever they go.
There are simple rolls which wrap, fish and rice in seaweed. Sometimes wa few, sparse other ingredients like shallots or cucumbers make there way into the roll.
Then, Sushi gets taken to America, and what I can only assume was a creative solution to the problem of limited access to fresh fish, sushi was transformed into the decadent "maki" rolls that dominate sushi menus in the US. Cheese, fruits, vegetables, fish, meats. US maki rolls that have nearly a dozen ingredients are not uncommon.
Both styles of sushi are amazing, though very different. More like cousins than the same type of cuisine.
Reminds me of how cocktails were invented during prohibition to mask the bad taste of moonshine. Japanese shushi is to American maki what wine is to martinis.
I think when cuisines get transported to foreign counties, they get changed to adapt to their new environment.
>It is a common Japanese legend that the truly great itamae-san ("san" is an honorific suffix) should be able to create nigirizushi in which all of the rice grains face the same direction.
While that's definitely an exaggeration, it gives you an idea of the importance of rice in Japanese sushi. Basically, it's taking something that's naturally chaotic (like cooked rice grains that just stick together in whatever fashion), and bring their entropy down to become something ordered by using the most efficient motions possible. For that purpose they use hand fans and wood to control the moisture as well as very finely trained hand motions to control the shape of the nigiri as well as the alignments of the grains.
All of that, just so the guest can pick it up with his/her chopsticks, and have it effortlessly fall apart in the mouth, in an explosion of flavour, like a two stage guided cluster bomb targeting your taste buds ;-).
So, yes, you could probably just use an automatic cooker for the cooking process (although the masters sneeze at that of course, but it sure is standard in Japan nowadays up to a certain price level) - but cooking is the easy part, the fun starts after that.
This isn't a convincing argument at all, I could just as easily say "any trained sushi chef knows how to cook rice properly, all they need is Amazon and access to a good rice cooker like Zojirushi".
For what it's worth, I don't believe the idea that rice is the main focus -- it just sounds like the sushi chefs are fucking with people when they say something like that.
a) it was born a few hundred years ago (Edo period) as a take-away food / fast food
b) some forms of it have become a high craft or even art that you can spend a lot of money on (compare to high status Pizzerias in Napoli)
Now whether that's legitimate or not is of course up for discussion - in my opinion it's a legitimate and fulfilling experience that you can have by going to a Sushi master if you can appreciate this kind of craft.
Can't tell if you're trolling, have never been to France, or just went to all the wrong places. The center of Paris would be the worst place to eat any great French food, unless you only care for pretentious, overpriced restaurants which get featured in tourist magazines. Go spend some time in small restaurants in Bretagne, Lyon, Alsace, Marseille, ...
> Cheap Chinese food in Paris ... you'll be sick for days.
Paris' immigrant Chinese population has been growing pretty wildly recently, and I've been to many Chinese restaurants with Chinese friends who are studying in France who find them pretty legit. Again, sounds like you need a better guide for when you're spending time in France :)
> Turkish fast food, specifically Kebab, is as far as I know a German invention taken up by Turks, rather than something that historically existed in Turkey.
Wikipedia disagrees with you:
"With time, the meat took a different marinade, got leaner, and eventually took its modern shape. It was not until a century later, that döner kebab was introduced and popularized in Istanbul, most famously by Beyti Güler. His restaurant, first opened in 1945, was soon discovered by journalists and began serving döner and other kebab dishes to kings, prime ministers, film stars and celebrities. [...]
In Germany the döner kebab was popularized by Turkish guest workers in the early 1970s with a center in Berlin."
Hah! Lyon is the stomach of France, and it is very, very outside of Paris. There are many regions with amazing food in France. You're probably trying to make a point, but what you wrote makes no sense.
Others said it already you but you must be trolling; there is such incredible food to eat outside of Paris that we never get to Paris anymore. If you are not trolling you must've had really bad luck as in many places in France but outside Paris you'll trip over lovely food.
For the cuisine I cannot say (but I know it's a popular opinion to love it) I find Hong Kong very impressive; I went to all Michelin stars there (they change rapidly over the years and lose stars as easily as they get them) and it's just ok food. I find far better food in Shanghai and for some dishes (mushroom auntie dumplings) I would even say that I had better luck in Suzhou. Hong Kong seems to have far too many tourists/immigrants to sustain any authentic flavours (anecdote: we had lunch a few days ago and someone from the UK was barking at the waiter that his food was too spicy). There are some good Indian/Nepalese places in HKG but often you have to tell you are used to Indian food, otherwise you get the bland version (and that does not only mean not spicy as in chilis which is a matter of taste, but other spices are left out as well).
Ofcourse everything is a matter of taste when it comes to food, so not arguing, just hoping people will try more stuff open minded.
Sure there will always be places where someone native wants his home food and does all the hard work to put it together. But those are very few.
As Portuguese living across multiple European countries, including two years in France, my only complaint about french restaurants is the average price they cost, making going out an event instead of "I don't feel like cooking".
That is not quite correct. The Kebab ("grilled meat") is genuinely Turkish. To put it into flatbread was the invention of a Turkish immigrant to Germany, in Berlin in the 1970's [1]. From there it rose to prominence as fastfood all over Germany, and subsequently internationally.
[1] http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/doener-erfinder-...
I may just have to try it out some day and see what the fuss is all about. Maybe it's the east coast version of Kung Pao chicken (i.e. a quintessential dish)
Speaking of east coast dishes I don't see in the SF bay area are NY style calzones or knishes.
See more here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/chop-suey-...
Restaurants change hands frequently in cities. Actual family owned restaurants that have passed through generations are a small minority.
There are a handful of "Chinese" food distributors in the US that provide for most restaurants. It's more akin to opening a McDonald's.
Distribution still doesn't have the greatest online presence, but here's one of the east coast distributors. http://nywtc.com
I had assumed the change was due to a massive wave of immigration in the 1980s. But if all of the food was a deliberate creation for the American market, why didn't they stick with what was already popular?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/chop-suey-...