Cecilia Chiang, SF chef who brought authentic Chinese food to US, dies at 100 | Hacker News Reader

Cecilia Chiang, SF chef who brought authentic Chinese food to US, dies at 100

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85 pointswallflower30 comments

Somewhat less authentically, the "Chang" of PF Chang is her son Philip Chiang, who had to change even his own name to better suit American palates. Mongolian Beef, California rolls and a Great Wall of Chocolate, anyone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._F._Chang%27s_China_Bistro

nothing wrong with that, seems to have done very well for himself.

His daughter, Siena, cited in the article is product manager of PillPack, the online pharmacy that sold to Amazon in 2018.

Its a shame what happened to PF Changs. They had perfected American Chinese food, which really seems to be under appreciated as its own type of food. The typical place might have good Mongolian beef but then just buy the cheapest worst chicken so General Tso's is garbage. Another place might actually care about properly frying their chicken and have incredible Orange chicken but just not care at all about their lo mein. PF Changs used to have one of the best versions of everything you could find at a typical American Chinese restaurant.

But at some point they were bought out by a company that was intent on squeezing every penny out of the place and didn't care about quality. The sauces changed for the lettuce wraps to obviously cheaper ingredients, then the waiters stopped even making the sauces. Prices of the all the dishes went up as the serving sizes shrunk. Then the quality just went to shit.

When I lived in Asia, I could obviously get amazing authentic Chinese food. But, whenever I visited home I would always get a turkey sub first (turkey is harder to find than a good sub sandwich in general) and then American Chinese food. PF Changs used to easily fill that niche and was ruined by a bunch of terrible people who I'm sure got promotions and now are ruining some other restaurant while increasing profits for the owners.

To people who enjoys food: you never know what you've missed if you never been to Sichuan or Chongqing.

The weird thing about Chengdu is that they don’t have kungpao chicken, which is actually just Beijing-style Sichuan food. You can have inauthentic Chinese food even China.

https://youtu.be/-AZ87qyHQ88 The video is a Sichuan master chef showing the cooking procedure. He speaking of Sichuan accented mandarin.

Gongbao jiding is traditional Sichuan dish. You might simply did not see that on menu at chengdu. Sichuan has 80million people, chengdu 16million, it’s expected to see highly clustered food style even in a city.

宫保鸡丁 was invented by a Beijjng chef serving a mandarin on assignment in Sichuan, they had some visitors but didn’t have much time to prepare something, so they came up with that at the last minute, which impressed the visitors and became popular “back home.” Truly the definition of transplanted food (like how lemon chicken is popular in the states as canonical hunan food but is not anything of the sort).

There are dishes that resemble it that are authentic Sichuan (eg laziji), so you are more likely to find something similar with a different name.

I’ve been through much of Sichuan province, though much of that (Eg Daocheng) was actually Tibetan where Sichuan food was considered transplanted by default.

So you are saying a dish should be named after the chef who cooked it?

A beijing chef cook in Sichuan, using the local cooking style and technique, are still considered a Beijing dish, that's what you implied here.

I am not saying it's wrong. But that's not how Chinese people think about the dish...

That’s the story the Chinese go with, and it seems pretty reliable since it happened relatively recently during the Qing dynasty.

It wasn’t named after the chef, but his boss of course.

The fact that some food is more popular outside of the regions they represent isn’t really weird. You see that a lot with Chinese food inside and outside of China.

Thanks for “educating” myself, a Chinese, about how a story goes by Chinese.

I wonder how many non Chinese people holding the same analytic rigorous as yours, claiming a story as authoritative over other interpretations, which were held by actual Chinese...

That’s manifested in popular culture, like in the well received, yet awkwardly dismissive to many Chinese people, movie “The farewell”. It has this line of thought that the life of a Chinese belongs to his/her family, and so the old granny were deprived of knowing her cancer diagnose. A hilariously nonsensical idea.

People were hiding from cancer diagnosis, because cancers were thought to be death sentence, and for many who were deemed financially impossible to afford the treatment, or is in a terminal state that death was inevitable, people were hidden from that to help them live a relatively less stressful last stage of their life.

The nonsense of “life belongs to family” is such a fitting story goes by Chinese, according the western perspective...

> Thanks for “educating” myself, a Chinese, about how a story goes by Chinese.

You welcome? I mean, its not like you can't find plenty of documentation on this if you are Chinese, it was only invented in the 19th century, its not like it was invented during the Qin dynasty where documentation is hard to come by and largely via folk tails.

Sorry for being sarcastic.

I meant to say that foreigner should respect the local view. Not blindly apply scientific judgement based on the data.

Your tone of comments appears assuming a stance of authority over a local person (a Chinese here). That makes me uncomfortable.

And finally, I did not see your references of proof. And I have given the youtube video with the Sichuan chef.

BTW, that's not the story goes by Chinese.

I dont know that story born and raised in China for 24 years. And I have eaten countless meals of "Gongbao Jiding"

North China cuisine is itself a reverse adaptation of Mongol/Manchu adaptation of Chinese cuisine.

Maybe "The Mandarin" was authentic, I don't think I went there, but having lived in SF for 11 years I never found any authentic asian food in SF. I found some in Fremont. There's plenty in San Gabriel, Alhambra, and other places on the north east side of LA but SF, nothing. No authentic Japanese, no authentic Chinese, no authentic Vietnamese, no authentic Korean, no authentic Taiwanese, no authentic Malay/Singapore/Indonesian.

SF is big on sauces and spices and has a wide variety of cuisine in general and it might have become a very localized taste to stay competitive on the flavor explosion people look for and compare experiences with.

I’ve had a variety of cuisine from chefs that had the same restaurant in their home country, I also went to their home country and tried the same dish at the same restaurant and found it comparatively bland. Off the top of my head I can only think of a ramen spot in Japan.

What? This statement is so hyperbolic.

- Pho in general in the US is pretty close to Pho in Ho Chi Minh. i.e. Turtle Tower doing Chicken Pho is pretty good and close.

- Dim sum is dim sum. The places in Chinatown serve a Ha Gau or Siu Mai and largely the same in Hong Kong... how is it not authentic?

- Japanese... Nigiri, sashimi is.... authentic? To say there's zero authentic Japanese seems too. Seriously, sashimi how is it not authentic? It's "just" a piece of cut fish.

If you're speaking about quality then 100% I agree. The quality/etc... is not nearly as amazing as the origin locations, but the flavors aren't drastically different.

Come to Singapore where all foods have sugar added which considerably changes the flavor profile.

To claim zero authentic in SF...

[EDIT] To qualify my side - authenticity should be a very low bar, which should be ingredients, quantity and process should match to generally create a similar flavor profile.

It shouldn't matter who, where, what the place looks like.

That style of pho is OK I find, I couldn’t find what I got in hanoi. I was on a quest for a good dimsum in SF and tried a bunch of places until I gave up, maybe I should try these places. Japanese is not just about sushi unfortunately.

Oh I agree, I think "good dimsum" is very hard to find even in SF.

"Good dimsum" != "authentic dimsum". That's all I'm trying to get at with the parent comment.

For the bad dimsum restaurants in SF, I could point you to a dimsum place in HK that's equally bad as long as the flavor profiles match.

There are lots of bad restaurants in HK. Does that make them not authentic? Of course not, so quality does not equate to authenticity.

The original article is talking about authenticity because that was a real problem. The flavors were changing as they came to America, by a lot.

Most of overpriced Hongkong dimsum is rather so so. Most find that Hongkong cuisine to be an evolution of Cantonese food towards a rather coarse side.

Similarly, the rustic side of Malaysian, and Singaporean Chinese cuisines is due to them having origin as food of laborers.

Yeah I also find this hard to believe. The easiest way to find authentic Chinese food and Asian food in the Bay Area is to look around a 99 Ranch market. There's one in Fremont, which I imagine is where you went, but there's also one in Daly City, and one in Milpitas.

There are TONS of authentic Asian restaurants around each of those locations. Like more than you can believe. Unless you think that all the grandmas eating there are on a Saturday night or Sunday morning are all confused about what they're eating.

(You can't make a good Asian restaurant with ingredients from Costco or Safeway, so you have to follow the supplier ...)

What I will say is that if you are a "tech person" who lives in SF, it's pretty hard to find an authentic Asian restaurant. If you live in SOMA or the Mission, there is almost exclusively the over-sauced Americanized stuff that people here are mentioning.

You have to "try" -- the "default" is to eat bad Asian food. It's hard to get over to Geary St. on a weekday. There's stuff in Chinatown that is good, but honestly I've found it hard to sort through.

Another easy way is to tell is to see if there's a whole fish on the menu... Americanized places won't have that.

One surprising/nice thing about the rise of the delivery apps is that it's made some of the food from the western part of the city more accessible. It opens up some different flavors/cooking.

When I was living in the Bay Area circa 2005, there was a Chinese restaurant in SF called the la meizi, so authentically Changsha/Hunanese that they even served stinky tofu.

Hmm, restaurants from Japan have opened locations in SF though. E.g. Hinodeya, Mensho, Tsuta. Did you feel even those weren't authentic?

Similarly, Crystal Jade (RIP) re Chinese food.

They only do fat broth, when I was in Japan broth would be much lighter I found, here I die after a bowl of ramen.

Not like there is a single type of broth in japan. There are really light and really rich thick ones in japan too.

Yeah, but in the US I often find that this is the most common style

This is all dependent on style. I went to many places in Japan where it was easy to get very fatty, dense bowls.

I can remember specifically a very small hole-in-the-wall place in Yokohama that seats maybe 8-10 people (although I suppose that's par for the course for ramen shops). You could choose how rich you wanted the broth to be.

There are many different preparation styles.

Hinodeya broth was about as light as you can get. And I have had equally fatty broth in Japan.

Throw every authentic chinese food in sf list you might have read (for some reason they all list bad restaurants) and go to:

- dumpling specialist

- chongqing xiao mian

- mr zsechuan

- jiang nan

- the pancake house

And that’s it, these were hard to find for sure.

Vietnamese is uber hard to find, but yummy yummy is really good, bunbo at cordon bleu is legit too. I like the buncha At tin.

If you’re saying that there is no good korean, oh boy you’re in for a treat, go to Daeho!

For thai: zen yai is uber legit, be sure to ask for “thai spicy”

Then go to 85C get some good taiwanese pastries, and then to little sweet to go get a hong kong style coconut drink with sago.

For Japanese, just avoid the over hyped places, go to kuishinbo!

Also, go to yemeni kitchen, pakwan, doppio zero, gusto pinsa romana,

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