Chop Suey The Most Chinese of Chinese Dishes
Recently many folk have found it quite important to discern if their ethnic food is authentic or "Americanized". One dish that has been given the "Americanized" label is chop suey. This means that chop suey is a Chinese dish that is only found in American Chinese restaurants. Thus many people believe that chop suey is not really Chinese. This is simply not true. Chop suey is the most authentic Chinese dish off all. Most Southern Chinese grew up eating chop suey every night of the week, they just did not know it. Why is this? Because in China chop suey is the name of the dish that most Chinese simply know as dinner.
To understand why Chinese do not know that they have been eating chop suey all there life's you have to understand were the name chop suey comes from. It all started in San Francisco in the 1860's. Thousands off Cantonese Chinese men came to America to work on the railroads and mines. When these Chinese men were in San Francisco most of these men would not cook at home for lack of time and know how. They could not eat at most restaurants because Chinese were not allowed in most restaurants. So they went to there own restaurants called Chow Chows (translated means Fry Fry). These restaurants served one dish and that dish was chopped up stir fried vegetables and meat served over rice or noodles. The vegetables and meat varied depending upon what was available at the marked on any given day.
Eventually adventurous Americans ventured into these chow chow's, and became some of the first Americans to enjoy Chinese food. The dish they enjoyed became known as chop suey. In Cantonese chop means the same as it does in English and Suey means mixed pieces, in other words chop suey means chopped up mixed pieces. You can imagine a Chinese cook a hundred years ago trying to explain in broken English the dish they served; "It Chop suey; me chop chop and mix everything."
Over time these restaurants started catering to American's and for many years the only dish chop suey was synonymous with Chinese food. Gradually more and more dishes started appearing on Chinese restaurant menu's. These dishes were Americanized versions of dishes that only the very wealthy Chinese enjoyed regularly. The rest of the Chinese usual eat chopped up stir fried anything or chop suey.