Many people in America love Chinese food, but perhaps nobody can match David R Chan. Mr Chan, a 72-year-old former tax lawyer based in Los Angeles, claims to have dined at nearly 8,000 Chinese restaurants across the US and counting. If you visit one Chinese restaurant per day, it would take more than 20 years to reach his current count — 7,812 restaurants.
Though he is the descendant of grandparents who immigrated to California from China’s Guangdong province, Mr Chan did not eat Chinese food as a child. And when he first tried Chinese food, he was not impressed at all.
Chinese food was cooked in the US for the first time by Chinese immigrants who came dreaming of wealth during the California Gold Rush in the mid 19th century. “Early American-Chinese food tended to be localized, had to adapt for local ingredients and catered to Americans’ taste,” said Mr Chan.
But things started to change in the late 1960s. As a new law removed restrictions on immigration from Asia, the US began to receive an increasing number of immigrants from China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, bringing in not only modern Cantonese food but also a variety of regional cuisines from across China.
In the 1970s, he started to dine at Chinese restaurants listed on the local yellow pages. “At the beginning, it was just a search for identity,” Mr Chan said. “My interest in the history of Chinese in the US led me to eat Chinese food and see what it was like to be Chinese in different parts of the country.” Through this, he learnt of the diversity of the cuisine. He had previously had no idea how varied it was, he said.
“The best place to find the most varied authentic Chinese foods in America is the San Gabriel Valley in LA, where many Chinese immigrants live,” he said. “But for dim sum, San Francisco is the best bet.”
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