Image credit : NYTimes

At last, someone else agrees that Chinese food served in the South is neither Chinese nor Southern, but the stirred and fried mix of the two. This article tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Missouri Chinese cashew chicken, as well as the beautiful story of Leong's Tea House in Springfield.

As a student in Boston, I remember how incredibly foreign the Chinese food seemed! I thought the tofu dishes were unappetizing because they were not fried or over-salted; it took years before I was able to appreciate what had first seemed slippery, weakly flavored, and bland. I was accustomed to Knoxville's deep-fried firm tofu, smothered in thick, heavy brown garlic sauces and flanked with broccoli; this was served in small, family-owned restaurants that were decorated with gold Buddha statues, paper fans, hanging red paper lanterns, and invariably topped with giant roaring dragons on the roofs. Yes, Boston's Chinatown did have its many charms, but I guess it's the MSG that has got me salivating for this lost (and yes, unhealthy) experience. I still miss Golden Dragon on Kingston Pike.

These days, I go to Devon Street to get my deep-fried and spicy fix. It's not the dosas and idly that I crave; it's the Indo-Chinese! When Krupa and I were younger, we would spend much of our summers in Surat, with my mother's family. My uncle would always insist that we go out for Chinese on my birthday. This was a revelation; this food had also resulted from a mixing of cultures -- it was as if you had taken your basic authentic Chinese and then added tons of chili and many Indian spices. I don't know what authentic Manchurian cuisine tastes like, but I would give anything for Surti Indo-Chinese Manchurian dumpling soup. On Devon St, I've found one restaurant so far that offers 'Indo-Pak-Chinese', but the food is extremely oily, and though the Manchurian sauce is tasty, it's grossly thick and gloppy. I will also complain about the dumplings, which are disappointing, fried potato balls placed in the sauce (which does nothing to their dense impenetrable interiors). In Surat, the dumplings are delicate creations, freshly made from all sorts of delicious vegetables. The sauces are also light and delicate yet mad spicy; they are probably made on site, and certainly didn't come out of a giant radioactive vat in the back, as I suspect is the case in Chicago.

NYTimes' "Immigration Explorer" is fascinating, and fun to play with as well! It was interesting for me to see the influx of Asian immigrants in the 1970s / 1980s.. my parents were part of that migration.