From the finest dining, to hole-in-the wall gems, to dim sum, to classic take-out; our nation celebrates it all when it comes to Chinese food. Ever wonder how and why Chinese food became an all-American classic? According to Jennifer Lee, author of the Fortune Cookie Chronicles, there are “some forty thousand Chinese restaurants in the United States – more than the number of McDonalds, Burger Kings, and KFCs combined”!
In large part, it was actually our nation’s xenophobic anti-immigration policies of the 19th and early 20th centuries that sparked this delicious culinary wildfire. Maria Godoy of NPR reports on the fascinating history of an investment-based visa exception to the Chinese Exclusion Act, otherwise known as the “Lo Mein Loophole”: