Here’s an interesting stat brought to you by Ana Swanson of the Washington Post: “A survey of 33 Japanese restaurants in the Washington area revealed that 12 were owned by Chinese Americans and 12 by Korean Americans. Only six were Japanese owned.” And it’s not just in the Washington area, mind you. Swanson reports on the growing trend of Chinese immigrants choosing Japanese over Chinese cooking. But why?
Swanson writes,
There are two other fascinating indicators in the piece, courtesy of Krishnendu Ray of NYU’s food study program and based on information from the Zagat restaurant guide. The first is the cost of a night out at a Japanese restaurant versus a Chinese restaurant in 1985 and 2013 (adjusted for inflation). Back in the day, prices were comparable: $31.88 for a Japanese dinner and $24.20 for Chinese. Fast-forward 28 years and a typical Japanese meal will cost you on average $62.73, double the original amount. That Chinese meal? $32.78, a minor 35 percent increase.
The price ranges of Chinese and Japanese meals are compared in the other chart. Most Chinese meals range between $20 and $35. Most Japanese meals, meanwhile, range from about $35 to $45 with a few places ringing up $65 (7 percent), $80 (5 percent), and even $100 per person (3 percent). Think Morimoto, Masa, and Nobu. There are few Chinese equivalents.
Aside from Japanese cuisine, Italian has also managed to transcend the price range, with low-end pizza joints on the one hand and luxurious high-end dining on the other. The same can be said of Korean, Greek, and American. But the perception of Chinese as cheap food persists to this day.
Swanson explains:
In Paul Freedman’s Ten Restaurants That Changed America, the author devotes a chapter to the Mandarin in San Francisco, which challenged the stereotype by offering meals fit for an emperor. In the 1960s, owner Cecilia Chiang introduced Americans to pot stickers (chao tzui), Smoked Tea Duck, and Beef à la Szechwan. One of her chefs, Ming-sai Cherng, opened the Panda Inn in Pasadena. His son turned that into the Panda Express chain. Two other cooks who worked for Chiang went on to Shun Lee Dynasty in New York and popularized General Tso’s Chicken. And Chiang’s own son Philip went into business with Paul Fleming to create P.F. Chang’s.
“Some of the problem,” writes Freedman, “is the unshakable bias that Chinese food has to be inexpensive. Customer resistance to anything but bargain-level tabs has meant that Chinese restaurants have only intermittently been able to accomplish what Italian establishments achieved in moving from a low to high-end image.”
Again, there are a handful of exceptions—Freedman mentions Le Chine at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. But for the vast majority of the estimated 40,000 Chinese restaurants in America, the price and perception are still on the low side.
There are now approximately 2 million Chinese immigrants living in the United States. For those who want to enter the restaurant industry, it’s a good bet that many of them will be turning Japanese. I really think so.
