ABSTRACT
Panda Express was founded in 1983 as a fast-food chain with about 2,000 stores by 2018, while P. F. Chang’s was established in 1993 as a full service, sit-down Chinese restaurant with 210 stores in the same year. This chapter provides the significance of chop suey in American food history and analyzes the meaning of P. F. Chang’s in the Chinese restaurant business. Chinese immigrants were pioneers in the food business in California. On January 29, 1900, The New York Times reported: “Judging from the outbreak of Chinese restaurants all over town, the city has gone ‘chop-suey’ mad.” In 1962, Cecelia Chiang opened her Mandarin Restaurant on Polk Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Born in Beijing and raised in Shanghai, she had tasted many well-known Chinese dishes. Offering real Chinese food by a Chinese restaurateur seemed rare and strange in San Francisco where Chinese had come as early as 1849.
