ABSTRACT
In 1911, the Mandarin Inn Cafe opened its doors to the Chicago public. The Mandarin Inn blended “Oriental” and “Occidental” offerings in an upscale dining environment, creating a restaurant space that was simultaneously exotic yet familiar, entertaining yet respectable for middle-class patronage. In the midst of Chinese exclusion, Chin Foin took advantage of the burgeoning popularity of Chinese restaurants to accomplish a remarkable feat of upward social mobility for a member of an otherwise marginalized and ostracized immigrant population. The 1900s were a particularly opportune decade for Chin to launch his restaurateur career, as Chinese restaurants had reached an unprecedented level of popularity in Chicago at the turn of the century. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, racially informed stereotypes of Chinese restaurants imagined the eateries as sinister dens of iniquity, sites of taboo interracial and cross-class mixing, and hosts to vices like opium smoking, gambling, and the prostitution and enslavement of white women.
