Why You Should Hear Andrew Coe Talk About Bad Chinese Food Tonight at Omnivore Books

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Chop suey, America's gateway dish.

​Apparently, we have some New York City bohos to thank (or curse) for the birth of chop suey, the slippery Americanized dish that still shows up at many of the approximately 40,000 Chinese restaurants around the country. Chop suey, a "mixed pieces" hodgepodge of meat cooked quickly with veggies and doused with cornstarch-thickened sauce, has its detractors, and rightly so. But history suggests it single-handedly helped grow America's interest in eating Chinese. Like egg rolls and chow mein, it's served as a gateway dish to generations of Americans. Author Andrew Coe's Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (Oxford University Press, $24.95) details the evolution of our fascination with Chinese food. Coe will be speaking at a free event tonight at Omnivore Books (3885A Cesar Chavez at Church), from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Should all that talk about noodles and egg rolls whet your appetite, the nearby Eric's Restaurant (1500 Church at 27th St.) offers chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, and Mongolian beef in a relaxed setting even your non-Asian great grandmother might've loved.