Cecilia Chiang
“I think I changed what average people know about Chinese food. They didn’t know China was such a big country.” - Cecilia Chiang
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When Chinese immigrants came to the United States in the 1850s, they brought with them foods and cuisines that were quickly modified for the White palate. The likes of egg foo young and chop suey represented all of Chinese cuisine to the regular US citizen at the time. It was not until Cecilia Chiang’s opening of the Mandarin in San Francisco that reimagined what Chinese cuisine could be.
Chiang grew up in a wealthy family, enjoying the privileges of the upper class in Peking, such as having tailors, maids, and chefs. During the World War II Japanese occupation of China, she was forced to flee to Chongqing on foot for six months. After the war, she settled in Tokyo, where she opened The Forbidden City, a Chinese restaurant frequented by expatriates.
Chiang’s story in America started in 1960, when she came to San Francisco to visit her sister, whose husband recently died. There, she bumped into two Tokyo friends who wanted to open a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. Agreeing to help with the restaurant, Chiang put down a $10,000 deposit on the business, only to find that the two friends backed out on the business. Unable to retrieve her deposit, she turned to opening up her own restaurant: Mandarin.
The dishes Chiang served at the restaurant were unlike any others seen at the time. Notable dishes include potstickers (guo tie), Chinese crepes (bao bing/jian bing), and dumplings (shui jiao). To further distinguish it from common, Americanized restaurants, Chiang designed the restaurant to show the lavishness of a palace. The restaurant did not perform well at first. Not only was business slow, but she faced discrimination against suppliers, not only as someone who speaks only Mandarin in a Cantonese-dominant San Francisco but also as a woman running a business. It was not until well-known figures such as Herb Caen began boasting the restaurant did it gain popularity.
Chiang has been accredited for introducing more authentic Chinese dishes, as well more diverse, regional Chinese cuisines. She was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, among other accolades for her work in the Chinese culinary industry. As longtime friend and American chef Alice Waters once said, Chiang brings “not just the food from China but the whole culture of China—the whole way to serve, the way to be generous with other people at the table, the way that food was considered something very precious and important in everyday life.”
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