Chinese sailors and kung pao chicken

Angela Hui on where our favourite Chinese dishes come from

The first Chinese restaurant in the UK was called ‘The Chinese Restaurant’ and opened in London in 1909

Over the years working in my parents’ Chinese takeaway, prepping ingredients and cooking became second nature. From a young age, I was trained to mindlessly slice through crates of carrots, quarter white button mushrooms, and chop green and red peppers into neat slivers, all prepped for the night’s chop suey orders. I’d spend hours cracking tray after tray of eggs, using a comically oversized whisk that required my entire body weight to beat the yolks and whites into a perfect sunshine-yellow mixture, destined to become egg-fried rice. Getting my hands sticky with batter was pure muscle memory. I’d carefully lower each strand of shredded beef into the deep fryer, watching the bubbles rise as the spindly meat threads sizzled and crisped in the hot oil. These were the tasks we just did, without question. But I never thought to ask: Why do we cook this way? Where did these methods come from? Whose recipes are we following? It was just ingrained in me—this is how we do things. Much like the Mandalorian’s moral code, following traditions and ideals that everyone must uphold: ‘This is the Way’. We cook for the family. To keep a roof over our heads. To make sure there’s food on the table.

Chinese food is one of the world’s most widely served global cuisines. Yet, it is both familiar and very often misunderstood. In the UK, the Chinese food scene was initially centred around Cantonese dishes, adapted to suit British palates, with only faint nods to the country's vast regional cuisines by mentioning ‘Szechwan’ or ‘Peking’ flavours on mostly Cantonese menus in restaurants and takeaways. Historically, the first Chinese restaurants in Britain were catered to Chinese sailors who settled around the docks in London’s Limehouse, Liverpool, and other port cities during the 19th century. What was once seen as ‘exotic’ has become a beloved fixture in British food culture. Dishes like kung pao chicken, spring rolls, wonton soup, sweet and sour pork, shredded crispy chilli beef and chop suey have expanded our tastes and introduced us to new and exciting flavours. These takeaway classics have become so familiar in our diets that we rarely stop to consider their origins.