American chop suey boston12/8/2023 Today Chin Lee is a near-forgotten part of the city’s culinary memory, its Theater District building now covered with giant billboards, and a Latin nightclub occupying the upstairs space. You signal the waiter, point to the beef chop suey on the menu and say, “I’ll have some of that.” It’s the midpoint of the Chop Suey Era in American dining, and you want to share in the fun. The kitchen churns out hundreds of gallons of the stuff daily, to be shoveled down by hundreds of thousands of happy customers every year. You look around at the other tables and see big platters heaped with steaming mounds of brownish stew, either over rice, for chop suey, or noodles, for chow mein. You can have a club sandwich or a ham omelet, if you must, but the top of the menu lists Chin Lee’s specialties, which are chow mein and chop suey-six kinds of “chop sooy” to be precise. A black-bow-tied Chinese waiter hands you the menu for the 70 cents dinner, and you scan the choices. On the dance floor, it’s strictly catch-as-catch-can, with gum-chewing shopgirls from Gimbel’s dancing with shopgirls, while Wall Street clerks look on hungrily, and a gaggle of girlfriends from the Bronx tries to catch the eyes of a group of slumming Princeton boys. On the main floor, dozens of white-clothed tables surround a dance floor and an all-Chinese jazz orchestra wailing away at breakneck pace, while above there’s a second floor, with more tables and a balcony overlooking the dancers. He finds you a table off in a far corner and disappears, leaving you to survey the surroundings. The entrance is on 49th Street, under a movie-theater-style awning that lures you up a brightly-lit flight of stairs to a coat check, a crowd of people milling about and the clatter of plates and the noise of a frantic jazz band.įinally, the unsmiling Chinese maître d’ nods your way, pulls menus off a pile and leads you through a maze of tables crowded with shouting, smiling, eating diners. Around them, the words “DINING,” “DANCING” and “NO COVER CHARGE” are spelled out by blinking yellow bulbs. It’s winter of 1939 and the big, bamboo-style letters on the sides of a building at Broadway and 49th Street blaze forth the name “CHIN LEE” late into the night. I always give everything a second try unless I absolutley hate it (then I take a second look at the recipe and find out what attracted me to this recipe and how can I alter it a bit to my taste).A 1940s menu from Chin Lee Restaurant in New York. I do not rate below a 3 just for the simple fact that everyones taste is different and what might taste magnificant to some, might not be too great for others. I absolutley love to cook and this is why Zaar is a heaven sent! I like to take other peoples feeings into consideration when rating recipes so my rating system reflects that. I have been told by several people that I should open my own bakery or restaurant.which I am seriously considering in the near future. Weekends at my house are packed with family and friends because we usually have the grill going. I am known for the foods that I prepare for my dinner parties and special occassion gatherings. I have a family of 100+ relatives also living in Austin and we all share a passion for good food. I came to the states when I was about 2 yrs old and now currently have a full time job in the medical field.
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