NYC EATS

 “New Yorkers didn’t realize he was the real thing, and treated him like he was copying others.” - Ed Schoenfeld, restauranteur

You know Colonel Sanders and Frank Perdue, but you probably haven’t heard of another chicken virtuoso named Peng Chang-kuei. You most likely have tasted his most popular creation: Generals Tso’s Chicken. Now it’s time you get to know Chef Peng. 

Peng Chang-kuei grew up in China’s Hunan Province, also the birthplace of Mao Zedong. It’s a landlocked, mountainous area where spicy garlic and fiery hot peppers are cherished and devoured. Young Peng apprenticed with a famous Hunan chef, and developed an influential style which garnered him considerable praise. 

Peng fled to Taiwan after the 1949 Chinese revolution, and established a popular restaurant in Taipei, where he introduced many new Hunan dishes. During a visit from Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he created his most illustrious recipe, naming it after a famous Hunanese General on the spur of the moment.

Why did he name it after a general? Because General Tso, a courageous and patriotic 19th century leader, is greatly revered in Peng’s home province of Hunan. Although millions died in battle or famine during his tenure, his name can be found on a museum, school, monument, hotel and even liquor. So Chef Peng honored him with his chicken concoction.

However, Chef Peng’s original dish bears little resemblance to the General Tso’s Chicken served to millions of Americans today. He used traditional hot, sour and salty Hunanese flavors, dark meat chicken, and none of the sugary-sweet, gloppy sauce we now crave. (In China, it is the chicken’s legs and feet which are considered delicacies; cheaper white meat is rarely used.) Peng also did not add broccoli, which surrounds the plates of many American versions. Unfortunately for the actual General Tso, he died in 1885, and never had the opportunity to taste his namesake meal. 

Although Chef Peng’s culinary inventions garnered some popularity in Taiwan, Hunanese cooking was unknown in America. That all changed in 1972, when the nation watched President Nixon on live TV, manipulating chopsticks at a banquet during his trip to China. Suddenly, Americans became enthralled by everything Chinese, especially their food. In response, New York Chinese chefs wanted to establish a more refined dining experience, supplanting the ubiquitous Cantonese foods that New Yorkers had eaten for a century with new Szechuan and Hunan flavors. So they flew to Taiwan and dined at Chef Peng’s, where they tasted his General Tso’s chicken. Then they flew back to the Big Apple to create a copycat version of Chef Peng’s masterpiece, altered for American tastes.

The dish was introduced with great fanfare at Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan on East 62nd Street, and Hunam restaurant on East 45th Street. At Hunam, the chef put a Szechuan spin on it, crisping up the batter and sweetening the sauce. General Tso’s makeover became the taste sensation we all crave today. Shun Lee Palace on East 55th Street garnered a four-star review from The New York Times, making General Tso more famous than General Electric.

When the news reached chef Peng Chang-kuei in Taiwan, he left his wok and jetted to the Big Apple to get in on the action. After all, he had originated the dish...why couldn’t he gather some of the fame and fortune surrounding it? He opened the restaurant Uncle Peng on East 44th Street, which soon failed. His next venture was Yunnan Yuan on East 52nd Street, where he sweetened and crisped up his dish to American standards. When celebrity spotters reported that Henry Kissinger repeatedly dined there, the restaurant took off. Local news even featured Chef Peng preparing his famous dish, generating over a thousand requests for the recipe. Hunan and Szechuan restaurants took over New York City, attracting throngs of hungry worshippers with a taste for spicy hot foods. And all this was due to one little-known chef and his quickly-created chicken dish.

Chef Peng eventually took his Americanized version of General Tso’s Chicken back to Taiwan, opening a chain of restaurants there which are still serving the sweetened version. Amazingly, it’s a big hit! Peng passed away in 2016, but his remarkable chicken recipe continues to generate billions of dollars in restaurant revenue. It is served in virtually every Chinese restaurant in North America.

But how does this happen? How does one chef’s dish find its way onto thousands of Chinese menus? The reason is explained by Jennifer 8. Lee, author of the memorable travelogue The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. She points out that, unlike McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and most other fast food joints, Chinese restaurants are not overseen by a huge corporate conglomerate, which determines everything on every menu, as well as pricing, uniforms, napkin design etc. Chinese eateries are “open-sourced,” spontaneously self-organizing networks. (Wikipedia is a perfect example of decentralized open-source collaborations, where ideas bubble sideways, not top-down. Information is added by everybody and available to everybody.)

Almost every small village in America has a Chinese restaurant, usually run by the only Chinese family in town. Virtually all of them offer beef with broccoli, egg rolls and General Tso’s chicken. But these were not decided upon by focus groups or market testing or corporate caveat...they were created through local, personal decisions, which spread equally throughout the land. This is what makes familiar, friendly Chinese food the same across the country, yet distinctly unique. And this is why Chef Peng’s spur-of-the-moment creation for an admired Admiral can be enjoyed by everyone, everywhere. (Select to enlarge:)

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