Thursday, January 19, 2006
Unrest at the tea garden.
The San Francisco Chronicle describes dissatisfaction among Japanese-Americans at how the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park is run. Part of the unhappiness is with tourist schlock, but it seems that the deeper frustration is specifically with "Chinese-themed" items -- although, curiously, not the fortune cookies. "The tea garden is the reputed birthplace of what has become known as the "Chinese fortune cookie," an American invention ubiquitous in Chinese restaurants in the United States but not commonly found in China." The concession was run by the Hagiwara family until they were interned in 1942. Fred Lo's Chinatown Fashion House Inc. has had the concession for the last 14 years; now Carol Murata, who is active in Japantown, is bidding to take it over.
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Maybe people expect less of those establishments.
It seems like the cultural history of the Chinese restaurant in this country is a rich subject waiting to be tackled. Or maybe it has been, I don't know.
When I was a kid, there was a Chinese/Polynesian restaurant not too far away, but it's long gone. I've read how returning WWII vets brought back a taste for/interest in Polynesian food, resulting in all of these places that sprung up in the 1950s. Made me look at my old 'hood in a new light.
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It seems like the cultural history of the Chinese restaurant in this country is a rich subject waiting to be tackled. Or maybe it has been, I don't know.
When I was a kid, there was a Chinese/Polynesian restaurant not too far away, but it's long gone. I've read how returning WWII vets brought back a taste for/interest in Polynesian food, resulting in all of these places that sprung up in the 1950s. Made me look at my old 'hood in a new light.
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