Why kung pao chicken bears little resemblance to the original Sichuan dish
The sweet and sour dish, with its gloopy sauce, is an American fast-food staple, but the original dish comes from Sichuan and includes the fiery peppercorn the Chinese cuisine is famous for
Wherever you go in the United States, signs advertising the same handful of fast-food restaurants jut above rooflines. For Hongkongers, many will be familiar – McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut – but then there’s Panda Express. The Chinese-themed fast-food chain, founded in 1983 by Chinese-Burmese immigrant couple Andrew and Peggy Cherng, has about 1,800 branches throughout the US, and has expanded worldwide, including to the Middle East. Despite its global success, many of the American-Chinese dishes will be unfamiliar to Chinese people, including the kung pao chicken.
It’s not the name of the dish that’s foreign –it is derived from gong bao ji ding, a famous dish from Sichuan province. But the Americanised version, made with bell peppers, peanuts and served with a gloopy sweet sauce, is quite different from that served in Sichuan, which is drier and includes a special type of peppercorn used extensively in the province.
American-Chinese food has long been mocked for pandering to Western palates, but in the case of kung pao chicken, it probably wasn’t just a matter of taste, but of the law.
