When I worked at a deli-style restaurant in Manhattan during college there were people who ordered a Reuben sandwich tree or four times a week, and I remember thinking about how unhealthy it was. That’s another one I haven’t tried, mostly because pastrami smells gross to me.

This was an entertaining piece!

The familiar American cuisine typically called “Chinese Food” originated in America in the 1800s. Chinese-run restaurants in San Francisco at the time did actually offer authentic Chinese cuisine (primarily to Chinese customers), but Chinese owned restaurants in smaller towns throughout California and the West served whatever their customers requested, from pork chop sandwiches to baked beans. American Chinese cuisine began to emerge when these restaurants began modifying traditional Chinese dishe to suit local, Western palates. Chinese immigrants set up eateries in rail towns all over the West where traditional Chinese food was completely unknown and catered primarily to miners and railroad workers. These restaurants created a new, hybrid American/Chinese cuisine, adapting Southern Chinese dishes like Chop suey, Ginger beef and others.

It’s important to point out that Chinese restaurants (and Chinese laundries) became prevalent at that time because these kinds of businesses provided a viable economic niche for Chinese immigrants who were largely excluded from almost every other kind of job because of racial discrimination and, very often, a lack of language fluency.

“Westernized” versions of original Chinese dishes include Egg foo young, Egg rolls, Fried rice, Ginger beef and Ginger fried beef, Lo mein, Moo shoo pork, Wonton soup and many others.

In France, people were already stuffing birds one into the other and cooking them, long before Columbus was born. An ancient French cook book from more than a century ago, even contains a recipe involving 14(!!) types of birds stuffed one into the other, from a huge turkey to a humming bird…