ALTHOUGH A RICH diversity of Chinese regional cooking is always available within the five boroughs, popular favor tends to fix on one O style at a time. For the past several years, that spotlight has fallen on Sichuan food, the lip-tingling spicy-peppercorn cuisine of the southwestern province, which has risen to enough prominence that schoolchildren now know what má là means. "Who's been anywhere good that isn't Sichuan?" a colleague of mine moaned, having gone numb to the numbing.
Lately, though, I've noticed that Sichuan's dominance is waning. Cantonese is once again on the rise. Cantonese cooking-at least, Cantonese American cookinginforms what most Americans reflexively think of as "Chinese food." Cantonese immigrants came to this country in numbers in the late-19th and early-20th century and shaped their cooking to suit American palates, while Cantonese cooks in Hong Kong absorbed the influence of British and international tastes. Cantonese-style Chinese is both an eminent regional cuisine and an evolving amalgam. Dim sum is Cantonese; but so, without too much stretching, is the cha siu "McRib" Calvin Eng serves at Bonnie's in Williamsburg, which helped usher in the renewed taste for haute Cantonese in 2021.
This story is from the October 07-20, 2024 edition of New York magazine.
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This story is from the October 07-20, 2024 edition of New York magazine.
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