Chinese Restaurant

A Chinese restaurant is an establishment that serves a Chinese cuisine. Most of them are in the Cantonese style, due to the history of the Chinese diaspora and adapted to local taste preferences, as in the American Chinese cuisine and Canadian Chinese cuisine. The Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands usually combine Cantonese and Indonesian meals on their menu.
''Chinese takeouts'' (United States and Canada) or ''Chinese takeaways'' (United Kingdom and Commonwealth) are terms to describe the act of ordering the meal(s) with the intent to eat the food at another location, such as at work or home. It can be found either as a service option of eat-in establishments or as separate establishments.

History

United States

Chinese restaurants in the United States began during the California gold rush, which brought twenty to thirty thousand immigrants across from the Canton (Kwangtung or Guangdong) region of China. The first documented Chinese restaurant opened in 1849 as th
Canton Restaurant
By 1850, there were five restaurants in San Francisco. Soon after, significant amounts of food were being imported from China to America's west coast. The trend spread eastward with the growth of the American railways, particularly to New York City. At the ratification of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 there were only 14 restaurants in San Francisco. However, the Chinese Exclusion Act allowed merchants to enter the country, and in 1915 restaurant owners became eligible for merchant visas. This fueled the opening of Chinese restaurants as an immigration vehicle. The Chinese Exclusion Act forced Chinese immigrants to move away from wage work to self employment through laundries and restaurants. , the U.S. had 46,700 Chinese restaurants.

There has been a consequential component of Chinese emigration of illegal origin, most notably Fuzhou people from Fujian Province and Wenzhounese from Zhejiang Province in Mainland China, specifically destined to work in Chinese restaurants in New York City, beginning in the 1980s. Adapting Chinese cooking techniques to local produce and tastes has led to the development of American Chinese cuisine. Many of the Chinese restaurant menus in the U.S. are printed in Chinatown, Manhattan.

United Kingdom

In the early 1880s, Chinese food items and eating houses appeared in London and Liverpool, mainly visited by Chinese seamen and students.

In 1884, Chinese food was made available as part of an exhibition featuring a 'restaurant' in the International Health Exhibition in South Kensington, London.

In 1907 or 1908, the first recorded Chinese restaurant was opened in London. The rise in the number of Chinese restaurants in the UK only began after the Second World War, and has been attributed to returning service personnel from Hong Kong. The restaurants were operated by Hong Kongers who moved to the UK. One restaurant that stands out in the history of Chinese restaurants in the UK is the Kuo Yuan which in 1963 was the first restaurant to serve Peking duck.

In 2003, the first British Chinese restaurant achieved a Michelin star. In the United Kingdom, the business employed a large percentage of Chinese immigrants in the 1980s (90% in 1985). Opening a restaurant or takeaway gave a relatively low capital cost entry for Chinese families into self-employment. Many takeaways served a pseudo-Chinese cuisine based around western tastes, and the limited cooking skills and experience of the shop owners.

In 2011, the Ming-Ai (London) Institute launched the British Chinese Food Culture project with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, aimed at exploring and tracking the changes in Chinese food throughout its history in the United Kingdom.

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has negatively impacted many Chinese restaurants in the UK, with a number of restaurants in London's Chinatown in particular facing financial difficulty, due to lockdown restrictions and social distancing as well as prejudice against Chinese takeaways which the BBC
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