This weekend’s New York Times explores an odd little stereotype you find in the city concerning Jews and Chinese food:
IT’S a yin-yang kind of thing.New York Jews love Chinese food because it doesn’t mix meat with milk. But half an hour later we complain we’re hungry.
We love Chinese food because it’s nothing like what we cook at home. But we get anxious when we can’t tell what it is:
“Is this gray thing pork?”
“Omigod, you think it’s pork?”
“It tastes like chicken.”
“Oy.”
New York Jews love Chinese food because you don’t need a tie and jacket to eat it. We love it because the portions are big enough to share and Chinese restaurants are open on Christmas Day. We love it because Chinese waiters, like Jewish families, are kid-centric.
There’s an e-joke making the rounds:
“According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5766. According to the Chinese calendar, it’s 4703. That means for 1,063 years, Jews went without Chinese food.”
I always suspected it was one of those stereotypes that wasn’t — New York has a lot of Jews, New York has a lot of Chinese restaurants, and bingo! You have Chinese restaurants with a significant Jewish clientele.
Comments
It's a much written about phenomenon among food geographers and cultural anthropologists. Somehow it relates to prairie turnips as well 'cause I cited the classic academic paper on the subject in my dissertation.
Posted by: plantnerd | March 29, 2006 9:18 AM
No kiddin'. Your research goes far and wide.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 29, 2006 10:27 AM
http://www.soc.qc.cuny.edu/Staff/levine/NYJews-and-Chinese.htm
There's a fair amount of interest in foods as cultural indicators (the primary consumption of prairie turnips now is at Lakota and Crow feasts, not necessarily because people like them but because they represent Plains Indian-ness) and emerging discussions of eating exotic foods as a sort of cultural tourism. You can be something (or someone) else for the day if you eat something that your people don't eat but someone else does.
Posted by: plantnerd | March 29, 2006 12:43 PM
It's the same way with Norwegians (or, really mostly Americans of Norwegian descent) and lutefisk.
Posted by: doubleohsoul | March 29, 2006 2:49 PM