Chinese restaurant
Restaurants serving Chinese cuisine, often adapted to local tastes.
A Chinese restaurant is an eatery focused on Chinese cuisine. Most lean toward Cantonese cooking, a result of the Chinese diaspora, but other regional styles like Sichuan and Hakka are also widespread. Many of these restaurants adjust their dishes to suit local palates, leading to variations like British Chinese and American Chinese food. Some menus include other Asian cuisines—such as Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, or Thai—but these options are usually sparse compared to the Chinese offerings. In North America, they’re often called Chinese takeouts, while in the UK and Commonwealth, they’re known as Chinese takeaways; these are places built for take-out orders, typically simple setups with no tables or chairs.
In Australia, Chinese restaurants had been present in most cities and towns for over fifty years by the early 2000s, and in many spots for more than 150 years. They began as businesses on the Victorian goldfields. Most early Chinese migrants came from Guangdong in southern China, shaping a cuisine heavy on fresh vegetables, fruit, fish, poultry, pork, rice, herbs, and spices. By 1890, one-third of all Chinese men in Australia were cooks.
Canada’s first Chinese restaurants popped up in Western Canada and the Prairies, opened by Chinese laborers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1800s. Due to widespread anti-Chinese sentiment at the time, many immigrants could only find work in restaurants or laundromats, which led to a boom in the former. The number of Chinese restaurants grew after the mid-20th century, when the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 was repealed, allowing more immigration. Today, they’re found across Canada, especially in areas with large Asian Canadian populations like Markham, Ontario.
Most of Egypt’s Chinese restaurants are in Cairo, which Slate described in 2015 as “Shanghai on the Nile” because of its growing Chinese food scene. In 2000, the magazine *Flavor and Fortune* counted seven or eight restaurants in Cairo and about a dozen nationwide, though the number was rising. In 2020, Egypt’s Health Ministry inspected Chinese restaurants over food safety worries tied to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the country denied that any premises were being raided.
Germany’s first Chinese restaurant opened in 1923 in Berlin’s Kantstraße area, known for its large Chinese community.
- First documented in us
- 1849 (Canton Restaurant, San Francisco)
- Number in us (2015)
- 46,700
- Number in germany (1992)
- over 3,000
- Number in netherlands (2019)
- declining by 22% over previous decade
- First in uk recorded
- 1907 or 1908 (London)
- First in germany
- 1923 (Berlin)
- Percentage of cooks in australia (1890)
- one third were Chinese
Lore & Background
Chinese restaurants emerged as commercial enterprises on the Victorian gold fields in Australia, and during the California Gold Rush in the United States, which brought twenty to thirty thousand immigrants from the Canton region of China. The first documented Chinese restaurant in the US opened in 1849 as the Canton Restaurant. In Canada, the first Chinese restaurants were established in Western Canada and the Canadian Prairies by Chinese labourers working on the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 19th century. Due to anti-Chinese sentiment, many Chinese immigrants were unable to work in businesses that were not restaurants or laundromats, leading to the common establishment of the former.
In Europe, the first recorded Chinese restaurant in London opened in 1907 or 1908. One of Germany's first Chinese restaurants opened in 1923 in Berlin. The number of Chinese restaurants in the UK only began to rise after the Second World War, attributed to returning service personnel from Hong Kong. In the Netherlands, the first Chinese restaurant opened in the 1920s, and Chinese food there is often inspired by Indonesian cuisine owing to the Netherlands' colonisation of Indonesia. The typical Chinese-Indonesian restaurant culture in the Netherlands has been acknowledged as Dutch intangible cultural heritage.
Reader's Guide
Chinese restaurants have played a significant role in the global spread of Chinese cuisine and in the economic survival of Chinese diaspora communities. In the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forced Chinese immigrants to move from wage work to self-employment through laundries and restaurants, and in 1915 restaurant owners became eligible for merchant visas, fueling the opening of Chinese restaurants as an immigration vehicle. In the UK, opening a restaurant or takeaway gave a relatively low capital cost entry for Chinese families into self-employment, and the business employed a large percentage of Chinese immigrants in the 1980s (90% in 1985).
Chinese restaurants have adapted to local tastes, leading to distinct cuisines such as American Chinese and British Chinese. They have also faced challenges, including anti-Chinese sentiment, labor trafficking concerns, and impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Netherlands, researchers attributed a decline in Chinese-Indonesian restaurants to outdated décor and fatty food considered unappealing to an increasingly health-conscious population. Despite these challenges, Chinese restaurants remain widespread, with almost every German city of over 15,000 having at least one as of 2016, and with 46,700 in the US as of 2015.
Did You Know?
- One third of all cooks in Australia were Chinese by 1890.
- The first documented Chinese restaurant in the United States opened in 1849 as the Canton Restaurant.
- In the Netherlands, the typical Chinese-Indonesian restaurant culture has been acknowledged as Dutch intangible cultural heritage.
- In 1963, the Kuo Yuan in London was the first restaurant in the UK to serve Peking duck.
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