Honey prawns, lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork and honey chicken are popular Chinese dishes – well, at least in Australia.
Key points:
- Australian Chinese cuisine has been around for at least 100 years, with businessman Huang Lai-wang opening the Peking Café in Sydney in 1919
- Chinese cuisine has evolved along with the migrants who have taken it to new countries
- Chefs adapted Chinese dishes to suit the “Australian taste”
Known as “Australian Chinese cuisine”, they are a unique derivative of Chinese cooking developed at the migrant-run restaurants that seem to be in every town across the country.
Chef Raymond Ng runs a restaurant in Malua Bay, New South Wales, about four hours’ drive from Sydney.
He had never heard of the Australian Chinese dishes before arriving from Hong Kong in 1976.
But since then, his life has been all about adapting – not only to the language and environment, but to the “Australian taste”.
Restaurants like Mr Ng’s are not just places for dining, they also carry the stories and histories of the families who have built and run them.
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In the new ABC show Chopsticks or Fork?, comedian Jennifer Wong travels through regional Australia hearing about the lives of people who have helped create and popularise these multicultural dishes.
Mr Ng was a tailor in Hong Kong, but, similar to many first-generation Chinese migrants of his time, he got his first job in Australia washing dishes in a restaurant run by another Hong Kong expat.
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)He then learned how to cook but was making food like deep-fried eggplant and honey chicken – none of which would be considered traditional or Chinese in Hong Kong.
“If one fails to adapt to a new place, it will become difficult to survive,” Mr Ng said.
Mr Ng said these recipes were likely invented by Chinese cooks in Australia and have become known as the signature dishes in many Chinese restaurants in regional towns.
“Australians can only get these foods from the Chinese restaurants. That is probably why they think they are Chinese food,” Mr Ng told the ABC.
Too busy for Christmas
Mr Ng’s youngest daughter Emily has been helping in the busy family restaurant since she was 10 years old.
And she has done a wide range of jobs in her time.
Besides serving the customers, she was also filling out legal documents to help her parents, as they weren’t proficient in English.
Her job, she said, was being her parents’ “number one personal assistant”.
In her memory, her parents were always at work.
As a kid, Ms Ng didn’t understand that. She even hated the kitchen for keeping her parents occupied.
“All of my school friends’ parents were always there to watch them perform and they were always there when they are needed. But my mum was always late to pick me up from school,” she said.
At the end of 2019, the restaurant was burned down by a bushfire.
Losing the restaurant made Ms Ng realised how much happiness it has brought to her parents and the family.
So she quit her job in digital advertising and moved back to rebuild the business with her parents.
Ms Ng said she is happy with her life now as she regains a relationship with her parents.
For those who have just started a business, it is still hard to get over the guilt of not spending enough time with their young kids.
Gary Bong is the owner and chef at the Oriental Palace restaurant in Hervey Bay, Queensland.
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)He said he worked hard to provide the best education for his kids so they didn’t have to take over the running of the restaurant when they grew up.
When Mr Bong’s family celebrated the 20th anniversary of their restaurant, he thanked his kids for their understanding of the demands involved with his line of work.
Being so busy in the kitchen making meals for his customers every day, Mr Bong rarely had the opportunity to have dinner with his children.
“They understand I do this for them, for giving them a better future,” Mr Bong told the ABC.
Food transcends cultural barriers
Supplied: Melbourne Kuomingtang Society
)In China, cuisines are categorised by region.
Cuisine in Guangdong, Sichuan, Anhui, Shandong, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are commonly defined as the “Eight Great Traditions” of Chinese cooking.
But alongside the journey of Chinese migrants, Chinese cuisines have also been evolving outside China.
In 1919, Chinese businessman Huang Lai-wang opened his restaurant Peking Café on Sydney’s central Pitt Street.
A year later, he was selling chop suey – a working-class food cooked from miscellaneous leftovers.
He had brought the recipe back from the US, and soon the dish was considered “cosmopolitan” in 1920s Sydney, according to Kuo Mei-fen, a researcher in migrant studies from Macquarie University.
“The story of chop suey has demonstrated that migrants’ cuisines can be influenced not only by the food of their home countries but also by the cooking in other overseas Chinese communities,” Dr Kuo said.
“When chefs want to represent their own culture, food becomes a medium that can cross the language and racial barriers.”
Dr Kuo said the long history of Chinese migrants in Australia was why “every town has a [Chinese] restaurant” and “every restaurant has its own fabulous story”.
For Mr Ng, although the family dishes are still the traditional Cantonese dishes like stir-fry choy sum and steamed minced pork with mushroom, the Australian Chinese dishes feature on his menu.
Mr Ng’s signature dish is honey king prawn, another Australian Chinese classic.
It is now the local favourite in Malua Bay and is firmly a part of the ever-evolving story of Australian Chinese cuisine.
