










































SUE SAMUELSON AWARD FOR FOODWAYS SCHOLARSHIP 
SECOND PLACE 
 
Wor Sue Gai and Claiming Local Identity 
By: Nancy Yan 

 
Wor Sue Gai is a local favorite that can be found on the menu in almost every Chinese restaurant in 
Columbus, Ohio. Literally translated, Wor Sue Gai means “Wok Seared Chicken.” While different 
restaurants may have slightly varying versions, Wor Sue Gai generally seems to be a portion of de-
boned chicken (breast or thigh) that is breaded or battered, deep fried, and then sliced. This sliced 
chicken is then served atop a bed of lettuce (generally shredded iceberg lettuce) with a gravy ranging 
in color from orange to brown that is drizzled over everything. According to Steve Yee, preparing Wor 
Sue Gai requires several steps. Yee is the third-generation owner and operator of Ding Ho, one of the 
oldest Chinese restaurants in Columbus, Ohio. He states: 

To make the Wor Sue Gai is a very long process. You gotta take a whole chicken and 
simmer it in the broth for about forty-five minutes. You gotta let it cool down, the 
chicken, then you gotta debone the chicken. Then you gotta bread the chicken, fry the 
chicken, and that’s a lot of work (Steve Yee 2007). 

According to my internet searches for the recipe, chopped or slivered almonds sprinkled over 
everything also seems to be an essential part of the dish, giving rise to its alternate name: Almond 
Chicken or Almond Boneless Chicken. 
 
What is particularly intriguing about this dish is the claim that it is a local creation although the exact 
origin story is a bit murky. “We’re [Ding Ho and Wing’s] one of the original inventors of the Wor Sue 
Gai, with Wing’s on East Main. We’re trying to figure out who did or [if] both came up with the original 
concept of it,” claims Yee (Steve Yee 2007). In continuous operation since 1955, Ding Ho is a rich 
repository of memories and information about Chinese restaurants in Columbus. Wing’s is another long-
standing Chinese restaurant in Columbus, located in the East Side of the city in an area called Bexley. 
Kenny Yee (no relation), the owner and operator of Wing’s Restaurant, agrees that Wor Sue Gai is a 
dish that “basically you can only get in the state of Ohio. It originated in Columbus” (Kenny Yee 2007). 
 
Unlike many other dishes offered in Chinese restaurants, Wor Sue Gai has not been the subject of 
debate about authenticity.  Neither restaurant critics nor patrons have questioned whether or not it is 
truly a "Chinese" dish that has traveled from China or whether it was a bastardized creation for the 
American palate. Its purported origin story already places it in America, not China, although its 
association with things Chinese remains. Thus, Wor Sue Gai raises some intriguing questions about its 
identity. In terms of Chinese food, most people would likely agree that if a dish was made in America, 
then it is not really “Chinese.” Yet Wor Sue Gai is not really subject to those types of questions. While 
it is understood to have originated on American soil, it retains its association with Chinese restaurants, 



especially since it is generally not found in non-Chinese restaurants in Columbus. People do not seem 
to have issues with its level of Chinese authenticity or inauthenticity but simply accept that it is found 
in Chinese restaurants. Thus, this paper will not define characteristics of Chinese cuisine and then 
attempt to determine whether Wor Sue Gai is “authentic” enough to enter those ranks. Instead, I 
explore the multi-layered and somewhat muddy background of a Chinese restaurant dish and examine 
its implications for claims of authenticity in cuisine. 

 
Authenticity and Folklorists 
Folklorists, as well as many scholars in other disciplines, understand authenticity as a construct. They 
recognize that cultural practices deemed traditional may have been altered over time by a variety of 
modifying influences, or have foreign, capricious, or recent origins (Bendix 1997, Hobsbawm and 
Ranger 1983). For many scholars, then, the notion that authenticity exists is a fallacy. They encourage 
dismantling the idea of authenticity, claiming that its use has been more harmful than helpful if 
cultural practices are held to such standards of scrutiny. Adding to folklorists’ skepticism of 
authenticity is its intersections with ethnicity. As Regina Bendix states, “Ethnicity and authenticity 
have grown to be uneasy partners in areas other than folkloristics” (1997:210). Scholars such as Bendix 
point out that the concept is perpetually shifting so that there is no stability. She writes, “Authenticity 
thus proves to be contextually emergent, lacking the essence that human beings have wished to attach 
to it” (Bendix 1997:210). 
 
While this may be true, history has forced some ethnic groups into identifying and using authenticity as 
a means of empowerment. Authenticity continues to be a powerful ingredient in the self-realization, 
identity, and political power of ethnic groups despite its contextually emergent nature. For example, 
academic disciplines impose standards and ways of thinking that nurture ideas of authentic 
essentialism in the study of ethnic identity and lawmakers rely on notions of authenticity in deciding 
which projects to nurture and dole public funds to. These are unavoidable facts in the pairing of 
ethnicity and authenticity. Bendix recognizes the complications and potential downfalls of ascribing 
authenticity to any cultural expression but she does not seem to recognize its empowering possibilities. 
In her concluding remarks, she writes that she “advocates laying to rest the use of authenticity within 
scholarship, and it constitutes my effort to undermine the social and political power of discourses on 
authenticity” (1997:227). In addition, Bendix contends that “Rather than giving in to the temptation of 
constructing new, elusive authenticities, cultural scholarship aware of the deceptive nature of 
authenticity concepts may turn its attention toward learning to tell the story of why human search for 
authenticity and why this search is fraught with such agony” (1997:227-228). 
 
Bendix is correct in thinking that scholars must be aware of the complexities, complications, and 
deceptions that authenticity may engender, yet we must resist the temptation to dismiss and 
undermine it because of these potentially harmful scenarios. Authenticity certainly has been used to 
dominate and to disempower, but people also find value in claiming authenticity as a tool of 
empowerment and resistance. While authenticity can be used to oppress, as Eric Hobsbawm and 
Terrence Ranger have shown in The Invention of Tradition (1983), it can also be used to legitimate and 



empower groups that have been historically disempowered. Therefore, rather than expunging 
authenticity as a superfluous aspect of cultural expression, a more valuable way to understand 
authenticity is to acknowledge and embrace its existence, and to examine how it is being used. Rather 
than disregarding the concept entirely, it might prove more useful to reexamine assumptions about 
authenticity. We may be better served to accept that there are multiple authenticities and accept it as 
an unstable concept. As a powerful tool that ethnic groups have used to gain recognition and voice, it 
cannot be so easily dismissed. Such a move would leave ethnic groups with less power to dismantle 
cultural hegemony. While Wor Sue Gai does not currently hold such political power for any group, it is 
an example of how authenticity can be viewed as empowering. 
 

The Story of Wor Sue Gai 
That Wor Sue Gai was created in Columbus is a widely held belief in the city. Anecdotal stories and 
conversations with restauranteurs and acquaintances reinforced the strength of this idea. Yet it seems 
curious that this seemingly common dish would have originated and spread from a city that was not 
known for having a large Chinese population. I am familiar with the names of many Cantonese dishes 
through my research on vintage Chinese restaurant menus and my own Cantonese background. While I 
was not specifically aware of this dish, it seemed familiar enough – the “wor sue” transliteration 
indicated Cantonese or the Toisan dialect – the languages of most of the Chinese population in the 
United States up to 1965. The “gravy” conjured up the vague orange/brown-color of the sauce often 
ladled onto Egg Foo Young 1 and other Chinese dishes frequently found on vintage Chinese restaurant 
menus. Other similar-sounding dishes include Wor Sue Ap/Opp (the Toisan pronunciation of “gravy 
duck”) or Wor Siu Ap/Opp (roasted duck). The name “Wor Sue Gai” did not seem to indicate any 
particularly outstanding characteristic or hint at any locality. In fact, it seemed to be just another 
standard dish, similar to chow mein in ordinariness though perhaps not quite as commonplace. 
However, after reviewing several Chinese restaurant vintage menus from cities across the United States 
2, I discovered that while some restaurants offered Wor Sue Ap/Opp, none of them listed Wor Sue Gai 
as a dish, indicating that it was perhaps indeed a more obscure dish than I had previously assumed. It 
seemed strange that if there was Wor Sue duck, cooks would not think of making Wor Sue chicken. 
 
Documentation of the dish itself is difficult to track. Spelling is an issue when conducting research on 
Wor Sue Gai as there were no standardized transliterations of Cantonese used in print. The dish has 
been spelled variably as “Warr Shu Gai” or “War Su Gai.” In addition, it may have been listed under 
other names such as Almond Boneless Chicken. But even under the same name (especially with a more 
broad name as Almond Boneless Chicken), the recipe itself might be different from what is generally 
understood to be Wor Sue Gai in Columbus. 3 
 
Wor Sue Gai appears on internet food discussion boards such as Chowhound. 4 There are several threads 
where posters seek or reminisce about this dish. For example, one poster states, “I'm a transplant from 
SE Michigan. Most Chinese restaurants in that area serve a dish called ‘Almond Boneless Chicken’ or 
‘Warr-Shu-Gai’……. Have any of you spotted this dish anywhere in the DC area?” 5 Another poster 
laments, “I have heard this is a Detroit dish - we certainly ate it in every Cantonese restaurant there - 



it does not seem to exist in Chicago….. The man needs his War Siu Gai and he needs it now! Can anyone 
help?” 6 Despite the numerous Chinese restaurants located in these cities, Wor Sue Gai is not to be 
found in the cities to which these Michigan transplants have moved. The fact that it cannot be found in 
the Chinese restaurants of Chicago or DC indicates that, unlike chow mein or fried rice, Wor Sue Gai 
may not be part of standard Chinese restaurant fare as I had originally assumed. The fact that posts 
about Wor Sue Gai generally involved asking others where they might find it, also indicates the dish has 
a type of uniqueness, in this case, a regional uniqueness. Indeed, all this lends validity to the idea that 
it might very well be a localized regional dish. 
 
It is also interesting to note that several of the posters mention Detroit, or more frequently Michigan, 
in relation to Wor Sue Gai, either noting that they (the posters) were originally from Detroit or other 
areas of Michigan where Chinese restaurants always offered it or speak of the dish as having originated 
from Detroit. Other online searches also indicate a Detroit connection. One food blogger writes, 
“Tonight I had the guts to try and replicate a chicken dish that is popular in Chinese restaurants around 
Detroit, MI. It's [sic] proper name is Wor Su Gai, but my family calls it ABC, short for almond boneless 
chicken” (Unsigned 2007). Like the posters from Chowhound.com, the blogger indicates that the dish in 
the version that she is accustomed to (in Detroit) cannot be found in her current locale: “I can only get 
this when I visit my family up north. I have been to many a chinese [sic] restaurant around here in 
Atlanta and not one has come close. So when I browsed the web for a recipe I was jumping for joy 
when I actually found one” (Ibid). Her recipe is taken from About.com 7 and on the site, there is an 
introduction to the recipe: “War Su Gai is a Chinese-American dish consisting of deep-fried chicken 
that is coated with a flavorful gravy and garnished with almonds. Although not widely available, it's a 
specialty in Detroit, Michigan, Columbus, Ohio, and no doubt a few other areas” (Parkinson n.d.). Here 
we see another claim for its Detroit connection as well as a Columbus connection. And in a 1991 email, 
Leah Smith claims: 

Warr Shu Gai or Almond Boneless Chicken, like chop suey, is a Chinese-inspired 
American dish. So far as I have been able to determine, it originated in Detroit. It was 
a favorite dish of my childhood there. Every Cantonese restaurant in the area serves it, 
but I've never been able to find it outside of Michigan. Descriptions of it to Chinese 
restaurant personnel elsewhere have been met with blank stares (Smith 1991). 8 

Based on these internet discussions, it would appear that Wor Sue Gai has a stronger association with 
Detroit than Columbus. 
 
This raises the question of whether Steve Yee, the owner of Ding Ho, may be incorrect in his claim that 
Ding Ho or Wing’s invented the dish. One poster on Chowhound.com explains Wor Sue Gai’s beginnings 
in a way that seems to definitively place Detroit as its birthplace: 

The reason that it developed in Detroit is because it was easy to make cafateria [sic] 
style and many of the cooks at the automotive plants were Chinese immigrants, so like 
most Chinese American dishes it was adapted to cooking early in the morning and being 



ready to compile about 4 hours later. Most true Chinese dishes are stir fried and served 
immediately. Not conducive to serving cafeteria style. Local resturants [sic] adapted to 
customer demands and started making this adaptation. So there is the connection: 
Detroit=automotive plantscafeteria=chinese immigrant cooks=War Su Gai. Thats [sic] 
my theory and if Pearls [sic] in Birmingham Michigan is still around Pearl could 
cooberate [sic] that theory (she was the Head Cook at General Motors). Lets [sic] hope 
the recipe doesn't die with the auto industry. 9 

There are several fascinating elements to this story. First, the poster links Wor Sue Gai with the Detroit 
auto industry and by doing so, reinforces the dish as American-made – much like the Detroit auto 
industry. Another point of interest is the conception of cafeteria food versus Chinese cuisine. Chinese 
dishes are stir-fried and served immediately while cafeteria food (read: low quality food) requires 
advance preparation to be put together hours later. In fact, Wor Sue Gai is a labor intensive dish that 
involves several steps. It seems an unlikely candidate for cafeteria style food. 
 
What is remarkable about this story is not that it provides any definitive or true origin of Wor Sue Gai. 
In fact, it not a definitive explanation, nor do we know if it is true. What is revealing about this story is 
that this popular dish, found in several Chinese restaurants, is presumed to originate in America. The 
actual origins of the dish are unknown or not clear, which allows for a creation story that is located in 
an American context. It is worth noting that in this story, Wor Sue Gai is not presumed to be just a 
Chinese dish; instead, it is a dish created in America by a Chinese cook for American tastes and is thus 
an American Chinese dish. Much like the ruminations that often accompany chop suey (Coe 2009, Calvin 
Lee 1958, Jennifer Lee 2008, Liu 2009, Yu 1987), information about Wor Sue Gai follows a trope about 
Chinese food in the United States: the belief that much, if not all, Chinese food in America is somehow 
fake, made-up, or bastardized for American tastes. Like chop suey, Wor Sue Gai is a popular dish on 
Chinese restaurant menus (at least in Columbus and apparently Detroit), but it is also seen as having 
been invented in the United States. 

 
Chop Suey and Chinese Cuisine 
Until relatively recently, chop suey was found on the menu of almost every Chinese restaurant. For the 
better part of a century, it was touted as the quintessential Chinese dish – a mixture of small bits of 
meats and vegetables in an indeterminate sauce. Today, however, chop suey is one of those dishes that 
many people consider to be an inauthentic representation of Chinese cuisine, a dish created by Chinese 
cooks in America for the unsuspecting white American palate, and its presence can mark a Chinese 
restaurant as inauthentic or old-fashioned. 
 
There are two main stories about the origin of chop suey. One is that hungry miners wandered into a 
Chinese restaurant and the chef had nothing but leftover pieces which he cooked into a hash called 
“chop suey” (Lee 1958: 27). Another is that Li Hongzhang, a high-ranking diplomat from China, visited 
the US in 1896 and had his chefs prepare a meal for his hosts in reciprocation for their hospitality. 
However, unsure that the dinner guests would be amenable to more traditional fare, he instructed they 



cook American meats and vegetables in a Chinese style and named it “chop suey” (Lee 1958: 28). 
Alternate versions of the diplomat’s visit claim that he was not accustomed or fond of Western so food 
and so he either went to a Chinese restaurant and ate chop suey or had his chefs prepared chop suey 
for him (Yu 1987). But in fact, journalist Andrew Coe, author of Chop Suey: A Cultural History of 
Chinese Food in the United States, maintains that Li never did eat chop suey during his visit to the 
United States. He writes that newspapers, unsure of what Li was really eating, widely reported him as 
doing so, most likely, as he explains it, “because chop suey, the only Chinese dish most white 
Americans had tasted, had become emblematic of Chinese food as a whole” (Coe 2009: 163). 10 A third, 
lesser known version involves Lem Sen, a San Francisco cook, who insisted that right before Li visited 
the United States, Lem invented chop suey at the behest of the owner of a bohemian San Francisco 
restaurant who wanted a dish that would pass as Chinese and satisfy the current interest in China due 
to the diplomat’s impending visit” (Coe 2009:176, Lee 2008:61). 11 All these origin stories place chop 
suey in the context of America as an invented dish created by Chinese cooks for the American palate. 
To lend even more credence to the idea that chop suey was an American creation, one often hears 
stories of Chinese from or in China who do not recognize the dish or who have never heard of it. Coe 
tells us that a 1904 Boston Globe article profiled six Chinese students who claimed that they had never 
heard of chop suey until they arrived in the US (2009:177). After all, it only seemed logical that 
someone from China would be in the best position to know about Chinese cuisine and whether chop 
suey was Chinese or not. 
 
However, Coe seems to imply that chop suey was in fact a dish that was already being eaten by the 
Chinese as a Chinese dish. He cites the journalist Allan Forman who wrote of an 1886 dinner at Mong 
Sing Wah’s in New York city in which a lawyer friend ordered in Chinese, “chow chop-suey, chop-seow, 
lanonraan, san-sui-goy, no-ma-das” (2009:158). Coe describes the meal as “not a banquet of rare 
ingredients imported from China but a meal off the menu – the everyday restaurant food eaten by New 
York’s Chinese” (2009:158). And the six students from China who had never heard of chop suey until 
they came to the United States? Two of them hailed from areas close to the Yangzi River and the rest 
from Guangzhou. In other words, they were not familiar with chop suey because they were not from 
the Pearl River Delta area of China which Coe states, “would have an outsized influence on the 
American perception of Chinese food” (Coe 2009:100). What Coe is referring to is the Toishan 
area/county by the Pearl River Delta in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong from which most 
of America’s Chinese population hailed from prior to 1965 due to America’s restrictive immigration 
laws. Thus, Chinese cuisine in the United States was essentially the regional cuisine of the Pearl River 
Delta. As further proof, Coe cites Hong Kong surgeon Li Shu-Fan’s memoir: 

I first tasted chop suey in a restaurant in Toishan in 1894, but the preparation had been 
familiar in that city long before my time. The recipe was probably taken to America by 
Toishan people, who, as I have said, are great travelers. Chinese from places as near to 
Toishan as Canton and Hong Kong are unaware that chop suey is truly a Chinese dish, 
and not an American adaptation (Coe 2009:161). 



Chop suey is indeed a familiar dish from the Pearl Delta county of Toisan. My own family hails from 
that region and I recall my mother, born in the 1930s, who never cooked anything that resembled an 
American meal, often prepared what she identified as “chop suey” as one of the dishes for the family 
meal and it was never considered “American.” In her version of chop suey, celery, onions, daikon, 
mushrooms, and either pork or chicken were stir fried together with oyster sauce. According to my 
father, 12 chop suey was eaten in China, but there it referred to a technique that became popular 
during the 19th century before it became known in America as the name of a specific dish (Yan 2012). 
 
Chop-suey itself it is not a particularly unique or imaginative use of ingredients. It is not like putting 
bacon and chocolate together where you have savory and sweet combined or the blurring of meat and 
dessert foods in combinations that are not usually put together. In a culinary tradition that includes the 
technique of stir-frying chopped meats and vegetables together, it is not inconceivable that a dish such 
as chop suey could have come from China. Chop suey is a very practical type of dish. In fact, as the 
conversation with my father suggests, chop suey is not even the name of a dish; it is more like a type 
of dish. The translation of “chop-suey” means “bits and pieces” and the “chow chop-suey” that Allan 
Forman and his friend dined on in 1896 means “stir-fried bits and pieces.” Essentially, chop suey or 
chow chop suey is taking whatever you have in the kitchen (perhaps leftovers), cutting it up into small 
pieces, and stir-frying them together. So if perhaps you are in a Chinese (home) kitchen and you dine 
on a dish of stir-fried sliced pork or chicken or any other meat with chopped vegetables and you ask 
your host, “What is the name of this delicious dish?” If your host replies, “Oh, it’s just chop suey,” 
what he or she is essentially saying is, “Oh, it’s just leftovers” or “Oh, it’s just a hash I threw 
together” or “Oh, it’s Mystery Surprise.” It’s not the name of a dish; it is meant as a general catch-all 
description of smaller bits of food put together and stir fried. It is a humble food: plain, simple, and 
economical. It is homestyle Chinese food of the Toisan Chinese; essentially it is peasant food. 
 
When Americans first began to take notice of chop suey, it was a little unclear what it consisted of. 
The bits and pieces that make chop suey could be anything, such as gizzards, sprouts, or fish, for as 
Coe writes that “in nineteenth century New York, the definition of chop suey was anything but fixed” 
(2009:160). Because Chinese chop suey meant that anything could be thrown together and stir-fried, it 
could be leftovers or it could be could whatever the cook felt like putting together that day. The 
theory often bandied about Chinese foods becoming Americanized because of substitution or 
adaptation because of the unavailability of specific ingredients does not really apply here because of 
the chop suey principle of various bits and pieces thrown together. There is no must-have ingredient to 
substitute. This flexibility is perhaps what allowed chop suey to become known as “Americanized.” For 
example, Shiu Wong Chan’s The Chinese Cookbook has this to say about a chicken chop suey recipe: 
“This dish is not known in China. From its name it means simply a variety of small pieces. However, the 
principles of Chinese cooking are the same” (Chan 1917:37). 13 Chan identifies chop suey as a Chinese 
cooking method and this echoes my own feeling that chop suey as a method, or a cooking principle, is 
rooted in Chinese cuisine. 
 



However, for many people, what makes a dish Chinese is not the principle but the ingredients. In the 
case of chop suey in the United States, the burden of authenticity seemed to whether you had the 
proper ingredients, whatever they may be (and indeed, as Coe noted, it was not so clear cut). In the 
late 19th and early 20th centuries, yes, Chinese ingredients and vegetables were not as widely 
available as they are today and substitutions most likely did occur. But chop suey did not necessarily 
require substitutions as it was already a flexible dish. It may have, apparently, been presumed to 
contain a set list of ingredient substitutions (which it did not), and any change or “substitution” would 
thus be described as “Americanized.” Chop suey in one form could conceivably be “Americanized” if 
the ingredients are say, chopped potatoes, ham, and cheese cubes stirred fried in wok because they 
are ingredients that are not usually utilized in Chinese cuisine. But if such a dish did exist, it would be 
less “substitution” than perhaps a deliberate creative endeavor. But if the principles are still the same 
– chopped bits and pieces stir fried together – it could still be chop suey. 
 
Coe writes that the idea that chop suey is not Chinese had “staying power” (Coe 2009:177) despite the 
lack of documentary evidence for stories of the miners or of Li Hongzhang’s chop suey adventures 
during his American visit. He points out that the idea of chop suey as a big hoax continues in popular 
culture from the headlines of a 1918 Philadelphia inquirer that announced “The Origin of Chop Suey Is 
An Enormous Chinese Joke” to Jennifer Lee’s proclamation that it was the “biggest culinary joke 
played by one culture on another” (Lee 2008:49). He observantly notices that in all these cases of 
chop-suey-as-fake-Chinese-food, it is the American who is the butt of the joke, “too ignorant to 
recognize real Chinese food” (Coe 2009:177) and “too stupid to know that they were essentially eating 
garbage” (Ibid:178). He writes that “the punch line about eating garbage suggests a veiled revenge 
(analogous to the chef spitting in the soup) for decades of mistreatment. Call it a myth that conveys a 
larger historical ‘truth’” (Coe 2009:178). Coe is onto something in that statement. The persistent 
labeling of chop suey as fake Chinese food for stupid Americans may very well indeed suggest an 
anxiety about the Chinese and their mysterious cuisine. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, 
Chinese culture was still something that was unknown and to be feared; it represented a site of 
fascination and exoticism. But what could be known was chop suey, the somewhat “addictive” dish 
that the Chinese made in their restaurants. One part of the search for authentic Chinese food 
(depending on who you were – a non Chinese versus a Chinese person) may have been the desire not to 
be the butt of the joke, to not be the “ignorant” American. Despite the “addictive qualities” that 
made one go to a Chinese restaurant again and again for chop suey, you were not taken in by that 
incredible “hoax.” 
 
But the larger historical truth may not be the revenge fantasy that Coe seems to think. Chop suey is a 
food of the “contact zone” which Mary Louise Pratt describes as “the space of colonial encounters, the 
space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other 
and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and 
intractable conflict” (Pratt 1992:6). Chop suey as a contact zone food does not mean that it is a hybrid, 
like the creolization of languages. It is a contact zone food because it raises questions about identity 
and power relations. The larger historical truth that Chinese food in America reveals is perhaps that 



Chinese food often represents this search for the authentic, a direct and verifiable connection to the 
Chinese motherland. 
 
Back to Wor Sue Gai. The frequent mentions of the Detroit connection may indicate to some that Wor 
Sue Gai did originate in Detroit rather than Columbus. However, it does not necessarily mean that 
Steve Yee or Kenny Yee are incorrect in their origin stories. It is possible that Ding Ho or Wing’s 
created the dish and the recipe made its way north to Detroit via a restaurant patron who enjoyed the 
dish or perhaps an associate of the restaurant who later moved to Detroit and that Detroit embraced it 
even more than Columbus did. While both Steve Yee and Kenny Yee are unclear as to who created the 
dish, Ding Ho or Wing’s, they do believe that it originated in Columbus. After all, it does not appear to 
be part of the Chinese restaurant menu lexicon in other cities. In addition, Ding Ho and Wing’s have 
always offered Wor Sue Gai on their menus, and both are among the oldest Chinese restaurants in 
Columbus. Thus, the idea that Wor Sue is a Columbus invention is not an unreasonable conclusion to 
make. 
 
Efforts to track the origins of Wor Sue Gai are as much about satisfying a simple curiosity about how 
this popular dish came to be as a desire to understand its connection to China. Origin stories are 
comforting; they can tell us exactly how, where and how something started without the ungraspable 
nebulosity of the unknown. As Jennifer Lee wrote about her wish that the story of Lem Sen inventing 
chop suey was actually true, “These symbolic characters make the mess of history more streamlined, 
palatable, and digestible – not unlike Americanized Chinese food. Against a backdrop of chaos, there is 
a single pleasant narrative” (Lee 2008:64). More importantly, in the case of foodways, it tells us how 
we should treat/view a dish by situating it in the realm of the inauthentic or authentic. Origins of food 
seem to be important, especially for food that doesn’t seem “American” in the context of the United 
States. Knowing the origins of Wor Sue Gai will decide whether it is Chinese or “Americanized.” If we 
know that Wor Sue Gai was invented in Columbus (or Detroit), then we can say that it is not really 
Chinese because it was invented in the United States. Then we are not the butt of any joke, armed 
with the sure-fire knowledge that puts us in on the “know.” 
 

Conclusion 
For any cultural expression, it is important to make the distinction about the type of authenticity that 
is in question. In the case of Wor Sue Gai, authenticity is not about whether this dish is truly part of 
the cuisine of China. It seems accepted that it is a product of America though an “exact” origin story 
could confirm the suspicion. When people talk about the authenticity of Wor Sue Gai, however, they 
are usually not talking about whether it is Chinese or not. Rather, they are talking about how it is made 
and whether it is good or not. Some people in Columbus are passionate about their Wor Sue Gai. One 
regular diner at Ding Ho states: 

What I like about the Wor Sue Gai the best is the chicken – the way it’s cooked and 
breaded on the inside and they have a sauce. The sauce was over it. And the diced 
onions. And I like the almonds that they crunch up on them. The almonds are sort of 
my favorite on it and I always like extra almonds. You know it makes it taste better. I 



love chicken so well . . . When they make it so moist and it’s just got a different taste. 
It’s something about the sauce mixed in with the chicken and the onion, with chopped 
up onions, green onion. It’s something about just the taste that’s just. . .It’s like eating 
a potato chip. You can’t eat one and I’m saying you sort of get hooked on it, you know. 
Like my son said, last week we come over to here to eat, he said, hey dad, I could eat 
it every day of the week and I sort of chuckle to myself. It’s the same way I feel from 
all those years I’ve been eating since the late sixties and seventies. I’ve ate Wor Sue 
Gai at other places and it’s just really not even close to being the taste.….I just love 
the taste of Wor Sue Gai (Follrod 2013). 

The process and labor involved in making Wor Sue Gai seems to require several steps that are not as 
quick and easy as chop suey. Steve Yee does not use the actual word “authenticity” when he described 
the process of making Wor Sue Gai, but he has an idea of what “real” or “authentic” Wor Sue Gai is. He 
observes, “There’s a lot of imitations….Whereas a lot restaurants call that Wor Sue Gai and you buy 
chicken breasts and batter it and deep fry it and call that Wor Sue Gai” (Steve Yee 2007). His meaning 
is clear: there is a real Wor Sue Gai and a Wor Sue Gai that is not so real. Here, authenticity seems to 
be conflated/equated with quality or effort. The use of just chicken breasts rather than simmering the 
entire chicken is a fast food short cut that is obviously not as good as the process he believes is 
required for Wor Sue Gai. For the short-cutters, Wor Sue Gai is not about process but simply about 
deep frying battered chicken breasts. And that is the issue Yee seems to have with this type of Wor Sue 
Gai – that the cooks did not really understand what constitutes the dish. For Yee, the burden of 
authenticity lies within the entire process of simmering, deboning, breading, etc in making Wor Sue 
Gai. For the short-cutters, the element necessary to make the Wor Sue Gai is the battered deep fried 
chicken breast. What we see here is a differentiation of what people mean by authentic in the very 
same dish. Authentic Wor Sue Gai is about process. 
 
In the cases of chop suey and Wor Sue Gai, it is important to note that the flavor of the dish is not 
contested in terms of its Chinese-ness. For the diners who are not intimately familiar with Chinese 
cuisine, an origin story that links it directly to China might be enough proof that it is Chinese. The fact 
that it is served by Asian people might also be enough verification. Or that the other diners in the 
restaurant are Asian. Perhaps it is because diners who are not intimately familiar with Chinese cuisine 
may not know enough to make assessments of authenticity based on flavor and must rely on other cues 
to validate a restaurant’s authenticity or inauthenticity. In such cases, how can one know what is 
authentic Chinese food? Elizabeth Rozin states that it is possible to re-create the flavors of any cultural 
cuisine by identifying and isolating the different flavors (or spices) that are used in combination in any 
particular culture. She writes, “A flavor principle, then, is the taste that results from a mixture of 
several flavoring ingredients that are used together frequently and consistently within a cuisine, a 
taste that can be abstracted and described apart from the basic foodstuffs the ingredients interact 
with (Rozin 1973:3). In order to approximate or at least come close to recreating authentic cuisine 
from a specific culture, one must understand the flavoring principles behind their dishes. So for 
instance, if one wanted to prepare a dish that tasted West African, one would use tomato, peanuts, 
and chili as the primary ingredients. While Rozin admits that a dish outside its home origin may not be 



reproduced with absolute authenticity since ingredients may be slight different or cooking techniques 
may vary, “with time and effort, authenticity can be achieved” (1973:4). The achievable authenticity 
is in the flavor even in approximation. Rozin comments, “The flavor principle idea proposes that 
seeming or theoretical authenticity may be a more valid goal and in fact permits mastery of a foreign 
cuisine without the necessity of conforming absolutely to the limits of that cuisine – in short, liberation 
from the non-essential and freedom improvise” (1973:4). Thus, authenticity or mastery of a foreign 
cuisine is not so much an exact reproduction as it is an understanding of the underlying flavor 
principles that make up a culture’s cuisine. 
 
What is important is not so much how Wor Sue Gai came about, who invented it, and where it was 
invented. It may or may not have originated in Columbus. It might even be found in other cities besides 
Columbus or Detroit. What is important to note is that it is a Columbus dish. At the same time, it is also 
a Detroit dish. It is also a Chinese dish. It is also an American dish. What Wor Sue Gai tells us is that 
like any cultural expression, it has multiple layers in its identity and multiple co-existing identities that 
are not contradictory. What makes it all of these things is not a linear origin story that neatly lays out 
the birth of an immutable dish. What is important to note is that Wor Sue Gai is all of these things 
because they all claim Wor Sue Gai. It is a local dish because it is embraced by the people of Columbus 
and Detroit. Authenticity is not about origins so much as it is about claiming and who claims the 
cultural expression as rightfully their own. 
 

Notes 
1. Egg Foo Young is an essentially a fried egg patty. Two or three raw eggs are mixed with chopped 
onions and bits of meat such as pork, chicken, beef, or shrimp. Sometimes spring onions and/or bean 
sprouts are added. The mixture is then deep fried and served over rice with gravy ladled on top of 
everything. The dish also has variations in spelling and may also be spelled as Egg Fu Yung. 

2. I own a small collection of vintage Chinese restaurant menus that I purchased individually on eBay. 
The menus were generally dated as being from the 1940s to the 1960s. Although the actual date of any 
given menu can be difficult to verify, the pricing and the types of dishes offered indicate a time period 
prior to the 1970s. 

3. Although there may be variations on the spelling, I use “Wor Sue Gai” to reference the dish. 

4. Chowhound is the discussion board of www.chow.com and describes itself as “community of 
discerning eaters share information and opinions about cooking and restaurants.” Please see 
http://chowhound.chow.com/boards. 

5. jahrjame, 2007, Almond Boneless Chicken in DC area?, Nov 1 
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/456433 (accessed July 20, 2012). 

6. Madd, 2002, ISO War Siu Gai - Almond Boneless Chicken, Dec 3 
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/111872 (accessed July 20, 2012). 



7. About.com provides content on a variety of topics and is owned by the New York Times Company. 
More about the company can be found at http://www.advertiseonabout.com/about-us/. 

8. Leah Smith’s 1991 email about Wor Sue Gai appears on several different sites. I found and used her 
email from the following link: http://kabish.com/recipes/recipes.php?id=147 (accessed July 20, 2012). 
In addition, portions of her email that identify the origins of Wor Sue Gai have been reproduced in 
varying forms to accompany reproductions of her recipe which she claims to have obtained from the 
Detroit Free Press. However, a search of the Detroit Free Press’s website yielded no information on 
Wor Sue Gai in any of the spelling variations. 

9. dave59, 2009 reply comment to thread entitled “Please Describe Almond Chicken To Me,” June 12, 
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/16141 (accessed July 21, 2012). 

10. Coe also states that the New York Journal painstakingly recorded every bite the diplomat ate in 
public and every move of his four chefs and according to the records, chop suey was not one of the 
things he ate (2009:163). 

11. Both Coe 2009 and Lee 2008 reference the original story that was reported in the New York Times 
in 1904. 

12. My father was also trained as a chef in Hong Kong in the 1950s and opened a Chinese take-out in 
Baltimore for over thirty years. 

13. Actually, the Chinese characters printed before the recipe is “Stir Fried Chicken Slices” but in 
English, it was printed as Chicken Chop Suey. 

 
References Cited 

Bendix, Regina. 1997. In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies. 
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 

Chan, Shiu Wong. 1917. The Chinese Cookbook. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. 

Chowhound. http://chowhound.chow.com (Accessed July 20, 2012). 

Coe, Andrew. 2009. Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States. 
New York: Oxford University Press. 

Follrod, Ron. 2013. Interview by the author, Columbus, Ohio. April 14. 

Hobsbawn, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. New York: 
Cambridge University Press. 

Lee, Calvin. 1958. Chinese Cooking for American Kitchens. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 

Lee, Jennifer. 2008. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. New York: Twelve Press. 



Liu, Haiming. 2009. Chop Suey as Imagined Authentic Chinese Food: The Culinary Identity 
of Chinese Restaurants in the United States. Journal of Transnational American Studies 1 
(1):12; available at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bc4k55r 28.1. ISSN: 1940-076. 

Parkinson, Rhonda. N.d. War Su Gai, http://chinesefood.about.com/od/poultry/r/War-
Sui- Gai.htm (accessed Friday, July 20, 2012). 

Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: 
Routledge. 

Rozin, Elizabeth Rozin. 1973. The Flavor Principle Cookbook. New York: Hawthorn Books. 

Smith, Leah. 1991. Email about Wor Sue Gai. 
http://kabish.com/recipes/recipes.php?id=147 (accessed July 20, 2012). 

Unsigned. 2007. Wor Su Gai or Almond Boneless Chicken. Culinary Infatuation (blog). 
December 28. http://culinaryinfatuation.blogspot.com/2007/12/wor-su-gai-or-almond-
boneless-chicken.html (accessed Friday, July 20, 2012). 

Yan, Heung Ming. 2012. Telephone conversation with the author. July 27. 

Yee, Kenny. 2007. Interview by the author, Columbus, Ohio. September 25. 

Yee, Steve. 2007. Interview by the author, Columbus, Ohio. September 10. 

Yu, Renqiu. 1987. Chop Suey: From Chinese Food to Chinese American Food. Chinese 
America: History and Persepctives 1:87-100. 


