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November 27, 2020 6:52 PM Subscribe
Follow me down a Joyce Chen rabbit hole. Joyce Chen was born in 1917, a Beijing daughter of a high ranking official. She and her husband and children were on the second to last boat leaving Shanghai after the communist revolution. Chen found herself a housewife in the US, a huge change from her job as an insurance broker back in Beijing. But in time, she started to focus on creating a career from her cooking...
By the mid-1960s, GBH had a runaway hit with The French Chef, featuring Julia Child.
In 1966, GBH decided to see if it could be replicated, and they offered Joyce Chen-- by then a successful restaurateur and cookbook author-- her own show.
The show was produced by Julia Child's producer and was even filmed on the same set as The French Chef. The producers dressed it up in symbols they considered to be safely enough Chinese for an American audience. The result ends cringeworthy at times , but Chen as a chef rises above her surroundings. The show was broadcast on ETS (the forerunner of PBS), but lacking a corporate sponsor, it only survived for one season.
11 of the 26 television episodes are digitised and open to the public domain
Reading list:
Joyce Chen's many accomplishments
The Chicago Post on Chen
Martha Stewart article on Chen where she talks about her walking the line between authenticy and accessibility.
An article about Chen and Boston Chinese fusion
A useful timeline of the history of Chinese food in the USA.
Chinese Food and the Chinese Exclusion Act
A Woman To Know-- Joyce Chen
By the mid-1960s, GBH had a runaway hit with The French Chef, featuring Julia Child.
In 1966, GBH decided to see if it could be replicated, and they offered Joyce Chen-- by then a successful restaurateur and cookbook author-- her own show.
The show was produced by Julia Child's producer and was even filmed on the same set as The French Chef. The producers dressed it up in symbols they considered to be safely enough Chinese for an American audience. The result ends cringeworthy at times , but Chen as a chef rises above her surroundings. The show was broadcast on ETS (the forerunner of PBS), but lacking a corporate sponsor, it only survived for one season.
11 of the 26 television episodes are digitised and open to the public domain
Reading list:
Joyce Chen's many accomplishments
The Chicago Post on Chen
Martha Stewart article on Chen where she talks about her walking the line between authenticy and accessibility.
An article about Chen and Boston Chinese fusion
A useful timeline of the history of Chinese food in the USA.
Chinese Food and the Chinese Exclusion Act
A Woman To Know-- Joyce Chen
Joyce Chen's restaurant is in Cambridge, across Alewife Brook Parkway from the Alewife T station. The restaurant is long out of business, but in 2001, a few months before my daughter was born, it was being used as a day care, which my wife and I visited in our search for one. It was a weird experience touring this place, full of little kids playing, but which still smelled of the deep fried Peking ravioli she popularized.
posted by briank at 7:19 PM on November 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by briank at 7:19 PM on November 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Oh, wow, this is so good. This is the mid-century equivalent of the Babish Cullinary Universe, the Childs Cullinary universe, except these women were more James Bond than James Bond before even stepping in front of a camera. Also the recipes are expert, and cater to their audience. Who were previously trying to put deviled eggs* and cooked lettuce in aspic.
*I like deviled eggs, with homegrown black mustard seed mustard and hot and also sharp hungarian paprikas and some mayo. Not the same thing. Not like THAT... NOT LIKE THAT!
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:37 PM on November 27, 2020
*I like deviled eggs, with homegrown black mustard seed mustard and hot and also sharp hungarian paprikas and some mayo. Not the same thing. Not like THAT... NOT LIKE THAT!
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:37 PM on November 27, 2020
Also interesting is the story of Ruby Foo, the first Chinese woman to open a restaurant across the river in Boston.
posted by adamg at 7:51 PM on November 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by adamg at 7:51 PM on November 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Not to divert attention, but also to be credited as an originator in this TV cuisine category: Martin Yan's mother.
posted by bartleby at 10:40 PM on November 27, 2020
posted by bartleby at 10:40 PM on November 27, 2020
Oh I'm so excited to see this post - thank you for pulling this together frumiousb! I've had a draft post about Joyce Chen just saved in my drafts for a while now and I'm so pleased to see what you've got here.
My mom had a memorable visit to the restaurant in the early '60s; she had dinner there but due to circumstances she got stranded, and at the end of the night Joyce Chen very kindly gave her a lift back into the city along with driving a bunch of the staff back home. When I was growing up mom regularly made a few dishes from the Joyce Chen Cook Book that are really simple but so perfect (eg the cold cut chicken). When I first started looking into this, I was surprised by her being more obscure than I realized - I think of her at the same level of fame as Julia Child, famous tv chefs everybody knows, but that's not the case.
One of my favorite links from the post I was putting together is this:
The Joyce Chen Cook Book, or Mom, Tofu and Crappies, by Cathy Luh aka Dr. Bookworm.
It's not about Joyce Chen herself, but rather a personal reflection about what Chen meant for Luh's immigrant mom, who immigrated in 1955 with a family to feed, but without cooking experience, to St. Louis, where none of the ingredients or traditions were readily available.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:52 AM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
My mom had a memorable visit to the restaurant in the early '60s; she had dinner there but due to circumstances she got stranded, and at the end of the night Joyce Chen very kindly gave her a lift back into the city along with driving a bunch of the staff back home. When I was growing up mom regularly made a few dishes from the Joyce Chen Cook Book that are really simple but so perfect (eg the cold cut chicken). When I first started looking into this, I was surprised by her being more obscure than I realized - I think of her at the same level of fame as Julia Child, famous tv chefs everybody knows, but that's not the case.
One of my favorite links from the post I was putting together is this:
The Joyce Chen Cook Book, or Mom, Tofu and Crappies, by Cathy Luh aka Dr. Bookworm.
It's not about Joyce Chen herself, but rather a personal reflection about what Chen meant for Luh's immigrant mom, who immigrated in 1955 with a family to feed, but without cooking experience, to St. Louis, where none of the ingredients or traditions were readily available.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:52 AM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
LobsterMitten, I feel the obscure need to apologise for scooping your draft. Your posts are so wonderful.
posted by frumiousb at 4:17 PM on November 28, 2020
posted by frumiousb at 4:17 PM on November 28, 2020
She taught us how to cook Chinese via the Betty Crocker Chinese Cookbook.
posted by SemiSalt at 12:51 PM on November 29, 2020
posted by SemiSalt at 12:51 PM on November 29, 2020
The picture book about Joyce Chen, Dumpling Dreams, was for over a year a frequently requested bedtime read -- I haven't seen the book since the last cleanup of their room and bookshelves, and suspect it ended up in one of the large piles by the bed and so out of sight. For a while, the kid didn't want to read about China (where they were born) but that was one of the few books that kept up their interest.
posted by Quasirandom at 8:05 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Quasirandom at 8:05 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
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posted by octothorpe at 7:19 PM on November 27, 2020 [1 favorite]