FOR SEVERAL years, beginning in the mid-2000s, devotees of Chinese food on America’s east coast obsessed over a mystery: Where was Peter Chang? A prodigiously talented—and peripatetic—chef, Mr Chang bounced around eateries in the south-east. One day diners at a strip-mall restaurant in suburban Richmond or Atlanta might be eating standard egg rolls and orange chicken; the next, their table would be graced by exquisite pieces of aubergine the size of an index finger, greaselessly fried and dusted with cumin, dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorns. Or by a soup made of pickled mustard greens and fresh sea bass, in its way as hauntingly perfect and austere as a Bach cello suite. A few months later, Mr Chang would move on.
从2005年前后开始，有那么几年美国东海岸的中餐迷对一个神秘事件津津乐道：张鹏亮（Peter Chang）在哪儿？他是一名才华横溢却行踪不定的厨师，游走于美国东南部的众多餐馆之间。里士满或亚特兰大近郊路边商店街的某个餐馆里，食客前一天可能还在吃着普通的鸡蛋卷和陈皮鸡，后一天他们的餐桌上摆上了食指大小的精巧茄子条，油炸过却不油腻，上面撒着孜然、干辣椒和四川花椒；有时是新鲜海鲈鱼配酸菜做成的汤，如巴赫大提琴组曲般完美简约，令人回味。几个月后，张鹏亮又会飘然离去。
He now seems to have settled down, running a string of restaurants bearing his name between Rockville, Maryland, and Virginia Beach. His latest—Q by Peter Chang—in the smart Washington suburb of Bethesda, may be his finest. The space is vast and quasi-industrial, with brushed concrete floors, massive pillars and not a winking dragon in sight. Order a scallion pancake, and what appears is not the typical greasy disc but an airy, volleyball-sized dough sphere. Jade shrimp with crispy rice comes under what looks like an upturned wooden bowl (perhaps, you think, for the shells). On inspection the bowl turns out to be the rice. Thumping through it with a spoon reveals perfectly cooked shrimp floating in shamrock-green sauce.
现在，他似乎已经安定下来，在马里兰州的罗克维尔和弗吉尼亚海滩之间开出了一系列以自己的名字命名的餐厅。最新的一家叫“Q by Peter Chang”（以下简称Q餐厅），位于华盛顿的高档郊区贝塞斯达，也许是他所有餐厅中最高级的。里面非常宽敞，打磨混凝土地面和大柱子营造出工业风，看不到眨着眼的龙。点一道“葱油泡饼”，端上来的不是通常那种油腻的圆形薄饼，而是排球大小的轻盈的炸面球。“锅巴葱汁虾贝”上面貌似倒扣着一只木碗（你也许以为那是扔虾壳用的）。细看才会发现那“木碗”正是锅巴。用勺子敲碎锅巴，精致烹调的虾浮现于三叶草绿色的酱汁中。
A tab for two at Q can easily top three figures—several times the outlay on an average Chinese meal. Nor is Mr Chang’s the only such restaurant in the area: like many big American cities, Washington has seen a rise in high-end Chinese cuisine. That is good news, and not just for well-heeled gourmands who can tell shuijiao from shuizhu. The culinary trend is underpinned by two benign social ones. Chinese-Americans are becoming wealthier and more self-confident; and customers are shedding old stereotypes about Chinese food. To put it another way: sometimes a dumpling is more than just a dumpling.
两人在Q餐厅用餐，账单很容易上到三位数，是普通中餐的好几倍。但Q餐厅也不是该地区唯一此类餐厅：和美国许多大城市一样，华盛顿也刮起了一股高档中餐的风潮。这是好事，不止是对那些分得清“水饺”和“水煮”的阔绰老饕而言。在这股餐饮潮流背后有两个良性社会趋势在支撑。一方面，美国华裔变得越来越富也越来越自信，另一方面，顾客也在逐渐消除对中餐的刻板印象。换句话说，有时候饺子不只是饺子了。
The comfort of strangers 外人的慰藉
Chinese restaurants began to open in America in the mid-19th century, clustering on the west coast where the first immigrants landed. They mostly served an Americanised version of Cantonese cuisine—chop suey, egg fu yung and the like. In that century and much of the 20th, the immigrants largely came from China’s south-east, mainly Guangdong province.
中餐馆最早在美国出现是在19世纪中叶，集中在第一批移民落脚的西海岸地区。它们大多提供美式粤菜——杂碎、芙蓉蛋之类。在19世纪以及20世纪的大部分时间，这些移民主要来自中国东南部，主要是广东省。
After the immigration reforms of 1965 removed ethnic quotas that limited non-European inflows, Chinese migrants from other regions started to arrive. Restaurants began calling their food “Hunan” and “Sichuan”, and though it rarely bore much resemblance to what was actually eaten in those regions, it was more diverse and boldly spiced than the sweet, fried stuff that defined the earliest Chinese menus. By the 1990s adventurous diners in cities with sizeable Chinese populations could choose from an array of regional cuisines. A particular favourite was Sichuan food, with its addictively numbing fire (the Sichuan peppercorn has a slightly anaesthetising, tongue-buzzing effect).
美国在1965年改革了移民政策，取消了限制非欧洲人迁入的种族配额，来自中国其他地区的移民开始涌入。餐馆开始管自家菜品叫“湖南”、“四川”，尽管它们往往与这些地区的实际菜式大相径庭；但相比最早期中餐菜单上那些偏甜的炒菜和油炸食物，这些新式中餐更多元，也更敢用辣。到了90年代，在华裔较多的美国城市，勇于尝新的食客已经可以选择各大菜系的中餐。带有令人上瘾的麻辣味（川椒有轻微麻醉舌头的作用）的川菜尤其受欢迎。
Yet over the decades, as Chinese food became ubiquitous, it also—beyond the niche world of connoisseurs—came to be standardised. There are almost three times as many Chinese restaurants in America (41,000) as McDonald’s. Virtually every small town has one and, generally, the menus are consistent: pork dumplings (steamed or fried); the same two soups (hot and sour, wonton); stir-fries listed by main ingredient, with a pepper icon or star indicating a meagre trace of chilli-flakes. Dishes over $10 are grouped under “chef’s specials”. There are modest variations: in Boston, takeaways often come with bread and feature a dark, molasses-sweetened sauce; a Chinese-Latino creole cuisine developed in upper Manhattan. But mostly you can, as at McDonald’s, order the same thing in Minneapolis as in Fort Lauderdale.
但在过去几十年里，随着中餐变得随处可见，抛开美食家的小众世界不说，它变得日渐标准化。在美国有41,000家中餐馆，数量几乎是麦当劳的三倍。几乎每个小镇都有一家，菜单都大同小异：猪肉馅蒸饺或煎饺、酸辣汤或馄饨汤、按主料列出的炒菜（以辣椒图标或星号表示含有少量辣椒碎）。10美元以上的菜式会列在“主厨特选”之下。地区之间有些微差异：在波士顿，外卖中餐通常附送面包和一份深色的蜜糖酱；在曼哈顿上城则发展出一种混合风味的拉美式中餐。但大多数情况下，就和在麦当劳那样，你能在明尼阿波利斯和劳德代尔堡点到一模一样的东西。
Until recently, the prices varied as little as the menus—and they were low. Eddie Huang, a Taiwanese-American restaurateur turned author and presenter, recounts how his newly arrived father kept his prices down because “immigrants can’t sell anything full-price in America.”
直到近年，中餐的价格和菜单一样变化不大，一直都很低。来自台湾的华裔美国人黄颐铭（Eddie Huang）从餐馆老板转型为作家兼节目主持人，他回忆父亲初到美国开餐馆时一直把价格定得很低，因为“在美国，移民无法以足价卖任何东西。”
That, in truth, was a consoling simplification. Americans have traditionally been willing to pay through the nose at French or Italian joints (where, in fact, Latinos often do most of the cooking). And every city has its pricey sushi bars and exorbitant tapas restaurants (tapas, as one joke goes, is Spanish for “$96 and still hungry”).
实际上，这只是聊以自慰的简单化的说法。美国人一贯愿意花大价钱在法国或意大利餐厅用餐（实际上那里的菜大多是拉美人做的）。美国每个城市都有高价日本寿司店和天价西班牙tapas小吃店（就像一句玩笑话说的那样，“花96美元还吃不饱”用西班牙语讲就是“tapas”）。
But Mr Huang is right that Americans have long expected Chinese food to be cheap and filling. One step up from the urban takeaway, with its fluorescent lighting and chipped formica counter, is the strip-mall bistro with its imposing red doors and fake lions standing guard—sufficiently exotic to be special, but still affordable enough for a family to visit once a week when nobody feels like cooking.
但黄颐铭有一个说法是对的：长期以来美国人都觉得中餐应该既便宜又管饱。比起城中那些亮着惨白日光灯、柜台塑料贴面破破烂烂的中餐外卖店，郊区公路边商业区里装着堂皇的红漆大门、立着假狮子的中餐馆要高级一些。它们带有足够别致的中国风，但一家人在不想做饭时每周光顾一次也负担得起。
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