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.

從2005年前後開始，有那麼幾年美國東海岸的中餐迷對一個神秘事件津津樂道：張鵬亮（Peter Chang）在哪兒？他是一名才華橫溢卻行蹤不定的廚師，遊走於美國東南部的眾多餐館之間。里士滿或亞特蘭大近郊路邊商店街的某個餐館裡，食客前一天可能還在吃著普通的雞蛋卷和陳皮雞，後一天他們的餐桌上擺上了食指大小的精巧茄子條，油炸過卻不油膩，上面撒著孜然、幹辣椒和四川花椒；有時是新鮮海鱸魚配酸菜做成的湯，如巴赫大提琴組曲般完美簡約，令人回味。幾個月後，張鵬亮又會飄然離去。

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.

現在，他似乎已經安定下來，在馬里蘭州的羅克維爾和弗吉尼亞海灘之間開出了一系列以自己的名字命名的餐廳。最新的一家叫“Q by Peter Chang”（以下簡稱Q餐廳），位於華盛頓的高檔郊區貝塞斯達，也許是他所有餐廳中最高級的。裡面非常寬敞，打磨混凝土地面和大柱子營造出工業風，看不到眨著眼的龍。點一道“蔥油泡餅”，端上來的不是通常那種油膩的圓形薄餅，而是排球大小的輕盈的炸面球。“鍋巴蔥汁蝦貝”上面貌似倒扣著一隻木碗（你也許以為那是扔蝦殼用的）。細看才會發現那“木碗”正是鍋巴。用勺子敲碎鍋巴，精緻烹調的蝦浮現於三葉草綠色的醬汁中。

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.

兩人在Q餐廳用餐，賬單很容易上到三位數，是普通中餐的好幾倍。但Q餐廳也不是該地區唯一此類餐廳：和美國許多大城市一樣，華盛頓也颳起了一股高檔中餐的風潮。這是好事，不止是對那些分得清“水餃”和“水煮”的闊綽老饕而言。在這股餐飲潮流背後有兩個良性社會趨勢在支撐。一方面，美國華裔變得越來越富也越來越自信，另一方面，顧客也在逐漸消除對中餐的刻板印象。換句話說，有時候餃子不只是餃子了。

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.

中餐館最早在美國出現是在19世紀中葉，集中在第一批移民落腳的西海岸地區。它們大多提供美式粵菜——雜碎、芙蓉蛋之類。在19世紀以及20世紀的大部分時間，這些移民主要來自中國東南部，主要是廣東省。

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).

美國在1965年改革了移民政策，取消了限制非歐洲人遷入的種族配額，來自中國其他地區的移民開始湧入。餐館開始管自家菜品叫“湖南”、“四川”，儘管它們往往與這些地區的實際菜式大相徑庭；但相比最早期中餐菜單上那些偏甜的炒菜和油炸食物，這些新式中餐更多元，也更敢用辣。到了90年代，在華裔較多的美國城市，勇於嘗新的食客已經可以選擇各大菜系的中餐。帶有令人上癮的麻辣味（川椒有輕微麻醉舌頭的作用）的川菜尤其受歡迎。

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.

但在過去幾十年裡，隨著中餐變得隨處可見，拋開美食家的小眾世界不說，它變得日漸標準化。在美國有41,000家中餐館，數量幾乎是麥當勞的三倍。幾乎每個小鎮都有一家，菜單都大同小異：豬肉餡蒸餃或煎餃、酸辣湯或餛飩湯、按主料列出的炒菜（以辣椒圖標或星號表示含有少量辣椒碎）。10美元以上的菜式會列在“主廚特選”之下。地區之間有些微差異：在波士頓，外賣中餐通常附送麵包和一份深色的蜜糖醬；在曼哈頓上城則發展出一種混合風味的拉美式中餐。但大多數情況下，就和在麥當勞那樣，你能在明尼阿波利斯和勞德代爾堡點到一模一樣的東西。

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，中餐的價格和菜單一樣變化不大，一直都很低。來自臺灣的華裔美國人黃頤銘（Eddie Huang）從餐館老闆轉型為作家兼節目主持人，他回憶父親初到美國開餐館時一直把價格定得很低，因為“在美國，移民無法以足價賣任何東西。”

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”).

實際上，這只是聊以自慰的簡單化的說法。美國人一貫願意花大價錢在法國或意大利餐廳用餐（實際上那裡的菜大多是拉美人做的）。美國每個城市都有高價日本壽司店和天價西班牙tapas小吃店（就像一句玩笑話說的那樣，“花96美元還吃不飽”用西班牙語講就是“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.

但黃頤銘有一個說法是對的：長期以來美國人都覺得中餐應該既便宜又管飽。比起城中那些亮著慘白日光燈、櫃檯塑料貼面破破爛爛的中餐外賣店，郊區公路邊商業區裡裝著堂皇的紅漆大門、立著假獅子的中餐館要高級一些。它們帶有足夠別緻的中國風，但一家人在不想做飯時每週光顧一次也負擔得起。

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關鍵字: 馬里蘭州 弗吉尼亞州 中餐

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