'We get more complaints about noise than the average restaurant. No one was flinching.īut they have before, says Tommy Lee, Hop Alley's owner and resident DJ. This was Yeezy.Ĭurious, I looked around the restaurant, half expecting a patron to throw his napkin on the ground and storm out. It wasn't the nice, Polo-shirt-wearing Kanye of Late Registration, either. Which is why I was surprised to hear West blaring at Hop Alley recently. A polarizing figure at best, a Kardashian at worst. Bring up his name to the latter and you'll get eye-rolls, long sighs, and a diatribe of reasons why West is an untalented egomaniac.

isn’t in San Francisco or New York City - it’s the Pekin Noodle Parlor in Butte, Montana, opened in 1911 and still run by the same family.ĭenver doesn’t have a Chinese restaurant that has such a long history, but for theatergoers hankering for food after seeing The Chinese Lady, here are 10 suggestions for some fine Chinese fare - both traditional and contemporary.Humanity falls into two camps: people who love Kanye West, and people who hate Kanye West. In fact, the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in the U.S. They all have on hand the takeout boxes we associate only with Chinese food (maybe with a dragon, or a pagoda in red on the side, and a wire handle), and they all add fortune cookies (which author Lee explains are not Chinese at all, but a Japanese American invention). Practically every small town from east coast to west, to the deep south and New England, have at least one Chinese restaurant. Lee wrote that there are more Chinese restaurants across the United States than Wendy’s, Burger Kings and McDonalds combined. In her terrific 2008 book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, then- New York Times reporter (now tech entrepreneur) Jennifer 8. But also because Chinese food tastes good and is available everywhere. None of the stories have been proven true but all have an element of historical truth to them: “chop suey” could be a Romanized version of tsap seui, a Guangdong dish that translates simply to “miscellaneous leftovers.” It’s a malleable recipe that can be made with almost anything available in the kitchen.Ĭhinese food intrigued the taste buds of Americans 150 years ago partly because it was considered “exotic” like Afong Moy, the central character in the DCPA Theatre Company’s production of The Chinese Lady (Sept 9-Oct 16, 2022). that could appeal to both the Chinese and American dignitaries, and that a restaurant cook tossed together leftovers for a group of white miners to avoid being beaten.

31, 1880 race riot in Denver’s Chinatown district, by the late 1800s, there was a national fad for Chinese dishes, especially chop suey.īased on a dish from Guangdong province west of Hong Kong, chop suey has been given several mythological origin stories: that it was invented by a cook for Chinese railroad workers by throwing together whatever meat and vegetables he had on hand that an imperial chef cooked it up for an emperor’s visit to the U.S. The cuisine was first cooked up by and for the immigrants themselves, but despite racism against the wave of Asian immigrants, including the Oct. Most Americans have had Chinese food all their lives.Ĭhinese food arrived with the first immigrants in the 1840s, looking to strike it rich panning for treasure in “Gold Mountain” - what America was called in China.

Hop alley denver menu