Cecilia Chiang
Encyclopedia
Cecilia Sun Yun Chiang (born ca. 1920) is a Chinese-American restaurateur
Restaurateur
A restaurateur is a person who opens and runs restaurants professionally. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who owns a restaurant, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of the restaurant business.-Etymology:The word...

 and chef, best known for founding and managing the Mandarin Restaurant in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

.

Early life

Chiang was born near Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

 and raised in a 52-room mansion in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

. Her Chinese name, Sun Yun, means "seventh daughter". As a child she enjoyed elaborate formal meals prepared by the family's two chefs, although the children were not allowed to cook or go into the kitchen. Her mother had bound feet
Foot binding
Foot binding was the custom of binding the feet of young girls painfully tight to prevent further growth. The practice probably originated among court dancers in the early Song dynasty, but spread to upper class families and eventually became common among all classes. The tiny narrow feet were...

, but her parents refused to follow the tradition with their children. She escaped with a sister from the Japanese occupation of China in 1942 by walking for nearly six months to Chongqing
Chongqing
Chongqing is a major city in Southwest China and one of the five national central cities of China. Administratively, it is one of the PRC's four direct-controlled municipalities , and the only such municipality in inland China.The municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the...

, where they settled with a relative. She soon met Chiang Liang, a successful local businessman who she married, establishing a comfortable life in Shanghai. There they had two children, May and Philip. During the war she operated as a spy for America's Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

. She and her husband escaped from China on the last flight from Shanghai during the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949. With only three tickets for a family of four they had to leave Philip behind with her sister (the family was reunited more than a year later). Her parents and siblings who remained were treated poorly by the communists. Her parents died poor. A brother died in a labor camp and one sister committed suicide. Others were killed by communist soldiers.

Chiang settled in Tokyo, Japan with her husband and children. In 1960 she came to San Francisco to visit a sister, whose husband had died. Walking through the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown she met two friends from Tokyo who were planning to open a restaurant, and agreed to help negotiate their lease. She impulsively wrote a deposit check for $10,000 to secure their rent, which the landlord refused to return after her friends backed out of the venture. Unable to terminate the lease she decided to run the restaurant on her own, although she had never before run a business.

At the time the city had very limited exposure to authentic Chinese cuisine, mostly an Americanized version
American Chinese cuisine
American Chinese cuisine refers to the style of food served by many Chinese restaurants in the United States. This type of cooking typically caters to Western tastes, and differs significantly from the original Chinese cuisine.-History:...

 of Cantonese cuisine
Cantonese cuisine
Cantonese cuisine comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and is one of 8 superdivisions of Chinese cuisine. Its prominence outside China is due to the great numbers of early emigrants from Guangdong. Cantonese chefs are highly sought after throughout the country...

. Convinced that residents would enjoy fancier Northern Chinese dishes, but unsure what would appeal to them, she initially listed more than 200 dishes on the menu. Avoiding the common elements of American Chinese restaurant decor, she designed the restaurant to evoke the opulence of the palace where she had grown up. The restaurant was at first unsuccessful and had few patrons. A Mandarin speaker, she had trouble communicating with suppliers from Chinatown, and also faced discrimination as a woman business owner. However, over time the restaurant began to attract loyal customers. Journalist C. Y. Lee
C. Y. Lee (author)
Chin Yang Lee is a Chinese American author best known for his 1957 novel The Flower Drum Song, which inspired the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song and writer for his 2006 film "10,000 Apologies" with May Wang.-Biography:...

, who had just written Flower Drum Song
Flower Drum Song
Flower Drum Song was the eighth stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was based on the 1957 novel, The Flower Drum Song, by Chinese-American author C. Y. Lee. The piece opened in 1958 on Broadway and was afterwards presented in the West End and on tour...

, about San Francisco's Forbidden City Nightclub
Forbidden City (nightclub)
The Forbidden City was a Chinese-themed nightclub and cabaret in business from the late 1930s to the late 1950s, on the second floor of 363 Sutter Street in San Francisco between Chinatown and Union Square...

, became a regular and brought many friends. One day, Vic Bergeron (founder of Trader Vic's) came to the restaurant with Herb Caen
Herb Caen
Herbert Eugene Caen was a Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco journalistwhose daily column of local goings-on, social and political happenings,...

, who immediately began to popularize the restaurant in his newspaper column. The restaurant was called the Mandarin.

With the restaurant's new success, Chiang decided to remain in San Francisco. She separated from her husband (they never divorced) and brought her two children to live with her in Saint Francis Wood. She was the first non-white resident of the neighborhood, and was admitted by the homeowner association only after they learned that she was from an upper-class background in China. In 1968 she relocated the restaurant to a 300-seat location in Ghirardelli Square
Ghirardelli Square
Ghirardelli Square is a landmark with shops and restaurants in the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco, California, USA. A portion of the area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Pioneer Woolen Mills and D. Ghirardelli Company....

, which required a multimillion dollar investment. Chiang was known for entertaining VIP guests in the dining room, wearing fancy gowns and expensive jewelry.

Chiang sold the Mandarin in 1991, and it closed in 2006. After living for many years in San Francisco, she moved to Belvedere
Belvedere, California
Belvedere is an affluent city in Marin County, California, United States. Belvedere is located northeast of Sausalito, at an elevation of 36 feet...

 in Marin County
Marin County, California
Marin County is a county located in the North San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. As of 2010, the population was 252,409. The county seat is San Rafael and the largest employer is the county government. Marin County is well...

, then back to San Francisco in 2011. Retired since 1991, Chiang remains active in promoting charitable causes, in particular the Chinese American International School. Her son Philip continued to run a sister restaurant, also called the Mandarin, in Beverly Hills, sold to an Orange County business person named Nathan Chen in 2001, it closed some time after 2007.

Influences

Chiang is often credited with introducing San Francisco, and the United States, to a more authentic version of Mandarin cuisine.

Chuck Williams
Chuck Williams
Charles E. Williams is the founder of the Williams-Sonoma company and author and editor of dozens of books on the subject of cooking.-Early life:...

 of Williams-Sonoma
Williams-Sonoma
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is a high-end American consumer retail company that sells kitchenwares, furniture and linens, as well as other housewares and home furnishings, along with a variety of specialty foods, soaps and lotions...

, who enjoyed the Mandarin's "beggar's chicken" dish (a whole stuffed chicken), introduced James Beard
James Beard
James Andrew Beard was an American chef and food writer. The central figure in the story of the establishment of a gourmet American food identity, Beard was an eccentric personality who brought French cooking to the American middle and upper classes in the 1950s...

, who became a friend and learned about northern Chinese cuisine from Chiang. Alice Waters
Alice Waters
Alice Louise Waters is an American chef, restaurateur, activist, and author. She is the owner of Chez Panisse, a Berkeley, California restaurant famous for its organic, locally-grown ingredients and for pioneering California cuisine.Waters opened the restaurant in 1971. It has consistently ranked...

, who had just opened Chez Panisse
Chez Panisse
Chez Panisse is a Berkeley, California restaurant known for using local, organic foods and credited as the inspiration for the style of cooking known as California cuisine. Well-known restauranteur, author, and food activist Alice Waters co-founded Chez Panisse in 1971 with film producer Paul...

 in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

, learned Chinese cooking from Chiang, and the two became lifelong friends. Waters said that what Chiang did to popularize Chinese cuisine in America is what Julia Child
Julia Child
Julia Child was an American chef, author, and television personality. She is recognized for introducing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which...

 (who Chiang also taught) did for French Cuisine. Waters, Chiang, and Marion Cunningham
Marion Cunningham (author)
Marion Cunningham is a California-born award-winning American food writer.Cunningham was responsible for the 1990 revision of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and is the author of The Breakfast Book, and Cooking with Children...

 took a several-month tour of Europe in 1978 to sample as many of the best restaurants as they could. George Chen, a founder of the city's Betelenut and Shanghai 1930 (now closed, as are his other ventures, Long Life Noodle Co. and Xanadu), waited tables for Chiang at the Mandarin in the 1970s. He now writes lukewarm to comically vituperative reviews of other restaurants under pseudonym "gregory c" on yelp.com (his lone 5-star review, of Shanghai 1930, has since been removed). Others who were influenced by Chiang include Jeremiah Tower
Jeremiah Tower
Jeremiah Tower is an American celebrity chef who, along with Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, and Jonathan Waxman, is generally credited with developing the culinary style known as California cuisine.-Biography:...

, and the food editor of Sunset Magazine.

In a panel hosted by Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Michael "Tony" Bourdain is an American chef, author and television personality. He is well known for his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and is the host of Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure program Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.A...

, in response to a question from an audience member, Alice Waters said that she wanted her last meal on earth to be shark fin soup
Shark fin soup
Shark fin soup is a popular soup item of Chinese cuisine usually served at special occasions such as weddings and banquets, or as a luxury item in Chinese culture. The shark fins provide texture while the taste comes from the other soup ingredients.There is controversy over the practice of shark...

 cooked by Chiang. The comment became a viral sensation, eventually leading the Humane Society International
Humane Society International
The Humane Society International is the international division of The Humane Society of the United States. Founded in 1991, HSI has expanded The HSUS's activities into Central and South America, Africa, and Asia...

 to obtain a pledge from Waters that she would never again eat the dish.

Chiang's son, Philip, is a co-founder of the restaurant chain P.F. Chang's.

External links

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