Indians slam NYT for saying chicken Manchurian is ‘stalwart of Pakistani Chinese cuisine’
By Bryan Ke
Several Twitter users from India had a meltdown after the New York Times claimed in a tweet that chicken Manchurian was a “stalwart of Pakistani Chinese cuisine.”
The outlet’s tweet linked to a recipe that claimed to be a recreation of the dish served at a restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan, called Hsin Kuang.
Chicken Manchurian is an Indian Chinese dish prepared using a combination of cubed fried chicken coated with a red sauce made from onions, green chilies, garlic, vinegar and soy sauce, with the optional ketchup.
The dish’s invention is widely credited to Indian Chinese chef Nelson Wang, 73, which he created while he was still working as a chef at the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai.
Wang first prepared chicken Manchurian after a customer requested a new dish he had never served at the restaurant before. Soon after preparing the dish, CNN Go, in its February 2010 report, noted that the customer loved the food and, through “word of mouth,” it became a popular dish in many Chinese restaurants in India.
It was unclear why Wang chose to name the dish after Manchuria, a region in Northeast Asia.
Born in 1950 in Kolkata (then called Calcutta), India, to Chinese immigrant parents, Wang went to Mumbai (then called Bombay) in the early 1970s only carrying a suitcase of clothes and little money. He found work in the city, and after persevering for years, he was able to open his restaurant, China Garden, in 1983. Wang’s restaurant now has multiple locations in India and Nepal.
Many Twitter users quickly refuted the New York Times’ claim in its tweet by sharing information about Wang.
“This is the real cultural appropriation. Serve anything to unaware Americans as your own,” one Twitter user commented under the New York Times’ post.
“Hi, it was invented by an Indian Chinese chef called Nelson Wang, he was born in Calcutta. His restaurants are in Mumbai. This is an Indian Chinese recipe,” another Twitter user commented.
“Just because your writer @zainabshah is a Pakistani, it doesn’t mean that you get to appropriate a dish, that (alongwith [sic] with its multiple vegetarian variations using cottage cheese & cauliflower) was invented across the border in India,” one Twitter user wrote, calling out the recipe’s author. “Please use some basic fact-checking.”
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