Between courses: a Thanksgiving toast

As I wrote last year – and as everyone knows — Thanksgiving is not a big day for most restaurants and they tend to be closed. This holds true especially for ethnic restaurants which don’t ordinarily serve anything resembling the traditional American-style turkey dinner.

For those who work in Chinese restaurants the day is a grand romantic holiday. Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, explains why. Few Americans eat Chinese food on Thanksgiving and for this reason, writes Lee, “it’s the only day that the nation’s Chinese restaurant workers can consistently get off.” And this means they are able to plan weddings for this day. Lee continues, “Each year, tens of thousands of people, almost all Chinese restaurant workers or former workers, flood into Chinatown on Thanksgiving for hundreds of weddings. Banquet halls are booked more than a year in advance, instead of just a month or two, as is standard for the rest of the year. The marital marathon of multiple simultaneous seatings starts before noon and stretches well into the night.”

I highly recommend Lee’s book. She explores the history of restaurant staples of Chinese restaurants in America, past and present, such as chop suey, General Tso’s chicken, fortune cookies, and soy sauce — even take-home cartons. What I found of greatest interest, though, were her stories of Chinese Americans and newly arrived Chinese who operate restaurants, and who work long days cooking, serving, and delivering Chinese food.

This Thanksgiving I am going to toast the Chinese restaurant workers who are enjoying their wedding day or their anniversary, or just a rare day off.