Detroit Through A Chinese Restaurant Window

The Sporkful

Curtis Chin was practically raised at Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, his family’s restaurant in Detroit. It was a restaurant that served everybody, from the mayor (who was a regular) to sex workers to business executives. Within the walls of the restaurant, the Chin family saw the rise of Detroit as a multicultural, industrial city, and its decline in the wake of white flight and the crack epidemic. Chung’s was also the place where Curtis started to figure out his own identity and sexuality — while also learning how to make the Detroit Chinese-American specialty, almond boneless chicken.

Curtis’s memoir is Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant. If you want to win a copy of the book, sign up for our newsletter by October 23. If you’re already subscribed, then you’re already eligible to win.

The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, Jared O'Connell, and Julia Russo.

Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.