A BANQUET FOR CECILIA

Leung and Iwai offer an account of the woman who changed the way Americans regard Chinese cuisine.

The seventh daughter in a wealthy Beijing family, Cecilia Chang (1920-2020) loved peering into the kitchen to watch the chefs preparing pork dumplings and sweet soup. At dinner each night, her father drew the family’s attention to subtleties of the meals—words that Cecilia eagerly drank in. When Japan invaded Beijing (and then the rest of the country) in 1937, Cecilia left the city, embarking on a harrowing wartime journey that took her throughout China as she learned about each region’s culinary specialties. In 1949, after civil war broke out, Cecilia escaped to Tokyo and then settled in San Francisco. She was disappointed by the Chinese food in restaurants, which was often cheap and greasy. “Chinese food is not just chop suey,” she complained. In 1961, she opened her own restaurant, the Mandarin, which boasted a menu of over 200 dishes that highlighted flavors from all over China. The Mandarin soon became a fine-dining destination that redefined Americans’ perceptions of Chinese food. Iwai’s muted watercolor-and-ink artwork relies on a mixture of vignettes and full- and half-page spreads to capture the details of Cecilia’s trek. Close-ups of the various dishes paired with sumptuous descriptions, along with maps of the regions where they originated, emphasize the richness of Chinese cuisine. (This review has been updated for factual accuracy.)

Inspiring and delicious.