Street View Street Food
General Tso’s Chicken
History
General Tso’s chicken (pronounced [tswò]) is a sweet,
deep-fried chicken dish that is served in North American
Chinese restaurants. (It is also seen with other variants,
such as General Tse’s chicken.) The dish is named after
Zuo Zongtang (also romanized Tso Tsung-t’ang), a Qing
dynasty statesman and military leader, although there is
no recorded connection to him nor is the dish known in
Hunan, Zuo’s home province
Culture
New York’s Shun Lee Palaces, East (155 E. 55th St.) and West
(43 W. 65th St.) also says that it was the first restaurant to
serve General Tso’s chicken and that it was invented by a
Chinese immigrant chef named T. T. Wang in 1972. Michael
Tong, owner of New York’s Shun Lee Palaces, says, “We
opened the first Hunanese restaurant in the whole country,
and the four dishes we offered you will see on the menu of
practically every Hunanese restaurant in America today.
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