“After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town”

I found the short story ”After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town” to be an interesting story. It got me thinking about the different types of American food and how there are many different types of Chinese food as well. I began to wonder what Chinese people think of American food today. Do they have occasional nights where they want American food, similar to how many people order Chinese food from their local restaurants here in the United State? I found a blog that interviewed Howie Southworth, one of the chiefs on Sauced in Translation,  a web series where a pair of chiefs traveled to China to try different food. They then challenged themselves to create an “American” dish for the locals using only local ingredients. Southworth talks about how many people in China think of food as very binary. They primarily think of having Chinese food or “other” food. These are broad categories, but I think that it is interesting that they do not necessarily think of some fast food chains such as KFC and McDonalad’s as specifically American food. These fast food chains also do not serve the exact same food here in the United States as they do in China to cater to the different preferences people may have. Howie Southworth also mentioned that one of the goals of the show was to “serve what locals love, surprisingly reshaped into an American dish”. This made me think about the similarities and differences between American dishes and Chinese dishes.