08/29/2026
National Chop Suey Day
The specific smell of a working wok — hot oil, ginger, garlic, sesame — coming from a Chinese-American restaurant kitchen on a rainy weeknight. The clink of the metal spatula against the steel. A red vinyl booth by a window. A paper placemat with the Chinese zodiac on it. A pot of tea, small ceramic cups, and a heaping plate of chop suey — bean sprouts, celery, water chestnuts, mushrooms, and thin-sliced meat glossed in a light savory sauce, ladled over a mound of white rice or a nest of crispy noodles. It's not the most refined dish in Chinese cuisine. It might not even be a real Chinese dish. But it's a very real American one.
National Chop Suey Day is August 29th, celebrating one of the founding dishes of Chinese-American cuisine — a stir-fry that was invented by Chinese immigrant cooks in late-1800s California, exploded into a national craze in the early 1900s, and became the signature offering at thousands of "chop suey houses" from coast to coast. Chop suey isn't served much in modern China. But it's a deeply American food, born out of the complicated, resourceful, and remarkable story of Chinese immigration to the United States. A dish with a whole country in it.
