The Museum of Chinese in the Americas (MoCA), 70 Mulberry Street in Chinatown, New York, is exhibiting Chinese restaurant menus through June.
The exhibition contains 50 of the best Chinese restaurant menus from America that are part of Harley Spiller's 10,000 Chinese menu collection from 80 countries. It is estimated that there are 35,000 Chinese restaurants in the States.
Spiller, 45, was born and reared in Buffalo, New York, now residing on upper East side of New York City He graduated from Northwestern University majoring in English literature in 1980.
Reports Dave Hoekstra, MoCA visitors can trace the migration of the Chinese restaurant from the Federal Café menu (1934) in San Francisco and Madame Wu's Garden in Los Angeles (where Gary Grant was a regular) to Jimmy Woo's New China menu (late 1960s) in Baltimore, Maryland." (Source: Dave Hoekstra, Chicago Sun-Times, Jan 26, 2005).