Have you ever had arroz cantonés? I saw this on the menu of a Latin American restaurant in Flemington, New Jersey, when I was in my home state a couple of weeks ago, exploring my old childhood haunts with an eye towards my professional interest in urbanism. The food wasn’t anything to write home about, but I did find this particular dish interesting. It translates, as you can probably guess, to “Cantonese rice.” In other words, a Latin American take on Chinese fried rice!

Our whole order looked like this. The rice is at the back, topped with grilled plantains:

I realized, as I got into my plate, that I had actually had this dish before, at a Peruvian charcoal chicken joint in Northern Virginia. There, they just call it “fried rice,” and I had assumed it was a South or Central American rice dish that simply used a similar method but had nothing to do with Chinese fried rice. I was wrong.

A Costa Rican cooking blog explains:

While the Jamaican immigrants decisively formed the Caribbean food culture, the Chinese first settled on the pacific coast of Costa Rica and brought with them a traditional recipe for fried rice.

As happens with migration, arroz cantonés has long become a fusion dish and is by many regarded as typical Costa Rican food….

[T]he Chinese community that enriched tico culture with a dish that they brought from the Guangzhou region in the southeast of China, also known as Canton.

The Chinese first arrived in Puntarenas and have since spread across the country and form one of Costa Rica’s bigger immigrant communities. 

It’s similar to typical Chinese take-out fried rice, but, according to the recipe at that blog, with less soy sauce, and the addition of green beans, butter, and some distinctly Latin American seasonings. The version I had in Flemington used hot dogs, chicken, and shrimp for its protein; the one I eat in Virginia simply uses leftover rotisserie chicken breast.

Typical Chinese take-out fried rice isn’t necessarily the exact version of the dish you’ll see in China. My wife, who is Chinese, prefers a much simpler version, sometimes made for breakfast, that simply uses leftover rice and a little bit of seasoning. So in some ways, the American continent is home to two different cultural adaptations of an original Chinese dish. It’s culinary evolution.

I’m not thinking about all of this while I’m eating, of course. But I sure do find it interesting!

Related Reading:

The Birthday Song in the Buffet

Plant-Based Patties, Italian Peasant Style

The Phylogeny of the Watch

Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekend subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive of nearly 200 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this!

Share