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 in an industry where diners rarely question high prices of French haute cuisine or Japanese omakase, Chinese restaurateurs often contend with resistance in getting customers to pay fine-dining tabs. Still, these owners and chefs insist their food, labor and cooking techniques are just as worthy.

“Why shouldn't I?" says Chen about his prices. “**Just because we’re in Chinatown? Or just because people’s perception of Chinese food is that it’s only good if it’s cheap? It’s not true.”**

... husband and wife Bolun and Linette Yao opened Yingtao, named for Bolun's grandmother, in New York's Hell's Kitchen in 2023, they have been up-front about their mission: “contemporary” Chinese food as an elegant dining concept. Their Michelin-starred restaurant offers a $150 chef's tasting menu.

“We are trying to break this bias, this boundary of people who only think about like Sichuan food, Cantonese food, the takeout box,” said Bolun Yao, who has nothing but respect for casual Chinese takeout restaurants. ...

Emily Yuen, who was a James Beard Award semifinalist last year for her Japanese American fare at Brooklyn's Lingo, is helping Yao achieve his goal ... For Yuen, ... the importance of representation — from who's in the kitchen to what's on the plate — has always stayed with her ... wanting to elevate Chinese culture and Chinese food.”

... Similarly, Ho Chee Boon, the Michelin-starred chef ... was accustomed to seeing high-end Cantonese food in China and India.

... Chinese culture and food has had its ups and downs when it comes to its reception in the West. More than 200 years ago, Europe highly desired Chinese silks, ceramics and tea, said Krishnendu Ray, director of NYU's food studies PhD program.

China's defeat by the British in the 19th century Opium Wars led to a view of China “as a poor country,” Ray said. Racist myths that Chinese people and their cuisine were strange and dirty persisted when Chinese railroad laborers came to the U.S. and were segregated to enclaves.

Ray says **the rise in an “ethnic” food's prestige** tends to **correlate with its country of origin rising in economic power.** ...

What also matters to these chefs is incorporating Chinese cooking techniques and not defaulting to European ones. At Empress by Boon, chef Boon and his staff maintain four wok stations with woks shipped from Hong Kong.

... “We want to keep the traditional, but we can look in a modern way.”

Chen takes pride in having an open kitchen where customers can see woks and clay pots being utilized. They represent techniques from various regions of China.

Chinese American restaurants question why Chinese cuisine can't get the chef's table treatment