Food impostors: 9 most famous ‘fake’ Asian dishes

Food doesn’t always travel with its passport. Some of the most beloved “Asian” dishes around the world are, strictly speaking, not Asian at all. They are recipes born not from centuries of tradition but from migration, adaptation and the demands of foreign palates. These inauthentic dishes are the culinary equivalent of invented traditions: meals that never existed in Beijing, Delhi or Kyoto but became staples in San Francisco, London or Manila. And yet, dismissing them as “fake” misses the point. These Asian dishes are stories of survival and ingenuity. They narrate the lives of immigrants feeding communities that didn’t always welcome them, and of flavours that learned to sing in a new key.

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Chop suey

Chop suey comes in different forms. In the Philippines, it can be the main meal or a side dish. (Photo: Obsidian Soul / Wikimedia Commons)

Chop suey might be the most famous of all inauthentic Asian dishes. Born not in Guangzhou or Beijing but in 19th-century America, it was the Chinese immigrants’s way of making do. Originally, chop suey entailed stir-fried odds and ends dressed up for Western diners who wanted something “Chinese”, but not too Chinese. It became a runaway success, the kind of dish that filled Chinatown dining halls and shaped how America thought Chinese food should taste. Authentic? Not even close. But its legacy is monumental. Without chop suey, Chinese American cuisine, which has evolved into its own genre, might never have gone mainstream.

Fortune cookies

The fortune cookie is served in Chinese restaurants in America, but the style has roots in Japan. (Photo: RDNE Stock Project / Pexels)

Ben Kingsley gave a short history lesson on fortune cookies in Iron Man 3. Despite this treat’s strong association with Chinese restaurants, fortune cookies are not at all Chinese. Their likely ancestor is the Japanese tsujiura senbei, a Kyoto temple cookie with a hidden fortune. Japanese immigrants first baked these in California in the late 1800s, but after World War II, when Japanese Americans were forcibly interned, Chinese American bakeries picked up production.

By the mid-20th century, the fortune cookie had been rebranded as the default dessert of Chinese restaurants in the US, a sweet ending to a meal that never existed in China. Ironically, when American companies tried to sell fortune cookies back to China in the 1990s, they flopped; the cultural export was unrecognisable to its supposed homeland. An estimated 3 billion fortune cookies are made annually, almost all in the US, proof that authenticity isn’t always the same as cultural ownership.

California roll

The California roll has paved the way for the likes of the dragon roll, the rainbow roll and more. (Photo: Antoni Shkraba Studio / Pexels)

One of the more popular inauthentic Asian dishes, the California roll is the sushi for the shy. Born in Los Angeles in the 1960s, the California roll flipped sushi on its head, literally. Seaweed tucked inside, crab (often imitation) on the outside, avocado to soften the deal. Purists scoffed, but the roll democratised sushi for an American audience wary of raw fish. Today, it’s a gateway dish: not authentic Edo-style sushi, but the reason many first picked up chopsticks. The California roll has also opened the floodgates to other similar types of gateway sushi.

Spam musubi

Who doesn’t love a pocket-sized meal like a Spam musubi? (Photo: Jamie Saw / Pexels)

A slice of grilled Spam on a block of rice, wrapped in nori—Spam musubi is the edible record of Hawaii’s wartime past. With canned Spam flooding the islands during World War II, Japanese and Hawaiian cooks adapted it into something familiar, incorporating US military rations with Japanese onigiri techniques. Today, it’s a convenience store staple and a symbol of Hawaii’s hybrid food identity, beloved from Honolulu gas stations to bento boxes across the Pacific. This is also one of those inauthentic Asian dishes that’s been welcomed back to its supposed place of origin.

See more: 5 ways to fake it as a “foodie”

General Tso’s chicken

General Tso’s chicken is one of the most famous American Chinese dishes. (Photo: Evan Joshua Swigart / TheCulinaryGeek / Wikimedia Commons)

Sweet, sticky and fried within an inch of its life, General Tso’s chicken is the patron saint of American Chinese takeout. Created by chefs in New York catering to Western palates, it bears almost no resemblance to Hunanese food. Even its namesake, General Zuo Zongtang, had nothing to do with it. Yet it became a staple of Chinese restaurants across the US, precisely because it scratched an itch Americans didn’t even know they had: deep-fried comfort with a whiff of “foreign” spice.

Chicken tikka masala

Asian-inspired dishes can be a popular meal in other countries. (Photo: Jonathan Cooper / Pexels)

The fact that chicken tikka masala is one of the most popular meals in the United Kingdom should already tell you about its provenance. The story goes that a Glasgow chef improvised it for a customer who wanted gravy with his chicken tikka, tossing yoghurt-marinated meat in a tomato-cream sauce. Whether or not that origin tale is apocryphal, the dish quickly rose to become Britain’s “national curry”. Once deemed by politicians as a symbol of multiculturalism, this dish represents the messy, delicious interplay of colonial history and migration. Think South Asian immigrants building a new cuisine for a new home. Authentic? Hardly. Essential? Absolutely.

Crab rangoon

Like many of these fake Asian dishes, crab rangoon has evolved into its own genre. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Crab rangoon is the poster child for “Asian” dishes that never set foot in Asia. Cream cheese (not exactly standard in your average Chinese ice box) stuffed into a wonton wrapper and deep-fried, it was introduced by Trader Vic’s, the tiki restaurant empire, in the 1950s. Served with a side of neon-red sweet-and-sour sauce, crab rangoon thrived because it was comforting, crunchy and perfectly designed for cocktail culture. No matter its lack of pedigree, it remains a cornerstone of American Chinese buffets.

Mongolian beef

Genghis Khan never had this imperial meal. (Photo: Logan Jeffrey / Unsplash)

Despite the name, Mongolian beef has no roots in the Land of the Eternal Blue Sky. It emerged in Taiwanese teppanyaki restaurants and spread to American Chinese menus, where it became a stir-fry classic: thin beef slices in a soy-based sauce, often sweetened and thickened to suit American tastes. Like General Tso’s, it exists entirely in the diaspora’s imagination—another invented tradition that became canon.

Sweet and sour pork

Somewhere in history, Guangdong’s sweet and sour pork morphed into something sweet, sticky and unabashedly orange. (Photo: Polina Tankilevitch / Pexels)

Now, before the culinary historians come running with their pitchforks, hear the explanation first. Yes, Guangdong cuisine has its own nuanced sweet-and-sour dishes. For example, the pork version has slender strips of meat, a light crisp and a sauce that balances vinegar and sugar without overpowering.

The Western takeout version that you get in American (and, consequently, Philippine), Canadian and British Chinese takeouts is a different beast: deep-fried chunks smothered in fluorescent-red syrup, padded with pineapple and peppers. Where Cantonese cooks prize balance, diaspora kitchens lean into spectacle: louder, sweeter, stickier. Born from diaspora chefs tailoring flavours to local sugar-loving palates, it became the ultimate gateway dish—equal parts nostalgia and neon.

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