On organic food and marginalized cuisines.

Californians consider it a sacred duty to question where their food comes from, how it has been farmed and what it has been fed. But in his 15 years as a serial Chinese restaurateur in the Bay Area, no one has ever asked Allen Shi how his chickens were raised.

“You’re the first!” Shi says, chuckling, when I ask him.

Shi is the co-founder of Nextdish, an on-demand meal-delivery service featuring northern Chinese cuisine prepared with organic and sustainable ingredients when he can secure them from sources such as local farms, Costco or Whole Foods locations. Earlier in his career, Shi opened several Chinese restaurants in the Tri-Valley area of Livermore, Amador and San Ramon valleys with a focus on organic and local ingredients. Along the way, he learned that the feel-good cachet of an organic menu does not benefit Chinese cuisine equitably.

The organic movement may inform the collective American palate, but its gravitas has not consistently paid off for historically marginalized cuisines.

And no food culture in America bears a millstone quite so bigoted as the Chinese. In the early 1900s, racial caricatures of Chinese immigrants portrayed them as rat eaters. This stigma lives on in the anti-Chinese-food rhetoric that indiscriminately blames Chinese restaurants for food poisoning and in white diners’ unfounded MSG hysteria. More blatantly, this stigma manifests in society’s tacit threshold for what Chinese food should cost: as little as possible.

Chinese restaurateurs have hardened to this injustice as coda to the American Dream. To counter knee-jerk assumptions about their food, restaurant owners trot out concession after concession. Coupons! Meal-sets! Free milk tea with lunch! On and on goes the self-flagellating song-and-dance to demonstrate value and credibility when Restaurateuring While Chinese.

In a speech to the National Immigrant Integration Conference in December 2016, Taiwanese American chef and author Eddie Huang railed against the denigration of Chinese food, proudly proclaiming that his restaurant only charges “full f—ing price.” In the speech, he honored the working-class immigrants who have persevered in a host nation that systemically undervalues their labor, culture and food. Huang’s rallying “No Coupons” cry is the immigrant restaurateur’s “No Justice, No Peace.”

David Chang, the Korean American chef behind the Momofuku empire, is also vocal about the culinary racism behind ethnic price ceilings. So much so that the Washington Post’s Tim Carman recently retired the name “$20 Diner” from his restaurant review column, crediting Chang for calling out the deepseated biases that celebrate immigrant food, so long as it’s affordable.

But in the multicultural, food-woke Bay Area, shouldn’t Chinese entrepreneurs be able to set their restaurants apart from their competition by embracing the organic and sustainable? If su-

perb ingredients speak for themselves, as Alice Waters preaches, shouldn’t organic-focused Chinese restaurants be able to escape the institutionalized expectation that Chinese food must offer the biggest bang for the buck?

Allen Shi’s experience says no. In 2011, he opened YiPing, an ingredientforward San Ramon restaurant with organic takes on Sichuanese classics, which he dreamed of expanding into a chain. The Contra Costa Times lauded YiPing’s “bold and spicy Sichuan specialities, local, organic ingredients and smartly crafted wine list” soon after it opened. Shi hired white waiters, thinking it would legitimize the menu and further its appeal to well-heeled, healthconscious American audiences. He even handed out $20 coupons.

“In the end, I learned that people who are going for organic, they’re not really seeking it out in Chinese food,” said Shi, who sold YiPing last year. Customers applauded his use of organic ingredients but grumbled about portions and prices in the same breath. One Yelper spied a Chinese produce truck outside the restaurant and deduced Shi’s ingredients couldn’t possibly be organic. He learned that consumers may understand the value proposition behind grass-fed Angus beef, but they don’t think it’s worth paying for in a Sichuanese main dish.

Tru Gourmet owners Olivia Liu and Cathy Tsui are familiar with Shi’s dilemma. Since 2009, this mother-daughter duo has been pumping out dim sum three times a week from farmers’ market stands overladen with bamboo steamers. Liu and Tsui use organic and seasonal ingredients hand-picked from the farmers at neighboring stands. Tamagotchi-size kale siu mai and seasonal Dungeness crab dumplings are topsellers.

Customers accustomed to inexpensive, fist-size dumplings from Chinatown still occasionally badger Liu. “They’ll ask me if it’s really organic,” she says. “When they ask a second time, it’s hard not to be offended.” Despite her sourcing, in 10 years of doing business, Liu has raised her prices just once: when the cost of biodegradable foodware skyrocketed.

Organic menus face scrutiny from another front: an older generation of immigrant Chinese who prioritize authenticity and taste over provenance. According to Shi, their skepticism stems from their food-insecure days in the old country. To this demographic, food is, well, food, and organics appear a weak premise for higher prices. They are more concerned whether a plate of braised pork belly has enough visible fat (and therefore value) than whether it came from a grain-fed Berkshire hog.

At YiPing and now Nextdish, Shi walks the tightrope between white and Asian skeptics by strategizing which dishes would best convey the value of organic ingredients. He decided Sichuanese beef and pork dishes are often heavily marinated or braised in rich sauces, masking or overpowering the meat’s quality. Landing a consistent organic supplier of Chinese cuts of beef and pork also proved difficult. Organic chicken dishes, however, could sing since they were typically parboiled or lightly sauced. Surely, even the most tightfisted of immigrant elders would not begrudge the premium on a flavorful, organic chicken.

Joyheart Cafe manager Amy Wong believes that only the affluent, educated and agriculturally versed among Asian Americans will pay the organic premium. Tucked in an industrial corner of San Jose, Joyheart Cafe is the first stateside location of a Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant chain founded on the values of Buddhism and environmental stewardship. The cafe creates convincing vegetarian and vegan versions of Taiwanese staples like braised pork noodles and eel rice and occasionally uses organic products from small-scale growers and producers.

Despite its mission, Joyheart chooses not to market any of its organic ingredients for fear of unnerving its pricesensitive base, which Wong estimates to be 70 to 80 percent Asian. Would Thomas Keller quietly absorb the cost of organic arugula out of the goodness of his Buddhist heart?

For now, the organic mind-set remains a culinary white space that asks Chinese entrepreneurs to compromise on price, portions and passion. It is yet another lionized, cost-prohibitive Western ideal foisted upon a centuries-old cuisine with varying degrees of success.

Hamstrung by an Asian generational divide and Western devaluation, it’s no wonder that Chinese restaurateurs are circumspect, fair-weather organic players. Shi is not betting that more Bay Area Chinese restaurants will fully embrace organic ingredients in the immediate future. “Not in the next 10 years, but maybe the next 20 to 30 years,” Shi says. “This trend needs more time to grow.”

April Chan is a San Bruno-based freelance writer. Email: food@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @pril