Egg foo young at Wang’s Mandarin House

Not surprisingly, we were talking about food at a recent CA Friday Lunch — a bimonthly gathering at area restaurants — when Kathy Sapp told me one of her favorite dishes was the egg foo young at Wang’s Mandarin House.

Wang’s Mandarin House co-owner Shelly Ansley described egg foo young as “a Chinese omelet.” It’s made with eggs, flour, vegetables and meat.

“Old school” is Ansley’s favorite description for egg foo young. “This dish is old style. We come from Taiwan. We never had it before. I never heard ‘egg foo young’ until I came over to this country.”

Her brother, Wang’s coowner David Wang, learned how to make it. “A lot of Chinese railroad workers came to the states and cooked some food for themselves,” he said. “They didn’t have any special dishes, so they put together whatever they could cook, and that became chop suey.”

Egg foo young was another one of those ChineseAmerican dishes, Wang said. Chinese restaurant owners created the dish for customers who wanted burgers. “Chinese people don’t have a burger,” he said. “They created egg foo young — a lot of cabbage, mushrooms, green onions and whatever they could find — and mixed it together with eggs. Then they deep fried the patty on both sides.”

Egg foo young is becoming harder to find, Wang said. “In this country, a lot of restaurants aren’t making it. They don’t think that is Chinese food. That is not representative of Chinese cuisine. It was originally designed for Americans.”

Wang’s Mandarin House still makes it because some of their customers enjoy the old-style ChineseAmerican food, Wang said. “We’ve been here 35 years.”

I ordered egg foo young with chicken. My server brought out three large patties and a tureen of sauce, which some people call “gravy.” I asked Ansley how to eat it. Some people pour the sauce on the patty, and some people dip the patty into the sauce, she said.

Ansley sees more people pour sauce over the patty. So that’s how I ate it. And I ate all three patties. They were fantastic. I loved the sweetness of the fresh vegetables.

I asked her if it was possible to eat egg foo young with chopsticks.

“You can eat anything with chopsticks,” she said.