It is an unusual trove of cultural kitsch: close to 10,000 Chinese restaurant menus going back to the late 1800's, filling an array of battered boxes and grocery bags. There is Ying's, a drive-through in Jacksonville, Fla., which describes itself as a purveyor of "Chinee Takee Outee," Jade Garden in Bismarck, N.D., which features the local specialty, "hot and spicy walleye," Brillante, a Mexican and Chinese spot in Paterson, N.J., which offers General Tso's Pollo.

There is a 1960's menu from the House of Lee in Oakland, Calif., featuring "fried ravioli," better known as wontons; a dog-eared menu from Mon Lay Won, a turn-of-the-century New York City restaurant that called itself "the Chinese Delmonico's"; and one from Madame Wu's Garden in Los Angeles, a favorite of Cary Grant and Mae West.

The bills of fare, gathered over the years by Harley Spiller, who has amassed a number of curious collections in his Upper East Side apartment, may be the ultimate road map to the Chinese restaurant's extraordinary trek across the American landscape.

Excerpts from Mr. Spiller's collection are the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas in Chinatown about a rarely examined phenomenon: the Chinese restaurant in America.

There are now close to 36,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States, according to Chinese Restaurant News, a trade publication, more than the number of McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King franchises combined. What began in this country as exotic has become thoroughly American. A study by the Center for Culinary Development, a food product development company, found that 39 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 13 who were surveyed said Chinese was their favorite type of food, compared to only 9 percent who chose American.

"It has become part of our consciousness," said Yong Chen, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, and co-curator of the exhibition, which will run until June. "It is quintessentially American."

Much of what has been served in Chinese restaurants in America is virtually impossible to find in China. Crab Rangoon, chop suey and sweet-and-sour pork are all essentially American inventions. In the late 1980's a Hong Kong entrepreneur imported another one: "genuine American fortune cookies."

Credit the versatility and adaptability of Chinese restaurateurs that has made them able to feed sophisticated gourmands in New York City, less discriminating palates in small Southern towns and immigrant communities across the country.

Cynthia Ai-Fen Lee, the exhibition's other co-curator, said Chinese restaurateurs have been "good at seeing what people wanted and getting out there and doing it."

The first Chinese restaurants in the United States were in mining towns of the California gold rush and even then catered to a mixture of Chinese and non-Chinese laborers. Soon they had spread East and into cities. For the most part, however, Americans viewed the cuisine with suspicion, Ms. Lee said.

Some restaurants began to bridge the gap. A menu from the Hong-Far-Low restaurant in Boston in the 1880's features a picture of a bald man in Chinese dress, with the caption: "This is the first man in Boston who made chop suey in 1879." Also on the menu: French fried potatoes.

By the early 20th century it had become fashionable for young urbanites to venture into Chinatowns for the exotic food, Ms. Lee said. A yellowing 1925 postcard in the exhibition depicts the crowded banquet hall of the new Shanghai Cafe in San Francisco, featuring "Chinese and American Dishes" and "Music and Dance Every Evening."

Soon chop suey houses were springing up in cities across America, serving the ubiquitous mix of meat, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots and other vegetables that would become a staple of Chinese restaurants everywhere, alongside cheeseburgers and fried chicken.

Chop suey references crept into popular culture, often in bizarre ways. Museum visitors can listen to Louis Armstrong's "Cornet Chop Suey" and sing along to a 1925 ditty "Who'll Chop Your Suey When I'm Gone."

But Chinese cuisine remained unfamiliar to many, said Ms. Lee, so many restaurateurs wrote long narratives into their menus, explaining Chinese food and history or spinning fanciful legends of their restaurants' exotic origins. They also offered tips for how to order family style.

At the King Joy Lo Mandarin Restaurant in Chicago, the menu advised: "If you experience difficulty in making selections, the floor walker will cheerfully aid you."

In reflection of the lowly status of Chinese immigrants in America at the time, many restaurants deliberately used a bizarre pidgin English in their menus. A menu in the exhibition from one restaurant in Honolulu, Lau Yee Chai, reads in part: "Sometams fliends make appointmans. When come, place full no room. Vely sorry. You please wait little while."

Another restaurant even adopted the pidgin language into its name, calling itself Led Looster Lestaulant.

By the 1950's and 60's "going for Chinese" had become part of the suburban vernacular. In places like New York City, eating Chinese food became intertwined with the traditions of other ethnic groups, especially that of Jewish immigrants. Many Jewish families faithfully visited their favorite Chinese restaurant every Sunday night. Among the menus in the exhibition are selections from Glatt Wok: Kosher Chinese Restaurant and Takeout in Monsey, N.Y., and Wok Tov in Cedarhurst, N.Y.

Until 1965 Cantonese-speaking immigrants, mainly from the county of Toisan, dominated the industry and menus reflected a standard repertory of tasty but bland Americanizations of Cantonese dishes. But loosening immigration restrictions that year brought a flood of people from many different regions of China, starting "authenticity revolution," said Ed Schoenfeld, a restaurateur and Chinese food consultant.

Top chefs who were trained in spicy and more unusual regional specialties, like Hunan and Sichuan cooking, came to New York then, Mr. Schoenfeld said.

While some midtown Chinese restaurants had been popular places for a nice night on the town, by the early 1970's, restaurants like Shun Lee Dynasty, a daring experiment in Chinese food in a luxurious setting, run by the chef Tsung Ting Wang and Michael Tong, were getting raves for their food.

Mr. Tong's is among more than a dozen recollections from restaurateurs in the exhibition. He recalled the day Shun Lee Dynasty became the city's first Chinese restaurant to get a four-star review in The New York Times. Soon it was averaging 500 people a night.

President Richard M. Nixon's trip to China in 1972 awakened interest in the country and accounts of his meals helped whet diners' appetites for new dishes. An illustration of a scowling Nixon with a pair of chopsticks glares down from the wall at the exhibition.

Hunan and Sichuan restaurants in New York influenced the taste of the whole country, Mr. Schoenfeld said. Dishes like General Tso's chicken and crispy orange beef caught on everywhere.

But as with the Cantonese food before it, Mr. Schoenfeld said, the cooking degraded over time, as it became mass produced. Today's batter-fried, syrup-laden version of Chinese food, he said, bears little resemblance to authentic cuisine.

General Tso's chicken, for example, originally made with garlic and vinegar, has evolved, he said, into "sweet chunks of chicken with batter in glumpy sauce."

The real explosion of Chinese restaurants that made them ubiquitous came in the 1980's, said Betty Xie, editor of Chinese Restaurant News. "Now you see there are almost one or two Chinese restaurants in every town in the United States," she said.

There are signs that some have tired of Chinese food. A 2004 Zagat survey showed that its popularity has ebbed somewhat in New York City.

But the journey of the Chinese restaurant remains the story of the American dream, as experienced by a constant but evolving stream of Chinese immigrants who realized the potential of 12-hour days, borrowed capital and a willingness to cook whatever Americans wanted. Sales margins are tight, and wages are low.

Restaurants are passed from one family member to the next, or sold by one Chinese family to another. Often a contingency written into sales contracts is that the previous owners train the new owners.

Nowadays it is overwhelmingly Fujianese immigrants, many of them smuggled into this country illegally, who are flocking to the restaurant business because they have few other options.

Many restaurants operate with a startling sameness, Ms. Lee said, believing that that is what customers want. She said the menu "has to be exotic enough that it's different, but they have to keep it familiar."

So, there are the crunchy noodles that Americans like to dip in duck sauce; place mats with the symbols of the Chinese years; and the stalwarts: General Tso's chicken, beef and broccoli, sweet-and-sour pork. Although old-style dishes like chop suey, chow mein and egg foo yong are almost nonexistent today in New York City and the West Coast, they are surprisingly common in the middle of the country.

Indigo Som, 38, an artist in Berkeley, Calif., has been traveling through the heartland photographing Chinese restaurants. Some of her photographs are featured in the exhibition; others can be found on her online travelogue. Among the highlights: China Town Gourmet Chinese Restaurant in Powell, Wyo., and Hong Kong Buffet in Onalaska, Wis.

"The competition in Chinese communities is cutthroat," Mr. Chen, the co-curator, said. "What people realize is you can make much, much better profit in places like Montana."

A typical story is that of Joseph C. Chan, another restaurant owner whose memories are part of the show. He came to the United States in 1982 from Hong Kong, settled in Huntsville, Ala., and worked at a cousin's restaurant, learning just how much coloring to add to the sweet-and-sour sauce.

After four years he struck out on his own. Seeing few Chinese restaurants near his friend's home in upstate New York, he borrowed $100,000 from family and friends and bought an old diner in Scotia.

Now he faces competition from Fujianese immigrants and new takeout joints, and he only hopes to be able to make it through a few more years to retirement.

It has been a life full of sacrifice, he said. When his daughter, Joyce, first asked him for stories for the exhibition, he was puzzled.

"It's just making a living," he said, "that's all, nothing special."

September 22, 2004