99 Fun Facts About Asian Food

Which dish, despite its name, was invented at a Taipei street stall in 1951 by a comedian from Beijing?

Mongolian barbecue was nearly called Peking barbecue, after Wu Zhaonan's home city, but that name was too politically sensitive in 1950s Taiwan; he later left the stall for the stage.

Hong Kong's pineapple bun contains no pineapple at all; what does its name actually describe?

Its crusty topping is the 'pineapple': the cracked, sugary crust resembles the fruit's skin, and the bun is now a fixture of Chinatown bakeries worldwide.

Which Taipei soup-dumpling chain began in 1958 as a shop selling cooking oil?

Din Tai Fung takes its name from founder Yang Bing-yi's old employer, the oil seller Heng Tai Fung, and his supplier Din Mei; dumplings came in 1972, when the oil trade slumped.

Which Indonesian meatball soup did Barack Obama, raised partly in Indonesia, recall as a childhood favourite?

Bakso sellers were part of Obama's Jakarta childhood: in a 2010 speech there he drew laughs by imitating the street vendors' cries of 'Satay!' and 'Baso!'.

Which Philippine fast-food chain began in 1975 as an ice cream parlour in Quezon City?

Jollibee's founder, Tony Tan Caktiong, held a Magnolia ice cream franchise until the hot meals he added outsold the ice cream; in 1978 he dropped it and turned his parlours into fast-food outlets.

Arak, the anise spirit of Lebanon and Syria, turns from clear to milky white when it is mixed with what?

Water does it: anethole, the essential oil of anise, dissolves in alcohol but not in water, so the traditional one-to-two dilution clouds the glass.

Hong Kong-style milk tea is nicknamed after which garment, which the cloth bag used to strain it resembles?

Silk stockings is the nickname because the long cotton filter bag, stained brown by the tea, looks like one; Hong Kong lists the brewing technique as intangible cultural heritage.

Myanmar's lahpet thoke is a salad built on the pickled, fermented form of which crop?

Tea leaves, fermented and eaten rather than brewed, are unique to this corner of Asia; a Burmese saying holds that 'of all the leaves, lahpet's the best'.

Beshbarmak, the boiled meat and noodle dish of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, has a Turkic name that means what?

Five fingers refers to the traditional way of eating the dish: with the hands, scooping up the noodles and meat without cutlery.

Which cone-shaped rice dish was declared Indonesia's official national dish by the tourism ministry in 2014?

Tumpeng was picked from a shortlist of 30 as the dish 'that binds the diversity' of Indonesia's cooking, though some culinary experts objected that it does not truly represent the country's food.

Which West Sumatran dish is made by simmering beef in coconut milk and spices for hours, until almost dry?

Rendang is cooked dry so that it keeps: Minangkabau people leaving home to seek their fortune carried it on long journeys, and CNN readers voted it the world's most delicious food in 2011.

Which Malaysian national dish, literally 'fatty rice', is cooked in coconut milk and eaten with fried anchovies and egg?

Nasi lemak's 'fat' means rich: the name refers to the coconut milk the rice is soaked and steamed in, and the dish is traditionally wrapped in banana leaf.

Which frothy Malaysian milk tea, the national drink, is named for being poured repeatedly between two containers?

Teh tarik means 'pulled tea': the pouring from a height cools the brew and gives it a frothy head, and it is a fixture of mamak stalls and kopitiams.

Bak kut teh, the pork-rib soup linked to the Malaysian port of Klang, has a Hokkien name that literally means what?

Meat bone tea contains no tea at all: the ribs simmer for hours with herbs and spices, and the tea is drunk alongside in the belief that it dissolves the fat.

Singapore's chilli crab is traced to the 1950s, when Cher Yam Tian stir-fried crabs with chilli sauce and which other sauce?

Tomato sauce went in when her policeman husband suggested she try something other than steaming the crabs he caught; the dish sold so well from their pushcart that it grew into a restaurant.

Singapore's chicken rice was adapted from the Wenchang chicken dishes of immigrants from which southern Chinese island?

Hainan's emigrants carried the dish wherever they settled, so the same poached chicken and seasoned rice turns up across Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Appam, the fermented rice-flour pancakes of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, go by what English name in Sri Lanka?

Hoppers is an English mangling of appa, the Sinhalese form of the Tamil appam; the bowl-shaped pancakes are eaten for breakfast or dinner with a curry on the side.

Which Sri Lankan street dish of chopped flatbread is famous for the clatter of iron blades that carries down the street?

Kottu comes from the Tamil for 'to chop', and it took off in the 1970s as a cheap way to use up day-old roti.

Which crop did Ceylon's planters grow before a leaf-rust epidemic pushed them into tea in the late 1800s?

Coffee had made Ceylon a major force in the world market; planters nicknamed the rust fungus that ruined their estates, Hemileia vastatrix, 'Devastating Emily'.

Nepal's momo dumplings are popularly believed to have been brought home by Nepali merchants who traded where?

Tibet is where travelling Newar merchants are said to have picked up the recipe, which explains why the dish first caught on in the Newar community.

Which Nepali dish of fermented, sun-dried leafy greens is made like sauerkraut or kimchi but without any salt?

Gundruk is left to ferment until it turns mildly acidic, then dried in the sun; it is made each autumn from the glut of mustard and radish greens at harvest.

Nihari, the slow-cooked South Asian stew, is named for the time of day it was traditionally eaten: when?

Morning is when Mughal-era nawabs ate it, as a breakfast course after the dawn prayer; the name goes back through Persian nahari, 'breakfast', to the Arabic nahar, 'day'.

Kashmiri noon chai, the pink tea popular across Pakistan, gets its colour from brewing green tea with milk and what?

Baking soda reacts with the gunpowder green tea to turn the brew pink, and 'noon' means salt in Kashmiri, the seasoning it is served with.

Kabuli pulao, Afghanistan's signature rice dish, is crowned with which caramelised vegetable and which dried fruit?

Carrots and raisins top Afghanistan's national dish, whose name in one account comes not from Kabul but from qabil, a word for skilful.

Which lemongrass-scented fish and rice-noodle soup, sold as an all-day breakfast, is the national dish of Myanmar?

Mohinga's sellers traditionally walked the streets with a shoulder pole, the soup cauldron hanging from one end and the noodles from the other.

Which Cambodian province names the peppercorn that in 2010 became Cambodia's first geographically protected product?

Kampot pepper was noted by the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan in the 13th century; civil war later cut the harvest from thousands of tons a year to about four before growers revived it.

Which fermented fish paste, with a smell likened to ripe Camembert, is the Khmer staple nicknamed 'Cambodian cheese'?

Prahok began as a way to keep fish for the months when the catch was thin; its smell, likened to Limburger as well as Camembert, earned the nickname.

The Cambodian town of Skuon draws tourists for which crunchy snack, thought to date from Khmer Rouge-era food shortages?

Tarantulas the size of a human palm, fried in oil and called a-ping in Khmer, are bred in holes in the ground in villages north of Skuon or foraged from nearby forest.

In which Southeast Asian country is most of the rice crop the sticky, glutinous kind?

Laos grows mostly sticky rice, whose texture comes from one mutation: it is thought to have arisen a single time, in Southeast Asia, and to have spread because farmers selected for it.

Or lam, the tongue-numbing stew of Luang Prabang, gets its bite from simmering which ingredient?

Chili wood, or sakhaan, is the woody vine of a pepper plant: cooks drop splinters of it into the pot, and the original royal recipe called for deer meat.

Airag, the mildly alcoholic fermented drink of Mongolia and the Central Asian steppe, is made from which animal's milk?

Horse milk has more sugars than cow's or goat's, so when it ferments the drink ends up slightly stronger than kefir, though still mild.

Khorkhog, the Mongolian countryside feast, cooks chunks of meat inside a sealed container together with what?

Hot stones, ten to twenty of them, cook the meat inside a sealed metal milk churn; afterwards diners toss the greasy stones from hand to hand, which is said to be good for you.

Which Uzbek national dish, rice simmered in a meat-and-vegetable stew called zirvak, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2016?

Plov is so central to hospitality that, as an Uzbek saying has it, guests can only leave their host's house once it has been offered.

Samsa, the Central Asian relative of the South Asian samosa, is traditionally cooked in which way?

Baked in a tandoor rather than fried like its South Asian cousin, samsa are typically filled with mutton mixed with tail fat, onions and cumin.

Which crisp, caramelised crust scraped from the bottom of an Iranian rice pot has a Persian name meaning exactly that?

Tahdig combines tah, 'bottom', and dig, 'pot'; cooks often line the pot with sliced potato or flatbread to form the crust, which is traditionally offered to guests.

Fesenjan, the dark, sweet-sour Iranian stew for duck or chicken, combines ground walnuts with the paste of which fruit?

Pomegranate paste gives the sourness; the stew was long a rich man's dish, so Persians say of a show-off that he 'behaves as if he has had partridge and fesenjan'.

Ghormeh sabzi, the herb stew called Iran's national dish, is soured with which pierced and blackened ingredient?

Dried limes give the stew its sour edge; Iranians abroad even mark an International Ghormeh Sabzi Appreciation Day two days after Thanksgiving.

Faloodeh, a half-frozen dessert of starch vermicelli in rosewater syrup, is most associated with which Iranian city?

Shiraz lends its name to faloodeh Shirazi, the best-known version, whose noodles are chilled in syrup until at least half-frozen.

Which Levantine blend of wild oregano, sesame and salt tops manakish flatbreads and makes an olive-oil dip?

Za'atar names both the herb, Origanum syriacum or Bible hyssop, and the mix made from it; Lebanese and Palestinian tradition holds that eating it at breakfast sharpens children's minds for school.

Pineapple cakes, one of Taiwan's top-selling souvenirs, traditionally stretch the pineapple filling with which vegetable?

Winter melon bulks out the pineapple jam so cheaply that in modern bakeries its presence is read as a sign of lower quality.

Yuenyeung, Hong Kong's two-in-one café drink, is named after which birds, a Chinese symbol of married love?

Mandarin ducks, yuanyang, appear in pairs with strikingly different males and females, much as the drink pairs two unlike halves.

Which Filipino rice cake, cooked in a terracotta oven lined with banana leaf, is a traditional Christmas-season food?

Bibingka is the snack Filipinos eat after the dawn masses of Simbang Gabi, the nine-day run-up to Christmas, usually alongside puto bumbóng.

Which Bhutanese national dish is a fiery stew of hot peppers, spring onions and farm cheese?

Ema datshi means 'chilli cheese': in Bhutan chillies are cooked as a vegetable rather than used as a spice, and the white kind are green ones scalded and sun-dried.

Po cha, the salted butter tea of the Himalayan plateau, is traditionally churned with the butter of which animal?

Yak butter and salt are shaken into strong tea in a cylinder, though cheaper cow's butter is increasingly used because it is easier to find.

Which oily fish, the bulk of whose world catch is landed in Bangladesh, is the Bangladeshi national fish?

Hilsa catches have fallen in other countries, but Bangladesh's nearly doubled in a decade after it banned netting juveniles and fishing in the breeding season.

Ambuyat, the bland, starchy paste that is Brunei's national dish, is made from the interior trunk of which palm?

Sago starch has little taste of its own, so diners twirl the sticky paste around chandas, a joined pair of bamboo chopsticks, and dip it into a sauce.

Kecap manis, the thick, syrupy Indonesian soy sauce, can be up to half made of which sweetener?

Palm sugar, gula jawa, can make up half of the sauce, which is so popular that it accounts for an estimated 90 percent of Indonesia's soy sauce production.

Gado-gado, the Indonesian vegetable salad in peanut sauce, is often traced to a verb meaning to eat something how?

Without rice is what menggado means, one account of the name, though another traces it to a Portuguese word for a mixture; the salad itself often comes with lontong, a compressed rice cake.

Which parsley-based Levantine salad has had its own national day in Lebanon, on the first Saturday of July, since 2001?

Tabbouleh is dressed with olive oil and lemon, and the Syrian Jewish version flips the proportions to make the soaked grain, not the parsley, the main ingredient.

Which crisp treat served in Chinese restaurants abroad most likely began with Japanese immigrants in California?

Fortune cookie lookalikes were being made in Kyoto in the 19th century, and a 1992 attempt to sell the American version in China was dropped because buyers found it too American.

The green 'wasabi' paste served with sushi outside Japan is usually made from which cheaper root instead?

Horseradish dyed green stands in because the true wasabi plant is so hard to cultivate that it is costly and rare beyond Japan.

Which Southeast Asian 'king of fruits' is banned from public transport in Singapore and Bangkok because of its smell?

Durian has an odour that can linger for days, so some hotels bar it too, yet buyers in Malaysia prize the ripest and most pungent fruit they can find.

Which table condiment's name, by one popular theory, comes from a Hokkien Chinese word for pickled-fish brine?

Ketchup, on that theory, started as a salty fish brine from Fujian, and British cooks went on to make their own versions from mushrooms, oysters and walnuts.

Which global energy drink was adapted from Krating Daeng, a tonic created in Thailand by Chaleo Yoovidhya?

Red Bull exists because Austrian marketer Dietrich Mateschitz found the Thai tonic cured his jet lag on a 1982 business trip, then struck a deal with its maker.

Budae-jjigae, the Korean stew of Spam, sausage and instant noodles, has a name that means what kind of stew?

Army base stew grew out of Korean War poverty, when cooks used tinned rations scavenged or smuggled from US military camps; the city of Uijeongbu claims it and has a street of specialist restaurants.

Tempura, Japan's light batter-frying, was learned in 16th-century Nagasaki from missionaries of which European country?

Portugal sent Jesuits who ate battered, fried fish and vegetables on holy days of fasting, and the Latin word for those times, tempora, is one common explanation of the dish's name.

Which chocolate bar, sold in Japan in hundreds of flavours, is given to students as an exam good-luck charm?

Kit Kat sounds like a Japanese phrase about surely winning, so the bars were sold through 20,000 post offices to be mailed to students before university entrance exams.

Japanese chefs must train for years and earn a licence before serving fugu, which notoriously poisonous fish?

Pufferfish organs hold the nerve poison tetrodotoxin, so Japan has licensed fugu chefs since 1958, a year in which 176 diners died, and banned restaurants from serving the liver in 1984.

Banh mi, Vietnam's stuffed street sandwich, is built on which bread introduced under French colonial rule?

Baguette arrived with the French in the 1860s as a luxury made from costly imported wheat, and by the early 20th century it had become an everyday Vietnamese staple.

Which 'fifth taste' did Tokyo chemist Kikunae Ikeda name in 1908 after studying a broth made from kombu kelp?

Umami turned out to be the taste of glutamate, and within a year the discovery was on sale in Japan as the seasoning MSG, under the brand name Ajinomoto.

Takoyaki, the ball-shaped street snack first popularised in Osaka, is filled with diced pieces of which sea creature?

Octopus is tako in Japanese, and street vendor Tomekichi Endo is credited with creating the snack in 1935 by adding it to an earlier Osaka snack that was filled with beef or konjac.

Restaurateur Yoshiaki Shiraishi invented conveyor-belt sushi after watching what move along a factory line?

Beer bottles circling an Asahi brewery gave the short-staffed owner his idea, and after years of tinkering with the belt's design and speed he opened the first such restaurant in 1958.

Which chewy Japanese cake of pounded glutinous rice is a New Year tradition that causes choking deaths every year?

Mochi is so sticky that Tokyo's fire department has reported more than 100 people a year taken to hospital after choking on it, the elderly above all.

Soba, the thin Japanese noodles traditionally eaten on New Year's Eve, are made from the flour of which plant?

Buckwheat makes a dough so brittle that early soba had to be steamed in baskets instead of boiled, which is why most is now blended with a share of wheat flour.

Momofuku Ando launched the first instant noodles in 1958 and Cup Noodles in 1971 through which company he founded?

Nissin began as a small family firm producing salt in Osaka, and Ando was 48 when months of trial and error with flash-frying gave him noodles that would keep on a shelf.

Which bright green powdered tea from shade-grown plants is whisked at the heart of the Japanese tea ceremony?

Matcha owes its vivid colour to shade, which raises the chlorophyll in the plant, and the habit of whisking powdered tea began in Song dynasty China.

Which Japanese soup, adapted from Chinese wheat noodles, has regional styles such as Sapporo miso and Hakata tonkotsu?

Ramen traces back to Chinese immigrants in Yokohama's Chinatown, and it was at first looked down on as cheap working-class food before nearly every region built a style of its own.

Which Japanese drink, often called a wine, is brewed from rice that has been polished to strip away the bran?

Sake makers break down the grain's starch and ferment it in the same tank at the same moment, a double process that reaches 18 to 20 percent alcohol before the brew is diluted.

Which Tokyo market, the world's largest wholesale fish market until 2018, drew visitors to its dawn tuna auctions?

Tsukiji closed its wholesale halls in October 2018 and the trade moved to a new site at Toyosu, but the outer market of shops and sushi counters stayed where it was.

Which Cantonese meal of small steamed and fried dishes grew out of teahouse snacks and the yum cha brunch custom?

Dim sum began as the bites that Canton's teahouses served to travellers with their tea, and many restaurants still wheel the dishes round the room on steam-heated carts.

Which dense, round pastries are given as gifts and eaten across China during the Mid-Autumn Festival?

Mooncakes often hide one or more whole salted egg yolks in the centre of the sweet filling, each yolk standing for the full moon that the festival celebrates.

Which fiery Sichuan dish from 19th-century Chengdu is named after the pockmarked old woman said to have created it?

Mapo tofu joins the Chinese words for pockmarks and for an old woman, and records tie the dish to Chengdu's Chen Mapo restaurant in the 1860s or 1870s.

Hoisin, the dark, sweet Cantonese dipping sauce, takes its name from a Chinese word for what, though it contains none?

Seafood is what hoisin means in Cantonese, yet the sauce has none in it and is rarely even eaten with fish; its base is fermented soybean paste.

Bird's nest soup, among the costliest Chinese delicacies, is made from nests that swiftlets build out of what?

Saliva hardens into a shallow cup glued to a cave wall, and the cleaned nests can fetch thousands of dollars a pound, among the dearest animal products people eat.

Which deep-fried dish on American Chinese menus is named after Zuo Zongtang, a Qing dynasty statesman from Hunan?

General Tso's chicken reached New York menus in the 1970s, long after its 19th-century namesake died, and two rival chefs each claimed it as their own creation.

XO sauce, the luxury Hong Kong condiment made with scallops, borrows its name from a grade of which French spirit?

Cognac graded XO, for extra old, was the chic drink of 1980s Hong Kong, so the label signalled luxury even though the condiment holds no brandy at all.

The chewy 'pearls' in Taiwan's bubble tea were originally made from the starch of which root crop?

Cassava starch, better known as tapioca, gives the pearls their bounce; two Taiwanese tea rooms both claim to have invented the drink in the 1980s, and a 2019 court ruling said nobody could patent it.

Which rice porridge, eaten for breakfast in many Asian countries, takes its English name from a Tamil word?

Congee comes from the Tamil kanji, and the dish is simply grain boiled in far more liquid than usual until it breaks down into a soft, savoury gruel.

Zongzi, leaf-wrapped sticky rice parcels, are eaten at which Chinese holiday popularly linked to the poet Qu Yuan?

Dragon Boat Festival legend says villagers threw rice parcels into the Miluo River so the fish would spare the drowned poet's body, though the link to him is first recorded some 700 years after he died.

Baechu-kimchi, Korea's most common kind of kimchi, is made by salting and fermenting whole heads of which vegetable?

Napa cabbage reached Korea only at the end of the 19th century, so the country's best-known kimchi is far younger than the pickling tradition behind it.

Which Korean bowl of vegetables, egg and spicy pepper paste, stirred before eating, has a name meaning 'mixed rice'?

Bibimbap may have begun at ancestral rites, some scholars argue, when all the food offerings were tipped into a single bowl before the family shared them.

Which clear Korean spirit comes in a standard green bottle that rival makers agreed to share and reuse?

Soju from a single label, Jinro, was the largest-selling branded spirit in the world in 2019, and seven distillers agreed in 2009 to use one bottle so that empties could be refilled by any of them.

Which fermented pepper paste gives Korean dishes such as tteokbokki their savoury, sweet heat?

Gochujang was traditionally left to ferment for years in earthenware jars on a raised platform in the backyard, yet the fiery tteokbokki it flavours is thought to date only from 1953.

Miyeok-guk, the soup Koreans eat on their birthdays in honour of their mothers, has which main ingredient?

Seaweed soup is what Korean women eat for months after giving birth, a custom said to have begun when people noticed whales eating seaweed after calving.

Pad thai, the stir-fried noodles promoted by Thailand's wartime government, gets its sour tang from which fruit's juice?

Tamarind supplies the tang, and the dish itself was pushed by Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram, who wanted Thais to eat noodles so that the country could stretch its grain harvest.

Som tam, the fiery pounded salad of Thailand's northeast, is made from the shredded unripe flesh of which fruit?

Papaya is not native to Asia at all: European ships carried it from the Americas, along with the chili peppers that make the salad so fierce.

Which spicy sauce, sold in America with a rooster on the bottle, takes its name from a seaside town in Thailand?

Sriracha is named for Si Racha, the home town of its 1930s creator; the rooster-bottle version is a jalapeño sauce that Huy Fong Foods began making in the early 1980s for American pho restaurants.

Tom kha kai, Thailand's creamy coconut soup, is named for which pungent rhizome, a relative of ginger?

Galangal is the kha in the soup's name, which translates literally as chicken galangal soup, though some recipes swap in ordinary ginger.

Which Southeast Asian dish of seasoned chicken, beef or goat, skewered and charcoal-grilled, comes with peanut sauce?

Satay is ultimately traced to a Tamil word for flesh, a reminder of the Indian and Arab traders whose kebabs and techniques shaped it in the ports of Java and Sumatra.

Which golden-yellow spice, ground from a rhizome of the ginger family, colours curry powder and the robes of some monks?

Turmeric spread across India with Hinduism and Buddhism because its dye coloured the robes of monks and priests; cooks boil, dry and grind the root into powder.

Which long, slender-grained rice of north India and Pakistan is known for a popcorn-like aroma that fades as it cooks?

Basmati holds about twelve times more of its aroma compound than ordinary rice, and soaking the grains for half an hour before cooking helps to keep the scent.

Which hill station in West Bengal, where tea was first planted in 1841, names a brew marketed as the champagne of teas?

Darjeeling was so widely blended and mislabelled that in 2004 it became India's first product with a legally protected geographical name, reserved for certain estates.

Iran grows most of the world's supply of which spice, hand-picked from the stigmas of crocus flowers?

Saffron takes about 150,000 flowers to make a single kilogram, every one picked by hand, which keeps its price high on world markets.

Hummus, the Levantine dip blended with lemon and garlic, takes its name from the Arabic word for which legume?

Chickpeas are all that the word hummus means in Arabic, so the dip's full name adds the words for 'with tahini' to tell it apart from the plain pulse.

Which fiery Goan curry takes its name from a European dish of pork marinated in wine and garlic?

Vindaloo started as vindalho, pork steeped in vinegar and garlic by Goa's Christian cooks, and British employers who prized those cooks carried it into Anglo-Indian kitchens.

Which Philippine dish of chicken or pork braised in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic was given a Spanish name by colonists?

Adobo is older than its name: islanders were already cooking food in vinegar and salt to keep it from spoiling in the tropical heat before Spain arrived and applied its own word.

Which traditional Indonesian food is a firm cake of soybeans fermented with a Rhizopus mould?

Tempeh was being made by the Javanese before Chinese-style bean curd reached the island, one Indonesian food historian argues, which would make it a home-grown invention.

Which Chinese sorghum spirit sold more litres in 2018 than whisky, vodka, gin, rum and tequila combined?

Baijiu is drunk mostly inside China, in small glasses emptied in one go after a toast, and the Moutai brand was served at the state dinner for Richard Nixon's 1972 visit.

The Singapore Sling is reputed to have been created by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon at the Long Bar of which hotel?

Raffles lore says he made the gin drink look like fruit juice so that women, who could not respectably be seen drinking alcohol in public, could order it.