Winning Stomachs and Minds: Ethnic Restaurants and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the US

Abstract

This paper examines how ethnic restaurants influence mainstream sentiment towards immigrant groups. Leveraging one of the first restaurant booms in the US, the ‘chop suey craze’ of the early twentieth century, we investigate how the spread of Chinese restaurants impacted local attitudes towards Chinese immigrants during a period of intense anti-Chinese sentiment. Using historical press data to measure local sentiment and exploiting variation in the timing of Chinese restaurant openings, we find restaurants had a large and persistent positive effect on attitudes towards Chinese immigrants. The opening of Chinese laundries, on the other hand, had no significant impact on local sentiment, despite similar interaction and labor market competition with the US-born community as restaurants. We instead provide evidence in favor of a ‘cultural bridging’ mechanism whereby restaurants helped to reduce the socio-cultural distance of the Chinese-American community.