The story behind Panda Express’s Orange Chicken
One of the most popular dishes you order at Asian restaurants isn’t actually Chinese.
If you’ve ever walked into a food court hungry and low on patience, chances are you walked out with a cardboard container full of fried rice, slippery noodles, and a bright orange chicken that looked more like dessert than a savory dish. That sticky, crispy mix—known to millions as orange chicken—is now one of the best-selling dishes at Panda Express. And surprise: it isn’t Chinese.
The dish was born in 1987 in Hawaii, inside a Panda Express located in a shopping mall. The company—founded in Pasadena, California, by Andrew Cherng, a Chinese immigrant, and Peggy Cherng, originally from Myanmar—wanted something that could compete with sweet and sour chicken but that flowed more smoothly with the American palate. The person in charge of inventing it was chef Andy Kao, who adapted recipes from southern China and boosted the sugar, citrus, and frying levels.
The result? Fried chicken pieces coated in a thick orange sauce made of soy, garlic, sugar, and vinegar. It’s not traditional, nor does it try to be, but it works: the chain sells more than 100 million servings a year, and this dish is the reason Panda Express became the largest Asian food chain in the United States.
Orange chicken represents more than just a famous dish—it’s a symbol of Chinese-American cuisine, one that doesn’t aim to be strict about tradition but is very serious about applause and affection. The same culinary current that invented chop suey, egg foo young, and the fortune cookie. A migrant cuisine born out of craving and nostalgia for a homeland thousands of kilometers away from American cities.
Today, although Panda Express has an international presence (including Mexico), orange chicken is still nowhere to be found on any traditional menu in China. It’s now celebrating 38 years since it was first served to a customer at the chain.
So next time someone tells you it’s not authentic, you can remind them neither is Hawaiian pizza—and here we still are.
