NEW ORLEANS NOSTALGIA Remembering History, Culture and Traditio ns

By Ned Hémard

Don’t You Know

Yaka Mein is a Chinese-influenced dish extremely popular in the African-American community of New Orleans, a soulful soup steeped in mystery. It usually consists of beef or in a soy-salty , served over and topped with chopped green onions and half a hard-boiled egg. Flavor-wise, Creole seasoning gives the dish that something extra.

Food Truck offering YET-CA-MEIN on the Indians’ Super Sunday

Called “Old Sober” by local expert “Ms. Linda” Green, the Yaka Mein Lady, and others for its potency as a hangover remedy, it has become perhaps the quintessential street food staple at second lines, as well as fairs and festivals, such as Jazz Fest and the Mardi Gras Indians’ Super Sunday. In fact, it was served in 1970 at the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, familiarly known as Jazz Fest, held in Congo Square. After the Festival’s second year it was no longer offered, but was reintroduced to Fest goers in 2005 when “Ms. Linda” brought it back.

One origin theory states that Yaka mein was brought back home to the U.S. by African American troops who had served overseas in the Korean War and returned with a desire for some of the dishes they had experienced there. Trouble with that hypothesis is that I have found numerous references to the dish in American newspapers, appearing earlier than the Korean conflict – much earlier.

The oldest reference I was able to discover was an ad in the Springfield, Illinois, Daily Journal, dated October 10, 1905, which announced that “Yet-ca mein” could be had at the Café for only 20 cents.

Yet-ca mein available as early as 1905

As you can see, Yaka mein, or Yet ca-mein, has innumerable spellings. The list includes: Yetka mein; Yock a mein (or just “Yock”); Jakemein, Yakameat; Yakamein; Yakamee; Yakimi; Yacamein; Ya ka mein; Yatka mein; Yet gaw mein; Yat gaw mein; Yaca mein; Yakama; or Yaka may. These various spellings occur with and without hyphenation, and mein (which is the Chinese word for noodle) is often rendered as mien.

New Orleans jam band Galactic even named an album Ya Ka May because, just as the dish is a blend of Chinese and African-American culinary cultures, the band’s efforts on that album blended two very different musical genres.

And as you may also observe, Yaka mein, rendered in the 1905 ad as “yet-ca mein”, takes its place on the menu with other “simple” Chinese dishes, such as chop suey, culinary offerings intended as meals suitable for American palates. In Chinese, the term for food cooked to American taste is meiguorende kouwei.

Yaka Mien (as it was spelled then) was explained in an article in the Portland Oregonian, dated January 4, 1914.

A writer asked for “the recipe for making real ” and also “the broth in which they may be eaten” and “what kind of is served”?

The answer:

“Real Chinese noodles, or ‘Yaka Mien,’ as I have seen them prepared, call for white of egg, and a special kind of flour mixed to a stiff paste. The exact proportions vary with the kind of flour. The important feature is two hours’ heavy and continuous working of the paste with different kinds of rollers. You would, I think, need a special lesson or series of lessons in the manipulation of the paste and you would need untiring muscles. Even if you had the skill and the muscles, you would still find (if your time has any value at all) that it would pay you to buy rather than make these noodles. An excellent brand of Yaka Mien is to be had in Portland from the larger grocery stores at 10 to 15 cents a package. They are boiled in salted water and drained before being added to broth or served with sauces and . To tell you ‘what kind of broth they may be eaten in and what kind of meat is served on them and how it is prepared’ would be to write a fairly large Chinese cook book, which I am not prepared to do at present.”

The article continued:

“Strong, rich chicken broth, or broth of chicken, and or different kinds of vegetable broth, may be used.”

It’s interesting to note that beef broth, most often used in New Orleans yaka mein, is not mentioned in the recipe above.

The 1914 Portland version is further explained:

“Little strips or minced balls of chicken-meat, duck-meat, goose- breast, Chinese pork, Chinese ham (different flavored from ours) and various sorts of fish go with Yaka Mien. Bamboo sprouts, Chinese celery, Chinese mushrooms, green bean sprouts, and different Chinese spices and flavorings enter into composition of many different variations in serving Yaka Mien. Chinese soy is, of course, to be served with the noodles in any case. The meats are boiled, stewed or fried according to the ordinary rules for meat cookery, the difference being in form and seasoning. Some of the seasonings are unattainable by the ordinary American cook.”

Ms. Linda and her Yaka Mein, in a bowl or to-go Styrofoam cups

After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Herbert Hoover to head the U.S. Food Administration to ensure that the nation’s food needs were being met during the war. By 1918, Woo Bun, head cook at the Canton Restaurant in Denver, Colorado, was cooperating with the war effort on “meatless days”:

“We have learned to make our noodles almost entirely of fine white corn meal to save wheat, and on meatless days, we use broth of chicken and other fowls as a basis for our war mein and yat ca mein,” Woo explained.

In October 1921, the Chinese of Duluth, Minnesota, “attired in the flowing robes of the Celestial empire,” would do their part to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Chinese republic, according to an article in the Duluth News-Tribune, dated October 7, 1921. A great repast was to include “boneless duck stuffed with birds’ nests, and yet ka mien.” Still another spelling of yaka mein.

In 1926, according to the Augusta Chronicle, Georgia readers learned a recipe for “Yet-ca-mein” involving either “chicken” or “pork shoulder” for the broth. “Chinese noodles” were added and boiled for four minutes. Removed, the broth and noodles were transferred “to soup plates” and topped with “match-like” strips of meat. “Serve with soy sauce if desired,” the recipe concluded.

Making an appearance much further south in 1927, Tampa, Florida, to be precise, the dish was now spelled Yaka Mein. In ads from 1927 through 1929, the Mikado Inn in Tampa offered both Chinese and American dishes.

Yaka Mein hits the South in the 1920s

1935 was a very important year in Yaka Mein history. It was the same year that then Senator Huey Long of Louisiana delivered the longest speech in Senate history, taking 15½ hours and containing 150,000 words. In a scene from the 1935 MGM crime drama Whipsaw, starring Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy, the “bad guys” (who happened to be staying in New Orleans) placed a take-out order for Chinese food:

“I ordered three chop sueys and two yaka meins, right?”

“Right.”

For diners in Ohio, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, printed an ad, dated January 22, 1935, offering “luscious Yacamein” (this time with “diced baby ”) for the “Ravenous!” for only 35 cents. This Chinese fare was provided by a restaurant with the most New England-sounding name, the “Cape Cod Room of the Bean Pot”.

But perhaps the most significant 1935 event in the history of Yaka Mein, or Yet-Ca-Mein, was the printing of La Choy’s Chinese recipe booklet, entitled The Art and Secrets of Chinese Cookery and its inclusion of a simple recipe for “Yet-Ca-Mein”.

La Choy Food Products, Inc., a company and brand name offering canned and prepackaged American Chinese ingredients, was founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1922 by two friends who had attended the University of Michigan, Dr. Ilhan New, a Korean immigrant, and Wally Smith. The company, whose first product was canned sprouts, is currently owned by food giant ConAgra.

Yet-Ca-Mein recipe, The Art and Secrets of Chinese Cookery, 1935

The La Choy recipe for “Yet-Ca-Mein” offered an affordable meal for almost any family’s pocketbook: “beef or other broth” and some inexpensive “noodles or ” topped with “halves of hard boiled eggs” and “green onions”. It was almost identical to to the New Orleans yaka mein of today.

La Choy products were available in the New Orleans area as early as 1925 when Solari’s first began advertising these items. Established in 1864, Solari’s was one of the primary food destinations in New Orleans for both local shoppers and tourists for over 100 years.

Solari’s La Choy ad in the Times-Picayune, May 7, 1926

A Mrs. Peterson offered a recipe for “Yet-Ca-Mein” in the Times- Picayune, October 28, 1933. Hers featured “flaked ” as the major ingredient. Ms. Linda Green, who learned how to make yaka mein from her mother and grandmother, not only makes yaka mein with beef, but yaka mein, shrimp, shrimp and beef, alligator, duck and even vegeterian versions.

Free La Choy Cookery book featuring “Yet-Ca-Mein”, The Times-Picayune, April 29, 1955

Even in the 1950s, La Choy was making its Chinese Cookery booklet available to any interested homemaker who was willing to write La Choy Food Products. More than eight million copies were distributed across the United States, and an ad publicizing this offer appeared in the Times-Picayune April 29, 1955. Perhaps this was one way in which the recipe became widely available within the African-American community in New Orleans.

Others believe yaka mein was brought to New Orleans by Chinese immigrants as early as the mid-nineteenth century. That includes New Orleans chef Leah Chase who believes yaka mein originated with the Chinese laborers who were brought to South Louisiana to work and “had to mingle with the African-Americans.” As a replacement for slave labor due to the Civil War, Louisiana sugar planters sent agents to recruit a few hundred Chinese workers living in Cuba. They also brought into lower Louisiana 1,600 Chinese laborers from California, and later . By the mid-1870s, nearly all of these Chinese workers had left the plantations and migrated to Southern cities, such as New Orleans, in search of better conditions and pay. They became merchants, laundrymen and restaurateurs by the 1880s and created a small Chinatown along the 1100 block of Tulane Avenue, between South Rampart Street and Elk Place. Others set up businesses in and around the 500 block of Bourbon Street. On South Basin Street during the “Storyville” days of 1911, one could visit the Yee Wah Sen Restaurant, which the Picayune reported as very successful, taking in $100 a day from “more different types of humanity than you are likely to see anywhere else in the city”. There one could observe “the toughest specimens of the underworld as well as the respectable members of what is known as polite society” – “the aristocrat, comparitively speaking,” rubbing “elbows with the hoi polloi.” The restaurant served both white and black patrons in segregated seating. It is quite possible during this period and in this environment, Leah Chase believes, that this popular Chinese noodle soup was adapted by local Creoles of color. After some local seasoning and some hot sauce, they made it their own.

Meanwhile, the dish was still making its rounds throughout the United States – and in Canada, as well.

Mr. Hee Chong Lee of Montreal, Canada, an immigrant from China, established an import/export business of Chinese goods in 1897, under the banner of Wing Lung. Production of Wing’s famous “Yet-Ca-Mein” dry noodles began in the 1950s. Wing’s takes pride in the fact that it was the first manufacturer of Asian food products to introduce bilingual messages in its fortune cookies, and to have their entire product line certified kosher. Wing’s “Yet-Ca-Mein” Chinese Style Noodles are printed in French on each box as “Nouilles a la Chinoise”. Today, under the name Wing Noodles, Ltd., the company continues to operate after a century in business, run by three of Mr. Lee’s grandsons.

Yet-Ca-Mein noodles, a product of Montreal, Canada

Back in New Orleans in 1976, Mrs. Charity Morris of 311 Chippewa Street submitted her recipe for “ Yat-Ca-Mien” to the Times- Picayune. It included spaghetti, a pound of sausage (either boudin, smoke, hot or Italian), brown gravy sauce, soy sauce, green onions and boiled eggs. In addition to half a bottle of soy sauce, you could add “hot sauce, more soy sauce and ketchup.”

The following year (1977), Easter Merryman’s Red Rooster Snoballs opened her mostly to-go business at Washington Avenue and Clara (2801 Washington Avenue) with a can of red paint (by chance) and today specializes in “classic New Orleans style po-boy’s, fried chicken, platters, yet-ca-mein, snacks, freshly made desserts and of course snoballs.” She offers beef or chicken, or beef and chicken yet- ca-mein. Asking her the history of yet-ca-mein, she answered me simply: “Sober you up!”

Red Rooster and its snoball-shaped Yak-A-Mein sign

At one time, the Red Rooster’s sign spelled the dish “Yak-A-Mein”, but Ms. Easter has changed the spelling to “yet-ca-mein” today.

“Ms. Linda” now markets “Ms. Linda Green’s Original New Orleans Ya- Ka-Mein Seasoning” so that you, too, can achieve her success at home. I am told she uses a boneless chuck roast cooked slowly over a low boil. Her “Soul Food” fame is now international, having been featured by Anthony Bourdain and being named the winner of the Food Network’s Chopped Pride of New Orleans award.

Or, if you wish to have your yaka mein in a more formal setting, it’s on the menu at Ralph’s On The Park. Chef Chip Flanagan offers an upscale version with pork belly, house-made tagliatelle noodles and a sous vide egg.

For a unique experience at home, the February 2017 issue of Palate Magazine offers Jacqueline Blanchard’s in-depth recipe for Yakamein, “known to revive fading revelers”. Jacqueline Blanchard has traveled throughout the Orient and worked in top-ranking restaurant kitchens across the U.S. and today runs an extraordinary boutique knife shop on Oak Street. She has worked at John Besh’s Restaurant August, Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry in Napa Valley and at Benu, a San Francisco restaurant awarded three Michelin stars.

La Choy introduced Yet-Ca-Mein to American homemakers in 1935.

So now you have experienced the fascinating journey of yaka mein, a Chinese American dish over a century old that has become a huge favorite in New Orleans, where it has picked up some extra Creole spice from within our African-American community. Did it first arrive in the city’s two former Chinatowns, or via Solari’s in the French Quarter in the 1920s or was it an idea expanded from a simple 1935 recipe in a La Choy’s Cookery booklet? We may never know for sure, but we’re sure delighted that this delicious dish is now part of our culinary heritage.

In China, instead of asking someone, “How are you?” in ordinary conversation, the more common question is, “Have you eaten?” or “Ni chi le ma?” That’s how very important food is in Chinese culture. And that fits right in with the culture of New Orleans. We’re always talking about good food.

NED HÉMARD

New Orleans Nostalgia “Don’t You Know Yaka Mein” Ned Hémard Copyright 2017