The Brief

Chop suey was once a classic Chinese American dish enjoyed on December 25 — a day when most other restaurants were closed — by Jews and other non-Christians.

These days, we tend to think of chop suey as a mishmash of stir-fried ingredients that emerged from immigrant communities in the United States. But its roots run deep, says Miranda Brown, a professor of Chinese history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She wrote a 2021 article called "The Hidden, Magnificent History of Chop Suey" for the website Atlas Obscura.

"It's a dish that is chopped offal," she says. "Lung, liver, tripe, kidneys."

Yes, originally chop suey was primarily made of organ meats. Brown is quick to note that offal is flavorful, rich in nutrients, and was enjoyed widely until a few generations ago, thanks, in part to industrial meat packaging processes.

"It can be chewy, it can be buttery, it can be kind of rubbery," Brown says of offal's distinctive textures. "For some people, that's really kind of exciting. Bouncy!"

The origins of the dish itself bounces back hundreds of years, she says, to imperial China.

"We have references to chop suey in Ming Dynasty texts," she notes. "The Journey to the West, which is a famous novel [from the 16th century], has a reference to chop suey. You will find it on fancy banquet menus. A version of the dish was even eaten at the Qing court."

When Chinese immigrants to the U.S. in the mid-1800s wanted to impress local officials, Brown says, they held banquets similar to ones back home, with 300-course meals that would get written up in local newspapers, in articles marveling over delicacies such as Peking duck, chop suey and bird's nest soup.

"All the bling foods that were popular when you had to [build] a good relationship with a person who had a lot of say about your life," Brown says.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricted immigration heavily, but Chinese restaurants still spread rapidly across the United States. By the early 1900s, chop suey had become a cultural phenomenon, a beloved ambassador dish to what had been an unfamiliar cuisine to many Americans.

Louis Armstrong recorded a song in 1926 called "Cornet Chop Suey." The 1958 musical Flower Drum Song dedicated an entire number to it. And in the movie A Christmas Story, set in the 1940s and based on the writings of Jean Shepherd, a white, Midwestern, working-class family celebrates Christmas at a Chinese restaurant called the Bo Ling Chop Suey Palace.

"It was exotic," Brown says. "It involves a little bit of adventure, and it is a name that people can pronounce."

But by the late 20th century, chop suey had fallen out of fashion. Brown says she never saw it on menus in her home city of San Francisco in the 1980s, when she was growing up. By then, Americans had deepened their appreciation of Chinese food, thanks in large part to popular cookbook author, PBS host and restaurateur Cecilia Chiang.

Before she died in 2020 at the age of 100, Chiang told NPR she thought it was hilarious how so many Americans had believed that the contemporary versions of chop suey were authentic. "They think, oh, chop suey is the only thing we have in China," she said in a 2017 NPR interview. "What a shame!"

"I think for her, it had just evolved to the point where it was no longer recognizable," says Miranda Brown, whose own mixed heritage is half white, half Chinese. "Foods evolve. I always think, if I met my great-great-grandparents, would they recognize me? Would they see elements of their faces in mine or my daughter's? And I would guess not. Something similar happened with Chinese food in America. When a dish leaves, a hundred years later it has evolved, a lot."

And perhaps it's about time, Brown says, for chop suey's next evolution: to make a comeback.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The traditional way of voting in Huntington Beach could be upended after a judge’s ruling this week in a case accusing the city of diluting the electoral power of its Latino residents.

What happened?

The judge ordered Surf City to adopt ranked-choice voting for the November general election. Ranked-choice voting is where voters rank all candidates in order of preference, so if your first choice is eliminated, your vote transfers to your second-choice candidate.

It’s also the type of voting that helped Zohran Mamdani seize victory in the New York City mayoral race.

Why it matters

The ruling comes in a legal challenge to the city’s at-large elections, arguing Latino voters are unfairly disadvantaged and unable to elect a candidate of their choice. Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that “racially polarized voting has regularly occurred in Huntington Beach elections.”

The backstory

The case was brought to court more than two years ago by the nonprofit group Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Victor Valladares, a Huntington Beach resident and local Democratic activist.

They argued that the city’s predominantly Latino neighborhood of Oak View had suffered decades of neglect, in part because residents there lacked the voting power to get representation in city government.

The bigger picture

Dozens of cities across Orange County and elsewhere in California have faced similar challenges to at-large elections over the past decade. Most have settled out of court by adopting district elections, whereby voters elect a candidate to represent their area, rather than citywide.

The change has coincided with an increase in Latino city council members in some Orange County cities.

Why ranked-choice voting?

Judge Griffin wrote that ordering the city to adopt ranked-choice voting was a “less drastic remedy” to bolster Latinos’ voting power than district elections. Currently in Huntington Beach, all residents vote citywide for city council seats, and the top vote-getters win.

With district elections, only people within a particular district can vote for a particular seat, which advocates say helps ensure districts see themselves represented in their local government bodies.

Among the advantages of a ranked-choice system, advocates say, is that it gives voters more freedom to vote for their favorite candidate, even if they think that person won’t ultimately win.

What does the ruling say, exactly?

The ruling orders Huntington Beach to implement ranked-choice voting for the November 2026 general election, if the Orange County Registrar of Voters can support the quick switch. The ruling also calls for the city to elect all seven councilmembers at once, rather than staggering the elections, as it currently does per the city’s charter.

Judge Griffin had delayed his ruling earlier this year to consider the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which ruled that race cannot play a role in the drawing of voting districts. Griffin ultimately determined that “nothing in Callais alters this Court’s decision” in the Huntington Beach case.

What’s next?

Both sides have two weeks to raise objections to the tentative ruling. Kevin Shenkman, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he would not be surprised if the city appeals. City Attorney Mike Vigliotta told LAist in an email that his office is “reviewing the decision with outside counsel that litigated the case and determining next steps.”

We reached out to the Orange County Registrar of Voters for comment, and did not hear back before publication. If and when that changes, we will update this story.

How to attend Huntington Beach City Council meetings

• Huntington Beach holds City Council meetings on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 2000 Main St.
• You can also watch City Council meetings remotely on HBTV via Channel 3 or online, or via the city’s website. (You can also find videos of previous council meetings there.)
• The public comment period happens toward the beginning of meetings.
• The city generally posts agendas for City Council meetings on the previous Friday. You can find the agenda on the city’s calendar or sign up there to have agendas sent to your inbox.

LAist staff writer Sammy Marvin also contributed to this report.

A judge has ruled that a Metro bus project in a congested area of Los Angeles can go forward, for now, without incorporating bike lanes that street safety advocates argue are required by city law.

The $400 million project will add dedicated bus lanes along a more than 12-mile-long stretch of Vermont Avenue between 120th Street and Sunset Boulevard. The stretch of road has among the highest rates of pedestrian deaths and injuries in the city.

The ruling from June 15 is a preliminary decision on an injunction request that’s part of a lawsuit brought by Joe Linton, who argues that L.A.’s role in the design and permitting process of the project triggers Measure HLA street safety improvements. The L.A. City Attorney and Metro have rejected that interpretation of the law.

Linton filed the lawsuit in April 2025. He is the editor of the transportation publication Streetsblog LA. Linton is filing the suit as a resident of L.A., not in his capacity as an editor for Streetsblog.

What is Measure HLA?

In 2015, the L.A. City Council adopted Mobility Plan 2035, which identified networks of streets to improve with protected bike lanes, pedestrian signal improvements, bus lanes and other enhancements.

Seven years later, frustrated with a lack of progress on the plan, the local nonprofit Streets for All began campaigning for Measure HLA. The ballot measure, which was passed by voters in 2024, legally requires the city to implement Mobility Plan upgrades when it repaves at least one-eighth of a mile of a street located in one of the networks.

What are the key issues at stake in the lawsuit? 

There’s been a longstanding disagreement over whether Measure HLA applies to Metro’s work in city projects. Metro and the city of L.A. say the ordinance only applies to projects the city leads. Streets for All and Linton say the question of who leads a project is a technicality and that the city is obligated to follow Measure HLA because it’s responsible for approving certain elements of the project’s designs and permits.

The Mobility Plan calls for bike lanes along the same stretch of Vermont Avenue that Metro is working on.

Linton’s lawsuit says the city didn’t implement the bike lanes in accordance with Measure HLA when it resurfaced Vermont Avenue service roads in the past and that it should implement the improvements as part of the Vermont Transit Corridor project.

What are the details of the injunction? 

As the lawsuit plays out in court, Linton requested an injunction that sought to prevent the city from approving final design plans for the project without the bike lanes that Measure HLA calls for.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Kristin Escalante denied the request on June 15. Escalante wrote in her decision that the city neither initiated the project nor selected Vermont Avenue for resurfacing and won’t be constructing the project itself.

“Metro’s coordination with the city does not transform the project into one made by or undertaken by the city,” Escalante wrote in her decision.

In April and June, Escalante denied Linton’s requests for pre-trial judgement on two other issues in his lawsuit, including deciding if resurfacing work on Vermont Avenue service roads triggered HLA-mandated upgrades and determining whether the city’s HLA ordinance represents an “impermissible amendment” of the ordinance.

What happens next?

The ruling is a preliminary decision. Linton said his legal team is preparing for the case to go to trial.

 “We didn’t lose at the end of the day,” Linton told LAist. “It’s a setback, but it’s a skirmish and not the outcome of the battle.”

Metro said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

LAist reached out to the L.A. City Attorney and did not hear back.

Are other legal battles taking place? 

Yes, there are two additional ongoing lawsuits that are related.

Linton filed a second lawsuit saying L.A. is using loopholes, like “large asphalt repairs,” to skirt Measure HLA requirements.

Separate from Measure HLA, Metro is working on another bus rapid transit project to connect North Hollywood and Pasadena with construction set to begin this summer. Metro filed a lawsuit in May saying Burbank is, without authority, refusing to grant the transit agency construction permits. On June 18, Metro filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to get the necessary permits so it can begin construction in July and ensure the bus project is ready for the 2028 Olympics.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

A series of Fourth of July events scheduled across Council District 14 have been postponed due to the ongoing impact of a massive warehouse fire in Boyle Heights that blanketed surrounding neighborhoods in smoke for days. 

The fire at the 500,000-square-foot Lineage cold storage facility was knocked down Wednesday evening, but many residents say they are still feeling the effects of the smoke and have questions about the short- and long-term impacts of exposure, as well as what exactly they have been breathing. 

Jurado announced Thursday that out of an abundance of caution, the four Fourth of July events that were scheduled to take place from Friday to Sunday at various parks across her district have been postponed to allow the community and her office to focus on “recovery, connecting residents with resources and getting people the answers they deserve.” The free events were set to include live entertainment, community resources booths and a drone show. 

The postponed events include:

• Friday at Eagle Rock Recreation Center
• Saturday at El Sereno Recreation Center
• Sunday at Hollenbeck Recreation Center
• Sunday at Lincoln Park Recreation Center

“While air quality regulators have not ordered the cancelation of outdoor events, the fire response remains active, residents are still seeking clear information and support, and many families in the impacted area continue to have concerns about smoke, ash, odors, and possible exposure,” Jurado said. 

In the wake of the fire, Jurado has been asking agencies and the companies responsible for transparency. On Monday, the councilmember introduced a motion calling for the public release of air quality and environmental testing information in a way residents can actually understand.

While no independent testing has been commissioned by her office, Jurado told Boyle Heights Beat that the motion, “is intended to bring that information into the open so residents can get clear answers instead of rumors, speculation, or incomplete information.”

According to CD14, the rescheduled event dates will be shared as soon as they are available.