A Banquet for Cecilia: How Cecilia Chiang Revolutionized Chinese Food in America
by Julie Leung; illus. by Melissa Iwai
Primary    Little, Brown    40 pp.
4/25    9780759557413    $18.99

Take a compelling story of an indomitable chef, add heaps of immersive sensory details, stir in a warm palette, then devour this tasty introduction to Cecilia Chiang (1920–2020). Born in an old Beijing palace, young Cecilia loved the kitchen best, with its enticing aromas and iconic clamor of cleavers and sizzling wok oil. Her family enjoyed these delicious meals and savored each unique bite. When the arrival of Japanese troops in China in 1937 caused the family to scatter for safety, Cecilia and her sister fled to the countryside, where Cecilia discovered new cuisines. This education would inform her future, as she moved to Tokyo in 1949 to escape the Chinese civil war and later opened a Chinese restaurant to share flavors of home. After moving to San Francisco, she became determined to change Americans’ perception of Chinese food as “cheap and greasy.” Her second restaurant, the Mandarin, featured a fine-dining, two-hundred-item menu that would “showcase the best flavors from China’s many regions.” Excellent reviews and celebrity clientele brought fame, but what mattered most were sharing the tastes of her childhood and bringing customers joy. Leung’s straightforward and thoughtful prose never glosses over Chiang’s difficult life but lingers instead on the poetry of cooking, which is expertly paired with Iwai’s watercolors that offer heartwarming and mouthwatering details on every spread. An author’s note provides photos of Chiang and additional information in this story steeped in foodways and family.

From the March/April 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.