The Chinese restaurant is a defining feature of Chinatowns around the world and today they are usually associated with tourism and "ethnic restaurant" dining experiences. However, the Chinese restaurant has much older roots and wider purposes than the recent ethnic restaurant phenomenon. In the context of Southeast Asia, and Thailand in this case, the Chinese restaurant served an ostensibly assimilated Chinese migrant community not just in the provision of identity-affirming food, but in functions that were socially, economically, and politically significant. While much Chinese food was integrated into everyday street food, the fine-dining Chinese restaurant represented a deliberate dis-integration of the cuisine to affirm overseas Chinese identity under pressure from Thai assimilationist policies, and provide a meeting place acceptable to members of the Thai elite and Chinese migrant community on Chinese terms. This article examines the living archive of some of Bangkok's oldest surviving Chinese restaurants to reconstruct their history as an overseas Chinese social institution.
