General Tso’s chicken is one of the most popular dishes at Chinese restaurants across the United States, and almost nobody knows where it actually comes from. The origin of General Tso’s chicken is a genuinely interesting story, and the answer to whether it is really Chinese is more complicated than you might expect.
The short version: the dish was almost certainly invented in New York City in the early 1970s, which makes it a Chinese-American creation rather than something you would find in China. As someone who has spent a lot of time eating through New York’s dining scene, I find it fitting that one of the most recognizable dishes in American Chinese food was born here.
The dish itself is battered fried chicken tossed in a sweet, savory, slightly spicy sauce, typically served with steamed broccoli over white rice. It is comfort food by design, built specifically to appeal to American tastes.
If you have ever wondered where General Tso’s chicken comes from, the answer starts in Hunan, runs through Taiwan, and ends in a restaurant on East 44th Street in Manhattan. Here is the full story of how it got here.
The History of General Tso's Chicken: Is It Really Chinese?
Despite appearing on the menu of nearly every Chinese restaurant in the United States, General Tso’s chicken is not something you would find in China. It is a Chinese-American dish, created by a Chinese chef for an American audience, and the story of how it got there is worth knowing.
Chef Peng Chang-kuei was born and trained in the Hunan province of China. He fled to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War and continued working as a chef there. At some point in Taiwan he created an early version of the dish, cooking chunks of fried chicken for a visiting American military general. In a 2007 New York Times interview, he described that original version as typically Hunanese in character: heavy, sour, hot, and salty. Not the sweet sticky sauce most Americans know today.
In 1973 Chef Peng moved to New York City and opened Peng’s Restaurant on East 44th Street in Manhattan. It was here that he reworked the dish significantly, making it sweeter and milder to suit the American palate, and named it General Tso’s Chicken. The version he served in New York is the direct ancestor of every General Tso’s chicken on every Chinese takeout menu in the country.
So is it Chinese? The chef was Chinese, the cooking techniques are rooted in Chinese cuisine, and the dish is named after a real Chinese military figure. But the version Americans eat today was invented in New York City, adapted specifically for non-Chinese diners, and is virtually unknown in China itself.
Most food historians consider the General Tso chicken origin to be American Chinese food rather than authentically Chinese. This matters when people talk about whether the dish is ‘authentically Chinese.’ So, in that sense General Tso’s chicken is American as much as it is Chinese, a dish that could only have been created by someone navigating two culinary cultures at once.
Who Was General Tso?
General Tso’s chicken is named after a real person, which surprises a lot of people. Zuo Zongtang was a Chinese statesman and military commander during the late Qing dynasty, born in 1812 in Hunan province, the same region Chef Peng came from.
He rose to prominence during the Taiping Rebellion, one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, which began in 1850 as a civil war between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and Han Chinese rebels. Zuo was given command of Hunan government forces and eventually led 5,000 troops that drove the rebels out of the province. His military success continued over the following decades. He helped end the Taiping Rebellion entirely, suppressed later uprisings across China, and led campaigns against Russian expansion along China’s western border.
By the time of his death in 1885 he was one of the most powerful military figures in Chinese history and a celebrated hero in Hunan. He had no connection whatsoever to fried chicken.
Chef Peng chose to name the dish after Zuo Zongtang as a tribute to this Hunanese hero, a way of honoring the region’s most famous son. The name gave the dish a sense of authority and history, even if General Tso himself never tasted anything close to what now bears his name.
Understanding the general tso chicken origin requires knowing who this man was and why Chef Peng chose to honor him.
How Do You Pronounce General Tso?
This is one of the most commonly searched questions about the dish, and for good reason. The name looks nothing like it sounds.
General Tso is pronounced “General Zoh” or sometimes written as “Tsao” to help with the phonetics. The ‘Ts’ sound is closer to a soft ‘dz’ than a hard ‘T,’ followed by a short “oh” sound. Say it quickly and it comes out as one short syllable: “Zoh.”
The full name, Zuo Zongtang, is pronounced “Zwoh Dzohng-tahng” in Mandarin. Most Americans simplify this significantly, and the anglicized “General Tso” has been the standard for so long that even many Chinese restaurants in the US use the simplified pronunciation.
You may also see the dish listed as General Tsao’s, General Tao’s, General Cho’s, or General Tang’s on different menus. These are simply different English spellings of the same Chinese name, each reflecting a different attempt to transliterate the original Chinese into something English speakers could pronounce. They all refer to the same dish.
What Does General Tso's Chicken Taste Like?
General Tso’s chicken is designed to hit several flavor notes at once, which is a big part of why it became so popular with American diners.
The chicken is battered and deep fried, giving it a crispy exterior that holds up reasonably well against the sauce. The sauce itself is the defining element: sweet, savory, and lightly spicy, built from soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, and dried red chili peppers. The heat level is mild by most standards, more of a background warmth than actual spice, which makes it accessible to people who do not typically seek out spicy food.
The overall flavor profile is closer to sweet than anything else, which is a significant departure from the original Hunanese version Chef Peng described as heavy, sour, hot, and salty. That evolution was intentional. The sweetness is what made the dish work for American palates and what turned it into one of the most ordered items in Chinese-American restaurants.
It is typically served with steamed broccoli over white rice, which helps cut through the richness. If you have never tried it and are wondering where to start, most Chinese-American takeout restaurants carry it and the quality is fairly consistent across the board.
General Tso's Chicken vs Sesame Chicken vs Orange Chicken
These three dishes appear on nearly every Chinese-American takeout menu and and people constantly mix them up. They are all built on the same foundation: battered, deep-fried chicken pieces coated in a sweet sauce and served over rice. But each has a distinct flavor profile worth knowing.
General Tso’s chicken is the most savory and complex of the three. The sauce is sweet but balanced with umami, garlic, ginger, and dried red chili peppers that give it a mild but noticeable heat. It is darker in color than the other two and has a slightly sticky, caramelized quality.
Sesame chicken is the sweetest and mildest of the three. The sauce is lighter, less spicy, and finished with toasted sesame seeds that add a subtle nuttiness. If you want something in the General Tso’s family but without any heat at all, sesame chicken is the closest alternative.
Orange chicken gets its defining character from citrus, either orange juice, zest, or dried orange peel worked into the sauce. It is sweeter and brighter than General Tso’s, with a tangy citrus quality that makes it immediately distinct. Panda Express helped make orange chicken mainstream in the US, where it remains their signature dish.
All three are Chinese-American rather than authentically Chinese, and all three were developed or significantly adapted for the American market. If you are new to any of them, General Tso’s is the most flavorful starting point. Sesame chicken is the safest bet for anyone who avoids spice. Orange chicken sits somewhere in between, with its citrus sweetness making it the most distinctive of the three.
The Shun Lee Palace Competing Claim
Peng’s Restaurant is not the only New York City restaurant to claim credit for General Tso’s chicken. Shun Lee Palace, which has been on East 55th Street since 1971 and remains one of the oldest Chinese restaurants in the city, asserts that its executive chef T.T. Wang created the dish independently, also in 1973.
The claim is based on the premise that Wang had visited Chef Peng’s restaurant in Taipei before moving to New York, and that he brought back recipes and ideas inspired by what he tasted there. Whether that makes Wang a co-creator or simply someone who adapted Peng’s idea for his own menu is a matter of interpretation, and the debate has never been fully resolved.
What is not in dispute is T.T. Wang’s broader significance to Chinese cuisine in New York. When he died in 1983 at the age of 55, the New York Times described him as an influential master of the Chinese kitchen who introduced many New Yorkers to dishes they had never encountered before. Whatever the true origin of General Tso’s chicken, Wang played a genuine role in bringing Chinese-American cuisine to a wider audience in the city.
The honest answer is that both restaurants were serving versions of the dish around the same time, in the same city, drawing on the same Hunanese culinary tradition. Chef Peng’s claim is generally considered the stronger of the two since his connection to the dish predates his arrival in New York, but Shun Lee Palace’s role in popularizing it is real regardless of who gets the credit.
The Search for General Tso Documentary
If you want to go deeper on everything covered in this post, the best place to start is a documentary called “The Search for General Tso,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014.
The film follows food writer Jennifer 8. Lee as she investigates the origins of General Tso’s chicken and uses it as a lens to explore the broader history of Chinese immigration to the United States. It covers the General Tso chicken origin story in full, including Chef Peng’s account and the competing claims about who invented the dish, and the fascinating question of how Chinese-American cuisine developed into something almost entirely distinct from food you would find in China.
The documentary is worth watching not just for the General Tso’s story but for what it reveals about how immigrant communities adapt their food traditions to survive and thrive in a new country. One of the more interesting points the film explores is that dishes like General Tso’s chicken, though not authentically Chinese, represent a genuine cultural achievement. Creating food that appealed to non-Chinese diners allowed Chinese immigrants to build businesses, overcome discrimination, and establish themselves in communities across the country.
“The Search for General Tso” is available on Amazon Prime and is It is probably the best documentary if you want to go deeper into the history of Chinese-American food. It holds a strong rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was well received at Tribeca.
If You Want to Make General Tso's Chicken at Home
If learning the history made you want to try cooking it yourself, the dish is more approachable to make at home than most people expect. Cubed chicken is coated in a batter of egg and cornstarch, fried until crispy, then tossed in a sauce of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, and dried red chili peppers. Serve it over white rice with steamed broccoli and it comes close to takeout-style General Tso’s chicken.
For a recipe worth following, madewithlau.com has one that comes with a video of Lau’s father walking through the cooking process. What makes it worth clicking through is the discussion that follows: Lau argues that even though General Tso’s chicken is rarely found in China, it is still authentically Chinese-American, because creating food that appealed to non-Chinese diners was how Chinese immigrants built businesses and adapted to life in the United States. It is a good companion piece to everything covered in this post.
More From Around NYC
General Tso’s chicken is one of the more interesting origin stories in American food, and the fact that it was born in New York City makes it a fitting piece of the city’s broader food history. New York has always been the place where immigrant cuisines get adapted, refined, and eventually adopted by everyone else.
If the NYC food angle interests you, I cover the city’s dining scene extensively on this site. For Chinese food specifically, Chi on 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen is one of the better serious Chinese restaurants in Midtown, with a Szechuan-focused menu that gives you a sense of what regional Chinese cooking actually looks like. You can find it in my guide to the Best Restaurants in Hell’s Kitchen.
For a broader look at where to eat in that part of the city, the Best Restaurants in Times Square guide covers the Midtown area including a few spots that have their own interesting histories, including Gallagher’s Steakhouse which has been feeding New Yorkers since 1927.
