on the sideFried rice and chow mein
also: chow mein · the hot case
Kept in a warmer, sold by the scoop, priced under the sandwich.
Cooked rice stir-fried with egg, vegetables and meat, held hot in a steam table beside the donut case — with chow mein next to it in many shops.
The story Cited · kqed-donuts-chinese
Fried rice is a staple of Chinese cooking and of American Chinese menus. In California donut shops it arrives for the same reason egg rolls do: the shop needs a second product at a second hour, and the kitchen can already do it.
Dorothy Chow's family business, B & H Bakery Distributors, supplies these shops; her father, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide, built it, she told KQED, "to help our own people."
Today Inference
A donut shop with a steam table is doing lunch, which is a different business from the one it does at five in the morning.
The particulars
| course | savory |
|---|---|
| region | Southern California, Chinese America |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
Who it runs with
Where we got it
- Fried rice — Wikipedia · link
- Why Donuts + Chinese Food = A Very Californian Combination — Asal Ehsanipour, 2021 · link
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.