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Panda Express
Panda Express opened its first location in 1983 in Glendale, California, founded by Andrew and Peggy Cherng, building on their earlier Panda Inn restaurant to create a fast-casual format specifically designed for shopping mall food courts, an entirely new distribution channel for Chinese-American food at the time. The chain built its menu around American-adapted Chinese dishes rather than regionally authentic Chinese cuisine, with Orange Chicken — developed by chef Andy Kao specifically for the chain in the early 1990s — becoming its single best-selling dish and one of the most recognized Chinese-American fast-food items in the entire country. Panda Express grew into the largest Asian-cuisine restaurant chain in the United States by number of locations, remaining privately held by the Cherng family throughout its growth rather than going public, a genuine rarity for a chain of its scale operating in the highly competitive fast-casual segment. Panda Express's combination of pioneering the mall-food-court Chinese-American fast-food format and its Orange Chicken becoming a genuinely nationally recognized dish in its own right has made it the single most commercially significant Chinese restaurant chain in American history by sheer scale and reach.
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P.F. Chang's
P.F. Chang's China Bistro opened its first location in 1993 in Scottsdale, Arizona, founded by Paul Fleming and chef Philip Chiang, whose surname (spelled "Chang" in the restaurant's name) came from his mother, Cecilia Chiang, a pioneering figure widely credited with introducing authentic regional Chinese cuisine to American diners decades earlier through her own San Francisco restaurant, the Mandarin. The chain positioned itself as a more upscale, sit-down alternative to fast-casual Chinese food, with a menu built around approachable, Americanized versions of Chinese dishes served in a stylized dining room featuring a large horse sculpture, a design element that became one of the chain's most recognized visual signatures. P.F. Chang's lettuce wraps became one of its most specifically popular menu items, a dish the chain has credited with meaningfully shaping broader American restaurant menus, as numerous competing chains across multiple cuisines added their own versions of the dish following its success. P.F. Chang's combination of its direct family lineage to a genuine pioneer of authentic Chinese cuisine in America and its role in popularizing upscale, sit-down Chinese-American dining nationally has made it one of the most commercially significant Chinese restaurant chains in the country.
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