There are Chinese restaurants in places you would never expect to find them. In fishing villages above the Arctic Circle. In mining towns an hour from the nearest gas station. In communities where the family behind the counter is the only one of their kind within 200 miles — and has been for thirty years.
These restaurants are not curiosities. They are infrastructure. In towns without grocery stores, without diners, sometimes without running water, a Chinese restaurant arrived — opened by a family that saw an empty space and decided to fill it. They stayed. They fed their neighbors. They became part of the place in a way that most communities don't acknowledge until the day the restaurant closes.
General Tso at the Edge is a large-format documentary book about those families. Who they are, how they got there, what they built, and what it cost them. This is not a food book. It is a book about America — the version you find at the margins, where immigration and geography and stubbornness collide.
The book spans restaurants across Alaska, from the Panhandle to the Arctic Coast. Each stop is its own story. Here are four that define the scope.
The oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant in America, run by the same family for over a century. A copper mining town that built an empire and then collapsed — and the restaurant that outlasted all of it.
A Inupiaq hub 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle, reachable only by plane or boat. The family that opened here didn't know the word for "remote." They just saw a town that wanted a hot meal.
The northernmost Chinese restaurant in the United States, 330 miles above the Arctic Circle. When the ocean freezes over, supplies come by plane. The menu adapts. The restaurant endures.
Surrounded by Bristol Bay, one of the richest salmon fisheries on earth. The fishermen who work 20-hour days during the season eat here every night. It is the dining room their season is built around.
200+ pages of documentary photography and first-person oral histories. Designed to sit on a coffee table and get read cover to cover.
Far Counter Press is an independent publisher. No Kickstarter, no crowdfunding. Self-funded and self-distributed — the same way the restaurants in this book were built.
Currently in production. Field research ongoing. Sign up to be notified when pre-orders open and when the book ships.
No noise. Just a note when pre-orders open and when the book ships. Behind-the-scenes updates if we have something worth sharing.
We'll email you when the book is ready to order. That's it.
"The most American story is an immigrant family feeding a small town that isn't sure what to make of them, and staying anyway."