Critic Reviews

It’s noted that General Tso himself was a guardian of Chinese tradition and would himself shudder at what the dish named for him has become. On the other hand, what does “authenticity” even mean when it comes to cuisine that has assimilated into another culture along with the people who make it? The best food — the kind we want again and again — always tastes like home. Wherever that is.

Eventually, the quixotic “search” of the movie’s title seems secondary to that more arduous quest of so many Chinese-Americans to find their place in a country that did not always welcome them with open arms, and how food forged the path of least resistance.

In tracing the origins of this restaurant staple, Ian Cheney's The Search for General Tso is as much an immigration history as a culinary one, observing how a people who were demonized as low-wage laborers found entrepreneurial success in small and large towns across the country.

You may well emerge from The Search for General Tso with a hankering for the titular spicy dish.

A fascinating, funny and informative documentary.

Like any well-researched piece worth its weight in MSG, the documentary uses food as an angle to something else: a look at immigration and at a melting pot stirred by prejudice and persecution, later seasoned with adaptation, innovation and acceptance.

Director Ian Cheney doesn't delve too deeply into the possibly unsettling questions the documentary raises about society at large.

Most of The Search for General Tso is a breezy survey of the history of Chinese-American cuisine.

Mr. Cheney’s movie, while teasing at times, does its celebrating and debunking in mild-mannered fashion, making points without seeming to try to score them.