the original menu

Because of the northern-style flavor favored by House of Chow, we originally served dishes such as Peking Duck, Mu Shu Pork, Kung Bao Shrimp, and Kung Bao Chicken. Along these dishes, we also included popular Cantonese dishes like Mu Gu Gai Pan (Cantonese for “Chicken Mushroom”), Pepper Beef, Egg Foo Young, Chop Suey, and Chicken Almond Ding to cater to the established market tastes.

The biggest contrast with the above-mentioned dishes was the creation of Springfield Missouri Style Cashew Chicken. Even now people wonder, “This is a Chinese Restaurant, so where does ‘Missouri’ fit in?” The original recipe for this dish was given by Liang’s Restaurant in Springfield, Missouri. Master Liang was the creator of Springfield Missouri Style Cashew Chicken over 30 years ago. Springfield is located in the heart of a chicken-farming area, so he created the dish to bridge the local-people’s taste for fried chicken with that for Chinese food. He was quite successful. Since Columbia is a college town, Master Liang thought the people here would also be very accepting of it. They were and, to this day, still are.