NEW YORK -- The chef credited with inventing General Tso's chicken, a world-famous Chinese dish smothered in a sweet sauce that was never a staple in China, has died in Taiwan at 98.
Peng Chang-kuei died of pneumonia last week in Taipei, said his son Chuck Peng. He was still cooking in the family's Taipei restaurant kitchen just a few months ago.
Peng first introduced the sticky, sweet and spicy dish to New York about 40 years ago.
It's now on Chinese restaurant menus across the United States, exploding in popularity after President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972. The dish also reportedly became a favorite of famed statesman Henry Kissinger, who with Nixon helped open China to the West, spotlighting its culture and food.
But General Tso's chicken was never part of the Chinese culinary tradition.
The chef created the dish in the 1950s in Taiwan, where he fled in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek after the communists took over, said Chuck Peng, speaking from his home in Taipei.
In Taiwan, the chef helped welcome the commander of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet in the Pacific with a banquet that included the new culinary creation, named after a 19th-century Chinese military leader from Peng's native Hunan Province.
By the 1970s, Peng was in New York running a restaurant named after himself near the United Nations on Manhattan's East Side. Kissinger was a frequent guest, said Chuck Peng.
"General Tso's chicken is so famous because of Henry Kissinger, because he was among the first to eat it, and he liked it, so others followed," Peng said.
Chuck Peng runs the family's chain of 10 restaurants in Taiwan, all called Peng's.
Metro on 12/04/2016