Reddit mentions of Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants

Lord, the assumptions/priviledge that is in your post/responses...

The cuisine you're describing isn't an "old food fad" or "old food phenomenon." It's a multi-generation adaptation of a people's (the immigrant Chinese) cuisine in response to the to conditions, available ingredients, and demands of the people around them; in North America. To say that it isn't authentic, or calling it "fake crap," is condescending (and shows a lack of understanding) to the thousands of Chinese immigrants who have lived/worked/adapted/died in the U.S. and Canada for the past 200 hundred years. To think that this cuisine doesn't exist anymore (outside of of old menus) shows how sheltered/closed off you truly are. It is no greater/worse, nor is it less "authentic," than all the [regional] Chinese cuisine from China/Taiwan. It is a food style unto it's own; with it's own influences, responses, techniques and made by people who [usually] identify as Chinese.

If you want to try and know what you're talk about:

Books:

Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States by Andrew Coe

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee

Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants by John Jung

Wu: Globalization of Chinese Food by David Y.H. Wu and Sidney C.H. Cheung

China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West by J.A.G. Roberts

Ethnic Regional Foodways United States: Performance Of Group Identity by Linda Keller Brown

The Chinese Takeout Cookbook: Quick and Easy Dishes to Prepare at Home by Diana Kuan

American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods by Bonnie Tsui

Documentary:

Chinese Restaurants directed by Cheuk Kwan (IMDB Overview)