New Yorkers always think they know the real thing when it comes to Chinese food. Forty years ago it was egg rolls, chop suey and drinks with paper umbrellas. Then it was General Tso's chicken and sesame noodles.

But over the past decade, as large communities of people from India, Peru, Korea, Trinidad and Guyana have formed here, New York has had to expand its ideas about what Chinese food can be.

Dishes like chili-spiked, deep-fried chicken lollipops [(recipe)], which are a Chinese-Indian specialty, and lo mein topped with chunks of peppery jerk chicken, served at De Bamboo Express, a Chinese-West Indian restaurant in Brooklyn, are what Chinese food is now to thousands of New Yorkers.

Although we are lowly Torontonians and not classy New Yorkers, a friend and I have been inspired by the article: tomorrow we fuse Jamaica to Mexico (well, Texas really) and will be making jerk chicken tacos.