Yat Ko Main

History

Noodles began to be partnered with broth-based soups as early as the 1200s in China, and wheat noodle soups became a standard restaurant offering in Cantonese cuisine by the late 19th century. The basic formula—boiled noodles in a clear broth, seasoned with soy and aromatics, garnished with meat or ham—reflects this foundational Chinese-restaurant template that travelled with Cantonese immigration networks across the Pacific.

Some sources, including the late New Orleans chef Leah Chase, have claimed that yaka mein originated in New Orleans's now extinct Chinatown that was established by Chinese immigrants brought from California during the mid-19th century to build the railroads between Houston and New Orleans and work in the sugar plantations of the American South. The plain noodle soup documented in Sara Bosse and Onoto Watanna's *Chinese-Japanese Cook Book* (1914) represents the dish in its spare, pre-Creolization form—a Cantonese staple still served in Chinese restaurants across the early-20th-century United States.

What the 1914 recipe does not show is the later transformation into Yaka Mein proper. "Ya-Ca-Mein" is documented as being on the menu in New Orleans at least since 1945. It was during this period that the Chinese noodle soup adapted to local Creole and Chinese clientele. The evolution from "Yat Ko Main" to "Yaka Mein" — the beef-and-Creole-seasoned bowl associated with New Orleans second-line parades — marks the dish's creolization within African American foodways. In south Louisiana it is an African American dish built on an Asian soup, and it has been carried by African American cooks, food trucks and restaurants rather than by Cajun kitchens, with which it has no connection.

Ingredients

• 1 quart soup stock
• 1/4 pound noodles
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 pound ham
• 1 tablespoon syou
• 1 small onion
• 1 stalk celery
• pepper

Instructions

1. Boil the noodles until tender, about ten minutes.
2. Remove noodles from hot water and place in cold water to soak while preparing the soup.
3. To one quart of good soup stock, add the chopped onion and chopped celery, pepper and salt, and one tablespoonful of syou.
4. Boil ten minutes.
5. Remove noodles from the cold water and add them to the soup.
6. Boil for five minutes more.
7. Shred the ham.
8. Just before serving, sprinkle the ham on top.