who created orange chicken

Orange chicken is widely credited as the creation of chef Andy Kao, who developed it for the Panda Express chain in 1987, reportedly while working on a new dish for a Hawaii location.

Quick Scoop

• Orange chicken is not a traditional Chinese dish; it was created in the United States for American-Chinese fast food.

• Chef Andy Kao, a Taiwan-born, French-trained chef, is most often named as the inventor, working as an executive chef for Panda Express.

• The dish draws inspiration from tangerine or citrus-peel chicken from Hunan cuisine but adapts it with boneless, battered, deep-fried chicken and a sweeter sauce.

How It Came About

• In the late 1980s, Panda Express wanted a new, crowd-pleasing dish for its expanding mall and Hawaii locations, leading Kao to experiment with a sweet, tangy, crispy chicken recipe.

• Kao is said to have combined ideas from traditional citrus-flavored dishes with American-style fried chicken nuggets, then coated them in a sticky orange-flavored sauce.

Why Panda Express Gets The Credit

• Panda Express itself publicly credits Andy Kao with inventing orange chicken in 1987 and has celebrated anniversaries of the dish as part of its brand story.

• Food writers and documentaries on American-Chinese cuisine generally accept this origin story, though forum discussions sometimes mention earlier, similar “orange” or citrus chicken dishes in other restaurants.

American-Chinese Icon

• Today, orange chicken is one of the most popular American-Chinese dishes, often seen as a symbol of highly Americanized Chinese food.

• Its continued fame has even led to a “National Orange Chicken Day” and frequent coverage in food media and social videos that revisit its 1980s mall-food-court roots.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.