Despite its name, Mongolian chicken has very little connection to Mongolia. The history of the name leads instead to Wu Zhaonan, a comedian who was born in Beijing. During the Chinese Civil War, he fled to Taiwan, where he opened a food stall in Taipei in 1951.
Wu's dish was cooked on a griddle, a flat surface used for cooking. His preferred name for it was “Peking barbecue”, which would have linked the food to his home city. Peking is another name for Beijing. However, Beijing had just been made the capital of Communist China. The name associated with Mongolian chicken therefore has a history involving Beijing and a food stall in Taiwan, rather than a close connection to Mongolia.
