David R. Chan

David R. Chan is a retired tax attorney and accountant who lives in Los Angeles, California. David's grandfather migrated to California in 1880, and as a third generation Chinese American, he ate very little Chinese food while growing up. However once he started working and traveling the United States he developed a hobby of trying the local Chinese cuisine as part of his travel experience, which led to the goal of eating at as many Chinese restaurants as he could. Because of his training as an accountant, he logged his restaurant visits on a computer spreadsheet. David ate in anonymity for decades, but in 2012 food writer Clarissa Wei heard about his Excel schedule listing the over 6,000 Chinese restaurants he had eaten at (the current count is 7,550), and wrote a feature article which was quickly picked up by Huffington Post, People.com and hundreds of websites around the world. Since David had previously written a number of articles on the history of Chinese residents in the United States, and over years of travel had become familiar with Chinese communities all over the country, he began writing articles tying Chinese food in the United States to the history and demographics of Chinese Americans. David has written over a hundred articles on these subjects, and is also a frequent speaker and interviewee on Chinese American food topics, appearing in the feature Chinese food documentary, The Search For General Tso.