During the first two days Sidedoor Bagel in Indianpolis sold its Mr. Krabs Rangoon special — crab-flecked cream cheese and a fried egg inside a spicy everything bagel studded with Sichuan pepper flakes, sweet chile sauce and wonton strips — there were more than 100 orders, making it the shop’s most popular special to date.
“The creamy, sweet and spicy components make it so loved by everyone,” said Josh Greeson, the owner of Sidedoor Bagel, who grew up eating crab Rangoon from the Chinese American restaurant in his rural Indiana hometown. “It translates well to experimenting with different cuisines.”
The crab Rangoon is neither from Rangoon (present-day Yangon, Myanmar) nor reliably made with real crab. Imitation crab, also known as surimi, and cream cheese are tucked into wonton wrappers — perhaps the dish’s only Chinese component — and deep-fried. That it first appeared on menus in California in the late 1940s at the vaguely Polynesian-influenced Trader Vic’s chain only muddies the waters. But those details are mere trivialities to the chefs who have turned their love for Rangoons into mozzarella sticks, pasta, melts and more.
“It sounds like someone drunk on mai tais made it,” said Grace Lin, the author of “Chinese Menu: The History, Myths and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods.” She explained that many Chinese restaurateurs looked to American tastes to come up with appetizers, which are uncustomary in Chinese cooking except at banquets. “Since crab Rangoon was popular and already considered Asian, they seized the opportunity and claimed it as their own in order to survive.”
In Des Moines, King Ying Low, the oldest Chinese restaurant in Iowa, closed in 2008 and reopened the following year as Fong’s Pizza, which serves Asian-inflected pizzas inspired by dishes like General Tso’s chicken and banh mi sandwiches.
But Fong’s kept the Rangoon on the menu, albeit in the form of a pizza made with a cream cheese base, imitation crab, mozzarella and Asiago cheeses and crushed wonton strips. It’s the restaurant’s “most popular pizza by four or five times,” said Chris Mendenhall, a managing partner.
In New York, Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi turns the finger food into a vessel for oxtail. Kamat Newman, 32, the chef de cuisine, said leftover tips from a braised oxtail dish were initially intended to be a part of the staff’s family meal before Mr. Onwuachi suggested a play on the Rangoon.
The braised tips, crab meat and a pimento cheese mixture is stuffed into wonton wrappers, deep-fried and served with Peking duck-inspired jus. “Chinese takeout is a primary source of comfort food, so when people read ‘oxtail & crab rangoon,’ there’s an instant notion of familiarity and excitement,” Ms. Newman said.
In 2023, Marc Rose, 50, and Med Abrous, 46, the owners of the 42-year-old Los Angeles mainstay Genghis Cohen, added candy-wrapper-shaped crab Rangoon to the menu, now a top seller. The filling includes crab meat and fried shallots, and the wontons are wrapped like caramelle pasta.
For Dan Jacobs, 47, the chef and co-founder of DanDan in Milwaukee, eating cold leftover crab Rangoon from the refrigerator instantly evokes nostalgia. His take on the dish packs red snow crab and cream cheese into wonton wrappers and is “something that’ll never come off” the menu.
The crab Rangoon dip at Sweet & Savory in Brooklyn is speckled with Caribbean spices, while the “Not Crab Rangoon” at Yawning Cobra in Manhattan replaces the cream cheese with tofu. FieldTrip’s “crab pockets” encase blue crab and herbed Boursin cheese. In Chicago, the Duck Inn offers a rich, pentagon-shaped lobster Rangoon.
Sweet-savory renditions abound, too. Praveena “Jing” Viratchanaporn had never heard of crab Rangoon in her home country of Thailand. But when she opened Sonrisa, her Seattle bomboloni pop-up, she developed a crab Rangoon brioche doughnut, noting the dish’s popularity in Thai American restaurants. The doughnut envelops a Dungeness crab and scallion cream cheese filling spiked with a Thai-style sweet-and-sour sauce, and is crowned with a wonton chip.
At Rose Ave Bakery in Washington, D.C., you can order a crab Rangoon kouign-amann, featuring a surimi-and-cream-cheese center punctuated with sesame oil and fish sauce.
The crab Rangoon’s staying power is all about bare-bones pleasure — cheesy, crispy and a touch sweet. It’s a reminder that even well-worn pleasures, with new context, can surprise.
“Even bad crab Rangoon is better than no crab Rangoon at all,” Mr. Jacobs of DanDan said.
