Modern Forage: Springfield, MO
David Leong (1920-2020), a Cantonese immigrant and WWII D-Day veteran, created Springfield-style cashew chicken in 1963 by hybridizing Chinese-American technique with Ozarks fried-chicken sensibility. He shared the recipe freely; by the 1970s hundreds of local restaurants served their own version. The same Leong, while in Chicago postwar, also helped propagate the peanut-butter-in-Cantonese-egg-roll convention that became the Chicago default style.
Springfield is the canonical home of David Leong’s Springfield-style cashew chicken, a 1963 hybrid that turned standard Cantonese stir-fry into a deep-fried gravy-smothered chicken-fried-steak adaptation suited to Ozarks tastes. The recipe propagated to 70+ Springfield-area restaurants by the 1970s.
This list is almost certainly incomplete; Springfield and the Ozarks hold further hyper-local dishes that have not yet surfaced in the survey.
A note on the Where-to-eat blocks. Every entry below carries a list of restaurants and, where available, star ratings as of the date this post was published. These are a snapshot. Verify hours and addresses before driving anywhere.
Springfield-Style Cashew Chicken — Springfield, MO
Pattern: Chinese-American Adaptations.
Boneless chicken chunks breaded and deep-fried (like chicken-fried steak), smothered in a brown sauce of soy, oyster sauce, and chicken stock, topped with cashews and chopped green onions, served over white rice. Created in 1963 by David Leong (1920-2020), a Cantonese immigrant and WWII D-Day veteran, at Leong’s Tea House. Leong realized Ozarks locals loved fried chicken and chicken-fried steak but were unfamiliar with Chinese food, so he hybridized them. He freely shared the recipe, and by the 1970s hundreds of local Chinese restaurants served their own version. Today 70+ restaurants in the Springfield metro serve it, including non-Chinese restaurants. Standard “cashew chicken” nationally is a stir-fry. The Springfield version’s deep-fried, gravy-smothered preparation is completely different.
Sources: KCUR / Kansas City NPR (2021/2025, with Ling Leong interview); Fodors (2024); Wikipedia; Feast Magazine (2022, 2023, with Wing Yee Leong interview); Dann Woellert food etymology blog (2016). Five+ independent sources, multiple with named family sources.
Where to eat: The Riksha, 222 Park Central N, Springfield, MO (4.6 stars, 458 reviews; highest-rated). Leong’s Asian Diner, 1540 W Republic Rd (4.3 stars, 1,856 reviews; the Leong family original, essential for history). 70+ restaurants serve it.
More from the series
Browse the rest of the Modern Forage survey.
Research & primary sources
Methodology, validation logs, and the entries that didn’t make this post are in the modern_forage/ on GitHub. Every entry here passed a 2+ independent-source check; the citations under each dish list them.