The opening scene of The Search for General Tso speaks volumes. In a Chinese strip-mall restaurant called Jade Palace (its name spelled out in an exotic “chopstick” font), next to a Cartridge World and Massage Envy, a menu stylist races around the kitchen demanding “very red peppers” and “the prettiest broccoli.” Wok-fried chicken in a sticky-sweet sauce is carefully arranged inside a ring of broccoli on a plate, then brushed with oil to make it glisten before a photo is snapped. This is the photo of the ubiquitous General Tso’s (or Tsao’s or Gao’s or Gau’s, depending on the menu that happens to be in front of you) Chicken that appears on menus across the United States. The location of the strip mall is unidentified because it could be anywhere.

There are now more Chinese restaurants in the United States than there are McDonald’s, Burger Kings, and KFCs combined. Like the photo shoot, the cheap and filling General Tso’s Chicken that Americans consume every day is an elaborate construct. Behind the dish is a story of Chinese immigration, adaptation, and ingenuity. It’s this story that director Ian Cheney (King Corn) tells, first by tracing the ubiquity of Chinese restaurants to the American diaspora forced by the racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 as well as current patterns of migration.

Cheney travels to China to learn about General Tso, a hero of Hunan province, seeking any connection between him and his eponymous dish. Some of the best scenes are when filmmakers show pictures of General Tso’s Chicken to random people on the streets of China. Quizzical looks are often followed by maniacal laughter. In the words of chef Peng Yuan, who created the dish (which in no way resembles the cloyingly sweet General Tso’s Chicken we now know) in Taipei as a homesick homage to the fiery, sour flavors of the home province he had to flee during Mao’s revolution, “This is all crazy nonsense.”

Searching for General Tso conveniently makes for a good story (and Cheney crafts an entertaining documentary filled with great characters from eccentric menu collectors to Chinese-restaurant-obsessed accountants to the owners of the P.F. Chang's restaurant chain), but what lingers most are the ironies the film brings to light. Most notable: General Tso, a man who now sits down to lunch with thousands of working Americans each day for the price of $5.99, was a ruthless military leader who quashed peasant revolutions and whose life’s work was to keep Western colonizers and their influence out of his beloved China.