Takeout containers—especially for pizza, Chinese food, and sushi—have an iconic art and style. Granted, it’s not always the most elegant or politically correct, but some of these designs are now instantly recognizable. So, today, we investigate the origins of the smiling chef of pizza-box fame, the ubiquitous red pagoda of American-Chinese takeout, and the surprising elegance of plastic sushi trays.
The Winking Chef
Several years ago, I interviewed Scott Weiner, the owner of the world’s largest pizza-box collection. His boxes, which are brand new and grease-free, range from Domino’s boxes shaped like R2-D2 to fancy pizza places’ stern white boxes embellished only with minimalist black text.
My favorite pizza-box motif, though, is the Winking Chef. This piece of clip art has graced millions of pizza boxes over the years: a jolly-looking man in a high chef’s hat, winking, with his hand raised in an “a-ok” gesture. You’ve likely seen a similar man printed on take-out menus, or as a statuette outside restaurants holding a list of specials.
But who first set pen to paper and drew this self-satisfied cook? Weiner dove into researching his origins, noting along the way that the chef, though instantly recognizable, is often modified—sometimes winking, other times only knowingly raising an eyebrow.
One day, Weiner stumbled upon the Holy Grail: a pizza box printed with a signed illustration. The chef on this box wasn’t winking, and he held a slice of pizza rather than making any kind of gesture. It was the work of American cartoonist Gill Fox, who in his 20th-century heyday was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
In Fox’s 2004 obituary, the New York Times claimed that “the betoqued chef, winking and making an A-O.K” sign was his work, even though the signed illustration Weiner found featured neither winking nor the gesture. The standard clip-art chef seems much more crudely drawn than Fox’s work, though the chef’s hat, kerchief, and mustache are suspiciously similar.
Fox is said to have drawn the chef in the early 1950s, copying the style of a co-worker and selling it to a clip-art service as a joke. Perhaps the chef underwent plastic surgery by pen over the years, tweaked by other artists. Today, said chef is an implicit promise—from pizza place to customer—that good food awaits inside the box.
The Porcelain Pagoda
The Chinese takeout box is a marvel of engineering. Descended from 19th-century oyster pails, the folded, waxed-paperboard design was patented by Frederick Weeks Wilcox in 1894, and has changed very little since.
For most of the 1900s, the little box was plain and white. That changed in the 1970s.
According to The New York Times, a designer at what is now Fold-Pak decided to add a red line drawing of a pagoda onto the side. The take-out container manufacturer also added the words “Thank You” and “Enjoy,” in what is now derisively known as “wonton” font, letters used in 20th-century American marketing that mimicked the strokes of Chinese calligraphy.