Sweet and tart, hints of citrus bickering with pods of chile, the crackle as a breaded crust gives way to cushy white meat.

There’s a reason General Tso’s Chicken is often rated as the most popular dish at Chinese restaurants. Far too often, however, what restaurants serve is a pale rendition – the fried shell sodden from lingering too long in sauce, the sauce cloying or flat or just the same stuff tossed with their orange chicken, the restless spice missing. Some even deny poor Tso Tsung-t’ang the privilege and just call it General Chicken.

When done well, General Tso’s Chicken is memorable. When care is taken in the kitchen, even a basic take out version is satisfying. Watching Sky Liu work the woks at New China in Vandalia is a reminder of this. Things go into the wok. They come out, only to be ladled back in. Flames burst over the rim of the pan. Liquid is poured from one wok to the other.

There are several steps, but the busywork creates chunks of chicken with a crisp shell and sauce teetering on a tightrope. Citrus, sugar, an earthy bark and a fine heat – the kind that ginger and garlic bring, with a wisp of grassiness – backed by a subtle but lingering bite try to hold sway, but the rope finds balance.

Thanks to COVID-19, New China is take out only, at least for the moment. General Tso’s Chicken is relegated to a disposable container with a plastic lid. In this steamy environment the crust begins to wilt. It does, however, hold up long enough for you to reach the car.

No matter. New China’s version is indeed satisfying. And the search for a standout plate of General Tso’s Chicken can be more arduous than answering the question at hand.

Yes, there was a General Tso. No, he never got to try his dish. He died in 1885, long before chefs made him world famous.

Whether General Tso’s is Chinese – that’s a no, kinda sorta.

While most well-known dishes have no confirmed point of origin, pinpointing the first General Tso’s Chicken is relatively easy. Kinda.

When the Chinese communists defeated the nationalists, renowned chef Peng Chang-kuei fled his native Hunan Province for Taiwan. Sometime in the 1950s – NPR’s Fuchsia Dunlop tried to pry the exact moment out of him, but the chef couldn’t recall – he played around with some fundamental flavors of the old province and came up with the recipe he named General Tso’s.

“General Tso’s Chicken did not preexist in Hunanese cuisine,” he told Dunlop for a 2007 article. “But originally the flavors of the dish were typically Hunanese – heavy, sour, hot and salty.”

Note the word “originally.” His recipe is not what we now consider classic General Tso’s.

There are a couple versions of what happened next. In the one chef Peng related to NPR, he came to New York in 1973 and opened a restaurant. Henry Kissinger dropped in one night, tried the dish and the rest is history. Another version has two New York chefs traveling independently of one another in the early ’70s to Taiwan to sneak some of Peng’s secrets. Both returned with General Tso’s know how, but one – chef T.T. Wang, who owned 4-star restaurants in the Big Apple – brought sweetness to what was a tangy and spicy combination. He also breaded and fried the chicken.

In the latter version of the tale, chef Peng arrived in America to find his creation both different and exceedingly popular. He fell in line when diners shunned the original General Tso’s.

But that’s not what he told Dunlop.

“The original General Tso’s Chicken was Hunanese in taste and made without sugar,” he said. “But when I began cooking for non-Hunanese people in the United States, I altered the recipe.”

So is the dish Chinese? Sorta. Will an order of General Tso’s from New China make a person happy? Most likely.