Cities have long grappled with how to feed their populations, globalization being a key tool for supplying food and enabling city growth beyond ecological limits. Outside the agro-industrial complex, the Chinese diaspora in the United States built an efficient, biodiverse and global food system to satisfy cultural yearnings. At the local level, residents in Chicago’s Chinatown have adapted private and public space to meet food needs in creative ways as a complementary system. These adaptive strategies allow Chinatown to be food rich while also experiencing high rates of poverty. Looking forward, new urban developments should support and sustain these activities as vital elements of urban food systems to complement conventional large scale agriculture. Incorporating multiple strategies to amplify the food system in Chinatown can serve as a model for diverse urban food system strategies at multiple scales.