Possibly popularized, but no, not even in NYC itself – the original cold sesame noodles in NYC were brought by a Szechuan chef who went by the moniker Shorty Tang, who worked at a place simply called Szechuan, owned by David Keh, on the Upper West Side – and it is his recipe that really sort of swept the city in the late 60s (Empire didn’t come into being until 1979). But, though altered to fit local ingredient availability, the dish is a traditional one, ostensibly from Szechuan province, though, as I noted, different regions of China claim it as their own – particularly Hunan and Taiwan.