A Chinatown Institution on Opening Day

Since the day, back in March 2010, when I posted a series of ripe, flavorful photos from a curious 1978 New York souvenir book, readers have never stopped writing to me about them, commenting on and asking questions about them. I have even been contacted by a couple television producers inquiring how to obtain rights to the photographs.

Recently, I paged through the volume again (which was published in London) and stopped at the photo above. I hadn't realized what I was looking at when I first set eyes on the picture. This is actually an image of a newly born Big Wong Restaurant. Today, the Cantonese Big Wong is a Mott Street mainstay and Chinatown institution. But here we see it as the new kid on the block, with plastic flags and red-white-and-blue banners and everything. The place doesn't even have a permanent sign yet.

The now-gone restaurant to the left of Big Wong, Mon Sing, was well-regarded in its day. It, too, served Cantonese food. It was owned by Robert Tsang. Noted composer and arranger Hershey Kay loved the place and used to hold dinner parties there. New York magazine described it as a "good, cheap lo mein parlor that also serves won ton soup and spare ribs."

Another odd historical fact: the building Mon Sing was in, 65 Mott Street, was the first building in New York specifically constructed as a tenement. It was erected in 1824. It is still a residential building.

Tile Lives on Forever

This Chinatown door is interesting enough on its own. I mean, look at the crazy amount of detail. The carved doors, the cast iron decorative pillars, the uniquely shaped windows. It's freaking art, this doorway.

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Mystery Sign on Canal Street

I stopped in the middle of the street and stared at this rusted facade on Canal Street for about 20 minutes the other day. With its new signage torn off, I thought I glimpsed the shadows of an older painted sign among the wreckage. If I only stared long enough, I thought, I would figure it out, like one of those optical puzzles in which a word is spelled out in slightly different colored dots.  

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How Old Is That Product in the Window?

Here's a curious little shop on Bayard Street in Chinatown. A Thai and Indonesian grocery—how interesting. Let's take a closer look.

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On the Trail of Carlo Bacigalupo

It's adventures like the following that make running this blog occasionally rewarding. I was wandering aimlessly around the border of Chinatown and Little Italy when I decided to give a good look-see at the Most Precious Blood Church on Baxter near Canal, a gaudy Roman Catholic edifice I'd never given much thought. It's official address is 109 Mulberry (and most people enter that way, too), but the church faces onto Baxter. Inside, a half dozen ancient Italian woman were saying Mass. The place was renovated in the mid-90s is a particularly garish, vulgar manner, so the architecture and interior design isn't much to look at.

Outside, on either side of the entrance, I noticed two sculpted depictions of events from the life of Christ. Under each were the words "Charles Bacigalupo. Sexton Undertaker. 26 1/2 Mulberry St.—208-210 Spring St."

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Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Big Wong?"

My latest "Who Goes There?" column took me to Chinatown to one of the great cheap-good-eats joints in the City, Big Wong. No lack of business there.

Who Goes There? Big Wong

People walk into Big Wong King holding up fingers, showing how many they are. The maitre d'—if such a high title can be used in this circumstance—then leads them into one of the two big, bare-bones rooms, which are separated by a large circular cut in the wall. "Four—THERE!" he barks, pointing at one communal table. "Two—THERE!" You're almost always going to sit with someone you don't know at this Mott Street Cantonese mainstay, because the tables are so large, and the joint is always crowded, lunchtime and dinner (which ends on the early side).

I was placed at a round table with an extended family of four—husband and wife, their son-in-law and his newborn—and a lone middle-aged man who ordered off-menu, sipped Sprite like it was whiskey and looked like the Chinatown version of Benny Southstreet. The couple said they been coming for thirty years, almost as long at Big Wong has been around. "It's amazing how consistently popular it's been," said the man. "I remember the bathrooms at the beginning," recalled the woman. "They were terrible." The food, however, has always been good, they said. And the prices always ridiculously cheap. "Five dollars?" wondered the woman about one item. "Things are getting expensive."

I ordered congee because everyone at my table was eating congee. Big Wong makes about a dozen different kinds. The husband steered me to one with beef, pork and seafood. (I appreciated more than liked it; porridge is not my thing.) He also spoke to the waitress—he was Chinese—and made sure she brought me a dish of "traditional hot sauce" to accompany my wonderful roasted pork. If he hadn't intervened, I would have been stuck with the Trappey's on the table. The housemade hot sauce made all the difference, and gave me the feeling of inner triumph that is often expressed by writer Calvin Trillin, the Chinatown devotee who always frets he's not getting the best the kitchen's got going.

Around the room was a cross-section of the city. About half the diners were Chinatown natives, who kept quiet and bent over their food. Brokers who hoofed it up from Wall Street and tucked their ties in their shirt, meanwhile, yakked it up. A foursome of college students took up one table. A couple New York City sheriffs were at another. A man immaculately dressed in a gray, pin-stripe suit and a yellow silk tie ate alone. Up near the front door, the line for take-out was impressive. The cash register was operated by a sixtysomething gentlemen with shaggy white hair who identified himself as the owner. (Officially, according to City records, the proprietor is one Judy Chan.) The married couple stated that the family that ran Big Wong wasn't necessarily the founding family, but a relation of some sort.

Big Wong bustles. The bell in the kitchen that announces the readiness of dishes never stops ringing. "Ping! Ping! Ping!" Carts of hot sweet crullers are wheeled out and carts of dirty dishes are wheeled in. "Ping!" Glasses are filled at the huge tea dispenser and slammed down on the table as patrons sit down. "Ping!" Near the front window, chefs yank down duck after duck, place the browned fowl on a cutting board that looks like a slice of oak trunk, and hack speedily away with a giant butcher knife. They can assemble an order of roast duck in sixty seconds, and not lose a finger.

—Brooks of Sheffield

Remembrance of 300 Grand Street

I few weeks ago, I was musing about the history of these very old-looking twin buildings on Grand Street in Chinatown. I determined, with the help of readers, that they at least dated from the late-19th-century.

I received an amazing comment the other day that indicates they are even older than I thought. Someone names Bonnie wrote: "Number 300 Grand Street was my great, great grandfather's home and shop for many years in the mid-1800s. It is in the census record as well as the Civil war registration in 1863 I think it was. He was a hatter and he was born in Prussia."

A Mysterious Pair in Chinatown

These buildings interest me. Look at them. A couple of narrow, two-and-a-half-story brick boys with single dormer windows. The way they lean on each other, sloping toward the middle, tells of great age and little upkeep. They must be one hundred years old at least. Building of such modest proportions haven't been erected in Manhattan in a century.

This being mysterious Chinatown—the addresses are 298 and 300 Grand Street—I uncovered little about the addresses, aside from the usual reports of arrests of various shady citizens who once lived in the houses over the years. What can have happened here? One can only wonder.

UPDATE: A reader alerted me to a post on Manhattan Unlocked from earlier this year that featured this photo. The photo is from 1932, and the post indicates that the buildings were already 100 years old by then. So they're almost two centuries old now. Amazing. As you can see, the buildings haven't changed much (even the drainpipe down the middle is the same), just then they contained Jewish businesses and today they have Chinese businesses. No doubt before that they were Irish businesses. And way back in the misty past they functioned as modest homes.

Beef Jerky, Chinatown Style

How do you not go inside a shop called Malaysia Beef Jerky Inc.?

I happened upon this Chinatown store the other day during my wanderings. Evidently, I'm not the first. The clipping from Zagat's and Village Voice in the Elizabeth Street window praise the business' way with handmade, Asian-style beef jerky.

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Nom Wah Tea Parlor Finally Revamps

I've spent the last couple years watching Chinatown's classic Nom Wah Tea Parlor be repeatedly shut down and opened up by the Department of Health, and wondered, with a sick heart, how long it would be before the 90-year-old place closed for good. So the article that appeared in today's Daily News was like a balm to my worries. 

Wilson Tang—whose uncle Wally Tang bought the place in 1974, worked in the eatery for 60 years, but retired last year—has left his job in finance to take over the tea parlor. While he preserved the original dining room, Wilson renovated the kitchen, a process that took six months. He is keeping things as they've always been, but making critical changes which I think will help ensure the joint's longevity. 

"With Wally's blessing, some additions will be made to both the tea and food menus," reads the article. "Wilson is keeping the same 10 traditional Chinese teas that his uncle always served, but is thinking about adding some more Western flavors, like Earl Grey. Tea is integral to the dim sum experience, Wilson explains, because it washes away the oily taste of the dumplings before the next dish.

"Nom Wah's food menu is being expanded. It used to feature nine traditional items — including ha gow (a traditional Chinese dumpling), woo gork (taro root dumplings) and lo mein (traditional wheat flour noodles) — written on the back of a business card.

"The new menu includes a fried or steamed dim sum sampler with eight pieces, as well as roast pork buns, fried sesame balls, and sweet and sour spare ribs."

Wilson is also going to take advantage of his trendy neighbor, the cocktail lounge Apotheke, which is  planning to open a Mexican restaurant called Pulqueria in the vacant space between it and Nom Wah.

A Good Sign: Young City Fish Balls

A young city needs good fish balls.

Hidden Sign

Just barely glimpsed this painted-over metal sign in the doorway of 163 Hester Street. Strain your eyes and you can see it's a soda ad and pick out the words "Select" up top and "Naturally Good" down below. Can't be certain what soda, but "Naturally Good" was the slogan for Mission Sodas back in the day. Mission was initially out of California, and produced soda from 1929 to 1970. They were famous for their orange soda, that, weirdly, was sold in a black bottle.

Ho Ho Florist

Ho Ho Florist is an old school Chinatown business on the corner of Hester and Elizabeth. By the looks of the business—note the green-painted wooden cornice—things haven't changed here in decades.

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Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Wo Hop?"

As stated before, I'm still doing the "Who Goes There?" columns for Eater. Here's the latest:

Who Goes There? Wo Hop

The first time I ever went to Wo Hop, the 72-year-old Chinatown restaurant, I was chastised by readers as having gone to the "wrong" Wo Hop. There are two spaces on Mott Street, you see, a roomy ground-level restaurant at 15 Mott, visible from the street, and a harder-to-spot basement place down a long flight of stairs at 17 Mott. (Chinatown must have more mysterious subterranean eateries and businesses than any other neighborhood in New York.) The upstairs joint is for tourists and suckers, and the food stinks, I was told. Go downstairs for the real experience.

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The St. James Convent is on Oliver Street in Chinatown. It has an interesting metal sign next to the doorbell. Makes you think twice before ringing, doesn't it?

Meneely Bell in Chinatown

On a trip to Troy, NY, two years ago I learned about the Meneely Bell Foundry. The company was established in West Troy in 1826 by Andrew Meneely. That foundry, and the Meneely Bell Company of Troy, founded later by a member of the same family, together produced 65,000 bells before they closed in 1952. The outfit was one of the most famous producers of bells in the nation. Meneely bells went everywhere, and are still in use. Or so I was told at the time.

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Storefront

I liked the utterly aged, forlorn look of this Chinatown storefront. So much old wood and wire and plaster left to take their natural courses.

Pick a Number, Any Number

Ghost of a Building

The shadow of what was, until the recent fire, 283-87 Grand Street. The building made quite an impression on its neighbor.

Chinatown's Classic Mee Sun Cafe Closed by DOH

Chinatown's ancient Mee Sun Cafe, on Pell Street, has been felled by the Department of Health. The small storefront is shut up tighter than a drum. A notice on the door said the City came knocking on April 27.

In 1971, New York magazine described the hole in the wall as "a busy, fast-moving, noisy, sloppy establishment with a good Dim Sum repertoire." Yes!