When 42-year-old restaurant Hoy Wong closed in mid-February — it was one of the Cantonese old timers that line lower Mott Street — cookbook author and video storyteller Grace Young lamented the decline of Chinatown in a Food & Wine piece. She noted that the decrease in visitors had been a gradual one, as a result of gentrification, labor costs, and cheap prices. Now, she explained, fear of a then-remote disease had emptied the streets in a more visible way. And ended with a plea, “We’ve taken Chinatown for granted, assuming it will always be there, but if we don’t come to the rescue right now it could slip away.” Little did she anticipate what was to follow.
The article, published online March 4, included a handy guide to the neighborhood, listing 32 of her favorite restaurants, markets, and bakeries. During the month of February, articles in the New York Post and the Guardian detailed how what was at the time a seemingly irrational fear of a faraway virus, mixed with a dose of xenophobia and racism, were leading potential customers to shun the neighborhood. According to the Guardian, “Fewer tour groups are walking along the streets, fewer people are going to the neighborhood’s most famous restaurants.”
By the middle of March, the virus had actually arrived, though studies now show that most of New York’s confirmed cases come from travelers from Europe and not China. As stay-at-home policies were gradually instituted, Chinatown — along with other high-traffic destination Manhattan neighborhoods like Midtown — further emptied, leaving haunted, vacant streets with a fraction of its businesses still operating. Whereas there had previously been almost 300 restaurants in Chinatown, according to Wellington Chen, economist and executive director of the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation, now almost all were closed.
A chart published jointly by the Chinatown Partnership and Chinatown Business Improvement District on March 17 showed only 31 restaurants still doing takeout and delivery. Revised daily, the list on April 1 found 37 establishments open, of which only 16 were Asian restaurants, while pizzerias, diners, and taquerias were also included. A separate list featured supermarkets and smaller markets selling vegetables or seafood. (Current list here.)
I asked Chen what methods were used in constructing this chart. He said that daily calls must be made to the restaurants. “People change their minds,” Chen said. “One day they may be open and the next day circumstances may cause them to be closed.” Among those circumstances were difficulties of employees getting to work from Brooklyn and Queens, failure of supply chain, and a need to stay home to take care of children. He also mentioned that taking a restaurant off the list was not a decision to be taken lightly, so that a single unanswered call didn’t cause a place to be removed, but several on subsequent days might.
On Sunday, March 30, I toured Chinatown by bicycle, and discovered that at least one place on the current list — Eater favorite Wah Fung Fast Food, which usually slings wonderful duck and baby pig over rice — was not open, but other than that, the chart was right-on reliable. I went again a week later on Monday, April 6, and found the neighborhood stabilized, with about the same number of places open. But more important, I found a vitality in Chinatown that I had not expected. This was a Chinatown serving its residents, and not a place for destination diners and tourists.
In particular, supermarkets, small groceries, bakeries, pharmacies, and hardware stores were open, some with long lines carefully observing social distancing, with the shoppers all wearing masks. The scene on Bayard Street was the most animated, with 57 Bayard Meat Market a popular spot; there were perhaps 25 shoppers waiting outside. Open nearby was the iconic Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, a beacon of hope, and next door the newish Hong Kong restaurant Kong Sihk Tong, where a man sat behind a podium in the front window, taking orders over the phone.
Another hot spot was New York Mart at 128 Mott Street, where a line extended to the corner of Grand, and then turned the corner. This place is well known for its butcher shop and fish counter, in addition to a selection of groceries. Once again, a nearby eatery was open to provide snacks for shoppers, in this case Golden Steamer, known for its steamed char siu bao, little custard pies, and other dim sum. Its hot dog bun is a favorite of mine.
Though the sidewalk fruit and vegetable market that runs south from Canal on Mulberry was nowhere to be seen on my first visit, on my second, it had returned with about half the vendors usually there. The oranges and dragon fruit were as big and luscious as always. Grand Street between Forsyth and Allen was another concentration of activity, with two vegetable markets, two bakeries, and one of my favorite Chinatown restaurants, Delight Wong, still open for takeout and delivery. It’s a great place for over-rice bargains, wonton soup, and rice-noodle rolls made to order.
Yes, most of the streets of Chinatown are empty except for the occasional scurrying pedestrian and a trickle of car and truck traffic, but there are strong signs of life. I discussed this with Chen, and we agreed that, in the face of a disease that caused most New Yorkers to be homebound, eating Chinese food would have been a natural, with its rapid preparation and delivery, vegetable intensiveness, and very high, virus-destroying temperatures.
Yet, not only Chinatown restaurants, but neighborhood Chinese restaurants all over the city have closed. We compared reports on what Chinese restaurants remained open, noting that none or very few still remain in neighborhoods like Harlem, Chelsea, and Brooklyn Heights.
Asians and Asian Americans in general have also faced more assaults and increased racism during the COVID-19 crisis, despite no evidence to suggest “people of Asian descent bear any additional responsibility for the transmission of the coronavirus,” as Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said.
I asked Young what she thought of Chinatown’s chances to rebound. She thought there was still hope, and put me in touch with Don Lee, as an example of what might be done. This New York University grad was raised in Chinatown and worked his way through school as a cook in Chinese restaurants. He now operates senior centers in Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay that deliver 400 meals per day to seniors who now must be homebound. He has accomplished this feat by taking over a Chinese restaurant in Bensonhurst called Bay Parkway Café, keeping its seven cooks employed, and delivering many of the meals himself in a van. Delivering Chinese food “gives the clients a sense of normalcy,” he said.
Indeed, as Chen and I discussed, reopening Chinese restaurants as Lee has done in Bensonhurst’s Chinatown and all over the city would be a cost effective and efficient way to feed medical personnel, first responders, employees of essential services and industries, as well as school kids and other New Yorkers forced to stay at home. We’ve never needed the city’s Chinese restaurants more.