The streets of Chinatown are lined with restaurants representing every province of China and every kind of Chinese cooking, as well as some other oriental food traditions. With hundreds of restaurants, stands and markets within a few crowded blocks in which English is not always understood, finding what you want and like can be confusing.
Fortunately, most critics and publications over the years have extensively surveyed the Chinese restaurant scene and ranked restaurants in areas such as cheap eats, fiery cuisine like Szechuan and Hunan, Peking duck and dim sum. Most of the following places can be reached by subway to Canal Street, and most do not take credit cards.Learn More
Grand Sichuan on Canal Street, with another location at 24th Street and 9th Avenue, is among the most frequent critics’ picks, and has an illustrated booklet for a menu listing more than 100 dishes, most of them eye-watering as well as mouthwatering. Peking duck is represented on most lists by the eponymous Peking Duck House on Mott Street, which has many other dishes on its menu although almost everyone has the famous duck; the restaurant differs from most Chinese places by not requiring that Peking duck be ordered in advance and in taking credit cards. Great New York Noodle Town at the foot of the Bowery has almost every kind of noodle dish and serves them with duck, chicken, fish and shellfish, as well as their specialty of suckling pig. Oriental Garden on Elizabeth Street catches your eye with live crabs waving at you from their window tank, and has a wide range of dim sum and fresh seafood, ranging from an $8 prix fixe lunch to a $68 bowl of shark-fin soup. Chinatown and New York history fans are fascinated by Nom Wah Tea Room, located at the “bloody angle” of Doyers Street,between the Bowery and Pell, that became notorious during the tong wars of the 1920s,the first New York dim sum house.
Notable options for inexpensive dining include Xi’an Famous Foods at Bayard and Mott Streets as well as 5 other locations, a favorite of Anthony Bourdain that averages $5 for a main course. New Green Bo, just down Bayard Street has a unique decorating scheme, plastering walls and windows with rave reviews from the English-language press, and averages about $14. NhaTrang Centre, on Centre Street near the Precious Blood Church, leads many surveys of Vietnamese food at bargain prices.
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