All stories about "Chinatown"

The Lower East Side's burgeoning Fujianese food scene is getting a facelift. The region, which sits midway between Hong Kong and Shanghai, is known for its "wizardry with noodles." Fujianese dishes you can find downtown include hand-pulled Lanzhou noodles (at Super Taste) and Sheng Wang's "peel noodles." But while the neighborhood's Fujianese restaurants have usually been divey, new spots like Food Sing 88 Corp. are upping the ante with fancier decor and ambience. [Village Voice]

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Barbecue shouldn't be expensive, and neither should Chinese food. There may be gourmet pork buns at Momofoku and other upscale Asian restaurants in New York, but Chinatown is home to the genuine article. Cha siu baau, better known as pork buns, have got to be the best way to eat barbecue meats in your hand. The dough not only protects your greedy fingers from grease and sauce, it's also sweet and delicious in its own right. Pork buns can generally be purchased in Chinatown's bakeries and dim sum parlors for less than a dollar. Cha siu baau come in two varieties: roast with a brown glazed shell, or steamed and chewy. Either way, they're one of the most filling cheap snacks in the city.

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Once spread out over nine city blocks, Washington DC's Chinatown now comprises a minuscule area that laugh-it-up hipsters refer to as "Chinablock." Even though the community dates back to the 1850s, the most recent census only counted 700 Chinese residents in the neighborhood, making DC the smallest Chinatown in all America. Gentrification happens, right? In 2006, the city of Washington DC spent $200 million to make Chinatown safe and nice for tourists and Virginians. Subsequent side effects included Chinatown becoming much more expensive, really cheesy, and a lot less Chinese. Now it's that place by the metro to grab lunch before the game at the Verizon Center or a way to break up a day of shopping. It's also the place to buy a condo if you happen to be a millionaire who wants a room without a view. It's all quite tragic really, but even more worrisome is the thought that DC Chinatown is the proverbial sparrow in the mineshaft. Will our want of safety and shopping erase the ethnic hoods we love? Let's discuss!

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Refinery29 offers up one of their typically astute and choosy shopping guides, this time to a few establishments scattered amongst New York's Chinatown and Lower East Side. The usual assortment of funky art spaces, plus the requisite sneaker shop and a 'biodynamic catering company."

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Last week we satisfied the heathens in Los Angeles . This week New Yorkers get their fair share. Our list from last year catered to the outer boroughs, this time we're sticking with Manhattan, more specifically the streets in and around Chinatown. Why be ripped off in Midtown when you can be only moderately ripped off below Canal?

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Unlike most of the other tourist traps in New York, Chinatown is actually worth visiting. Out of towners usually stick to Canal Street and haggle over counterfeit purses and perfumes, but those in the know steer clear of that mob scene and head to the surrounding blocks to shop and feast on the unique brand of Chinese food that New York has become famous for. Chinatown is open late, and it's easy on the wallet. Best of all, it's one of the last neighborhoods in the city that hasn't been completely gentrified and overrun by "hipster" hordes living off of the monthly checks their parents send from the suburbs. Better enjoy the cheap dim sum and chow mein now before the ever-expanding Lower East Side creeps southward, leaving Mott Street covered in condos, indie bars, and American Apparel outlets.

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Courtesy of Menupages SF, here's a clip of Conan O'Brien cavorting through San Francisco's sights and scenes. He even picks up a lil' pal in Chinatown. Warning: contains Bob Saget.

-- Chris Mohney

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Now centered around Dixon Street and located next to Darling Harbour, Sydney's Chinatown is a bustling shopping and dining center. Established in its current neighborhood since the 1920s, the district is solidly populated by Chinese residents and many students. Though not as large as the Chinatowns in cities like San Francisco and New York, Sydney's Asian center is still well worth a visit. Our picks for noodles, herbs, and chili crab after the jump.

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Getting to Chinatown's Mountain Bar requires a modicum of dedication on your (the bar patron's) part. Adhering to the no-sign rule of Los Angeles bar hauteness, owners took the extra step and abolished street signs as well. The bar is on Gin Ling Way, an unmarked street between Hill and Broadway. When you Google it to see if you're even close, you find out that the closest signed street is Lei Min Way -- which is also unmarked. Awesome.

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Chinese massage in New York is the poor man's spa. For around $25 a half-an-hour, you're body will be handled vigorously by usually an older Chinese person without even a pretense of interest. Your body, relaxing into the slightly soiled table, will make crinkle sounds on the 1 ply paper and your sinuses will fill with fluid. Ah, relaxation. With so many places and so few regulatory committees, it's always a chance you'll come out severely disfigured. But follow Gridskipper's Handy Guide and you'll get Tui Na'd, deknotted and handjobbed to your heart's content.

New York magazine took a trip downtown to Chinatown in their Feb. 19 issue. And they really really heart it. The issue includes a Matt Gross annotation of a Chinatown storefront (including a toothpaste called Black Brother), Chef Zak Pelaccio's eating guide and Mary Redding's recipe for garbage fish. But the has to go to Katie Charles' East Broadway Map which highlights places like the Lay On Co., a place peddling royal ginseng jello among other products and the "Chinese Restaurant" on 60 E. Broadway. The only thing missing are a trio of rougish freakishly good looking hoodlums.

The Everything Guide of Chinatown [NYMag]

Previously: The Hidden Secrets of SF Chinatown, Chinatown Bus Phishing Scam? You Betcha!, My WashPo Will Destroy Your Fung Wah

Welcome the year of the Pig! The Lunar New Year takes place on Sunday February 18th which first and foremost means some major partying is happening in the Chinatowns of the world (and in China). It also means all you pigs out there are going to have a stellar year. Gridskipper is half pig (honest, modest, and shy) and half cock (self-absorbed, pretentious, and overly romantic), so we are all about 2007. In honor of our favorable year, we have a guide to Vancouver's Chinatown celebrations. With over 400,000 Chinese people living in B.C.'s hippest city, Vancouver has the second largest Chinatown in North America. So let the Tsingtao flow and go eat some gelatinous neen gow cake.

Project No. 8 recently opened up in Chinatown a...erm...project of designing Batman-and-Robin Brian Janusiak and Elizabeth Beer. Since it sprouted two months ago, the store has been riding a raft of good buzz. We recently took a trip down to Division St., deep in the heart of Chinatown with the Leni Reifenstahl of New York, Richard Blakeley. What you can't see in the video are the prices which are hilariously reasonable. Those yak slippers that look like fur puddles? Only 100 bucks a pop, ditto the angorra-covered brick. The mittens, objets d'art in themselves, only $50. Go quickly though, affordable teary-eyed Utopian price points don't last long.

Project No. 8 [Refinery29]

Previously: Gridskipper Embed: Project No. 8, V-Day Gift Guide, All of Manhattan's a Mall, Virtually, CB I Hate Perfume

San Francisco has the largest Chinatown outside of Asia. This is both daunting and promising. It isn't hard to be swept into the tourist tide, eating General Tso's chicken and the like. The "real" Chinatown often seems allusive to the English speaker and even more so to the tourist. We've assembled the best restaurants and shops that would likely escape your radar. But make sure to go to the countless outdoor markets to gawk at and/or buy live turtles, fish, and crab.The smell is horrific but the sight of 20 turtles struggling fruitlessly to climb out of a cardboard box is priceless.

Golden Gate Fortune Cookies: Tucked away on an alley in Chinatown this fortune cookie factory bakes and folds the cookies before your eyes. You can eat them warm right out of the oven, and a whole bag is just $3. For once fortune cookies can be more than just an afterthought or an uncomfortable prompt for your dad to read "you will have many successes today...in bed."

The Pot Sticker: Local fans say the Pot Sticker has better dumplings than any of the other dim sum joints and dumpling dens in Chinatown. Righteously greasy, dumplings comes stuffed with pork and vegetables, prawns and bursting with juices.

Yang Chow is the kind of place that our tourist friends demand to go to when they roll into town, because they heard about it on the Food Network. It's the secret Chinatown hole-in-the-wall, known only to people who flip through travel books, watch cooking shows, or know people who do either. Despite its not-really-exclusiveness, though, you still Hollywood starlettes eating at Yang Chow so that someone will notice that they're eating at Yang Chow. Somehow a lot of LA residents still swear by it. This strange suspension of jaded cynicism is closely tied to the Yang Chow slippery shrimp. Whatever else happens, most Yang Chow food acquisition missions can be counted to produce two things: a relatively satisfying starfuck and quarts of the famous dish. No one understands how they're created, but a quart of slippery shrimp produces effects similar to deep Zen mediation. They're half-soaked in this kind of sauce thing that we've always been suspicious of - not only is it way too good to be healthy, but we can't remember ever actually seeing that exact shade of orange in nature. Yet we continue to consume the things, even though they may or may not glow under UV-light. They're that good. Plus, if we can let our soft side through for a second, the tourists really do love the Yang Chow starfuck: here's this LA-insider restaurant that they heard about, and right there on a stool is a real life LA insider (and "she looks so small in real life!" We know, we know...) It's like, awwww. So next time you visit LA, feel free to harass your friends until they take you to Yang Chow. They're expecting it.

Yang Chow

[Text: Omri Ceren Photo: girlfactor / Flickr]

Previously:
LA Museum of Neon Art, L.A. Suite: A Pomeranc Production, Juxtaposition Mania in LA, I'll Have the I Am Bemused With A Side of I Am Disgusted, Ciudad: Latin Food, Latin Drinks, Latin Music. Also, Mojitos, Bar 107: Because Hollywood Is So Fucking Vapid, Man

We hate jumping on the old New York magazine bandwagon, but they've got it right: Noho's Chinatown Brasserie is a bamboo piece of crap. Actually, the food is ok but the quality-to-dollar ratio is so horrible that unless you are deathly afraid of Chinatown, you're better heading a few blocks south. The space is cavernous and not poorly decorated at all. The service was incredibly slow even during the sluggish lunchtime service when we went and the servers, nary a Asiatic among them, were in possession of major 'tude but zero memory. Once we got the food all sorted, things improved slightly: delicious pork buns, crispy eggrolls, garlicky green beans, plump fried oysters all passed muster. And you can't really screw up Crispy Orange Beef (it had orange, it was crispy, it was beef). But for $124 for a measly dim sum for four people, c'mon now Chef Joe Ng, (pronounced Ung) who you kidding? There's no excuse except xenophobia to eat here when Chinatown, a ten minute walk away, is full of good cheap Chinese food. Check out New Green Bo for real pork dumplings (8 for 4.95), flavorful soups and divine noodles or head over to Joe's Shanghai's famous soup dumplings but leave Chinatown Brasserie to its own grandiose demise.

Chinatown Brasserie [NY Mag]
Chinatown Brassererie [Official site]
New Green Bo [Menupages]
Joe's Shanghai [Menupages]

Previously: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois Pig, Cheese Please, NY Thinks It's Turning Japonais, Maremma Says Knock You Out, Bondi Fish n' Chips