good chinese restaurant in Chinatown

[Oliviero]

Can anyone recommend a good chinese restaurant in Chinatown ?
Thanks

[Lau]

scoopG gave a nice list, but i would add Danny Ng's
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/856869
http://www.lauhound.com/2012/07/danny...

[SomeRandomIdiot]

Danny Ng's has been closed for a few weeks.

[Lau]

oh wow it closed? i knew it was supposed to close in like a year b/c of the building they are in, but not this soon

jeez that sucks

[Chandavkl]

How about the clone down the street, Sing Kee?

[Lau]

i tried it the other day and i didnt think it was as good

ill probably go back to try it again, but found it a little disappointing

[batterypark]

List a few dishes you would like to order, and it will be much easier to help you pick a good place for you.

[scoopG]

Hi Oliviero - you have many choices...

Amazing 66:
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/340879

Big Wong King:
http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/big-wong-king/

East Corner Wonton:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/611302?tag=boards;topic-611302

456:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/770707

Famous Sichuan:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/753398

Fuleen:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/816585

NOODLE SHOPS
Food Sing 88 Corp:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/824272

more:

http://theeatenpath.com/2009/08/03/hand-pulled-noodles-eastern-authentic-noodle-sheng-wang-super-taste-lam-zhou-handmade-noodle-tasty-hand-pulled-noodle-inc-chinatown-new-york/

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/492376
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/504362
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/822291

FUJIAN
Best Fuzhou (The former Best Fuzhou on Eldridge is closed):
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/483902

Double Dragon:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/714304

Great New York Noodletown:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/678367

Mei Li Hua:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/605528

Noodle Village:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/493604

Old Sichuan:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/742493
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/753976

Oriental Garden:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/826909
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/795596

Shanghai Café Deluxe:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/583263
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/769840

Shanghai Heping:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/841090

Xian Famous Foods:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/673306

DIM SUM
Dim Sum Go Go:
http://dimsumgogo.com/

Red Egg:
http://www.chow.com/manhattan_digest/6625?tag=search_results;results_list
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/610102?tag=main_body;topic-610102
http://www.redeggnyc.com/

Nom Wah:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/768644

Also:
Yummy Noodles at 44 Bowery, 10013.

[Pan]

scoopG, I love how you're so informative! But what do you like about East Corner Wonton?

[scoopG]

Their roast meats are not bad - not as good as Big Wong though. A solid old world Cantonese place on East Broadway if you are in the area.

[AubWah]

If you are looking for real deal Chinatown ambiance to dine in, it does not get much realer than East Corner Wonton. The intersection the restaurant is located at is legendary. Their roast duck is very delicate,a higher quality than what one might receive at Noodletown. Congee is a popular choice, its a very Hong Kong style place.

[Pan]

I prefer Noodletown's roast duck, precisely because it has more taste.

Also, I have to warn everyone: Never get beef muscle at East Corner. It's in excessively big pieces that can lodge in your throat and choke you. I almost had to do a heimlich on myself, not kidding. Their congee is OK.

[foodwhisperer]

I love the duck at East Corner. I also like a restaurant called Rong Hang .

[pravit]

I think that's one of the "no tipping" Fujianese places on Eldridge isn't it? What do you get there?

[foodwhisperer]

It is one of the "no tipping" places, but we leave a tip anyway. The fish ball soup and the razor clams are my favorite things there. I did get to try the short ribs and they were good. All the seafood dishes are fresh and good.
Here's a post from my first time there.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/851928

[Lau]

ah interesting you went there, ive been meaning to try those places although i wanted to go with someone who can read chinese better than me as alot of the fujian dishes have weird names and i cant read them, just haven't gotten around to it

[scoopG]

New Rong Hang is owned by the same folks who run Best Fuzhou at 71A Eldridge - the menu is exactly the same!
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/483902

[Lau]

ohhh ok well then i have eaten there basically then since ive been to best fuzhou a few times

[Lau]

im going to write a review on East Corner sometime in the near future, but as a preview i dont think most of their food is as good as NY noodletown except their duck is the best duck ive had in chinatown

[Pan]

Huh, maybe I should give that another try. I look forward to your review, as usual.

[Lau]

yah i went a long time ago and didnt like it at all then my friend told me about the duck so i went and it was good

i want to go one or two more times to make sure it wasn't a fluke then im going to review it

[pravit]

Personally I just like going there on weekends for lunch. Because of the big windows it's quite sunny and pleasant in the daytime unlike most Chinatown places and it has a bit of a retro diner feel.

[Lau]

"retro" haha i think that maybe the only time ill ever hear someone refer to GNYNT as retro

[pravit]

I was actually referring to East Corner, but yea, it's like the Cup and Saucer of BBQ meat noodle places

[Lau]

my statement stands for either place haha

[comiendosiempre]

Outstanding list, thanks.

[RosalineS]

Amazing 66 changed their chef earlier this year, and it is not as good as it used to be. I would recommend Ping Seafood on 22 Mott St instead - http://pingsnyc.com

[sgordon]

Agreeing with Rosaline - the chef at A66, Chen Ge (a Vietnamese kid who was the son of a French chef, go figure) was pretty interesting, and had a nice balanced touch. Currently my Cantonese go-tos are Ping's, Oriental Garden, and Fuleen - though my last visit to OG was a bit lackluster, I'm writing it off as a fluke if it doesn't repeat itself. Fuleen is probably my favorite of the three right now, especially in the colder months - their hearty, rustic dishes are particularly good. I do Ping's when I feel like something a litttle "cheffier" / more creative - Chef Ping grew up in Hong Kong, IIRC, and thus has a bit more worldy influence on his food, but he still pulls off the traditional stuff well.

Of course, it appears the OP has abandoned the thread and isn't particularly interested in joining the discussion or refining his/her question...

[AubWah]

I like Fuleen a lot. Once at lunch there I had a fish filet and tofu casserole that was very nice. What are the rustic dishes you refer to?

Very interesting info about the chef of A66. Do you know anything about the chef at Fuleen? I would imagine he's from Guangzhou

[batterypark]

I don't have the dinner menu, but the following lunch items might qualify as rustic --
Fuleen's lunch menu includes:
Intestines with salted vegetable
steamed minced pork with salted fish
steamed chicken and Chinese sausages
curry beef
stewed bean curd

[sgordon]

"Rustic" probably wasn't the right word - maybe "traditional" would be better, as opposed to, say, Ping's or A66's flirtations with other cuisines.

I'm awful fond of the preserved duck & taro casserole - it's a bit salty, not for everyone, but I find it quite comforting on a cold winter night. It's mostly taro, the duck used to add flavor. The chicken, eggplant, and salted fish casserole is another big one for me. Very bold in flavor, almost the opposite of the subtlety one goes to, say Oriental Garden for. The spicy clam soup is really good, too - I think it was called "clams & enoki mushrooms in broth" on the menu or something.

I'm a big fan of their veggie sides as well - the water spinach with fermented bean curd is great, for those that like that fermented dou fu ru taste. They do pretty good dishes with 1000-yr-eggs and salted duck eggs as well, speaking of funky stuff. I also like anything they do with dried seafood - though I haven't tried the "House Special" dried seafood platter, since it has Fat Choy (a/k/a black moss) - which apparantley contains some kind of neutoxins with serious long-term health risks we shouldn't be ingesting, so I'd rather avoid.

They're pretty famous for their geoduck - I find it's always better quality at Fuleen than at OG, though it's very expensive. And I think their conch is the best in Chinatown. Granted, also an expensive item.

Only thing I tend to pass on are their noodle and fried rice dishes - never been terribly impressed, and it's the kind of place I'd rather not be filling up on carbs anyway, save room for the good stuff. Sometimes maybe a rice - they're decent enough. The couple times I've had noodle dishes though I was disappointed.

[Lau]

get their clam soup next time, they make an excellent really light clam soup

[Chandavkl]

Well as scoopG and some of the others helped me figure out, Fuleen is the Fujianese version of "Fu Lin", and would hence imply at least Fujianese ownership of the restaurant. A lot of Hong Kong/dim sum restaurants in the eastern US are operated by Fujianese. This leads me to ask how many of the Hong Kong style restaurants in Manhattan Chinatown and Flushing are Fujianese operations. My guess is that it might be significant, but nobody knows, and it's an interesting question.

[Lau]

i dont think that is correct. Everyone that works at fuleen speaks cantonese as lingua franca and almost all the customers are cantonese; i dont know the owner, but i bet they are cantonese

also the "fu" in fu lin is not even the same "fu" as in "fu zhou" or "fu jian" (the fu in fujian or fuzhou means luck)

[Chandavkl]

Fuleen Seafood has been around for quite a few years, so it's possible that a Cantonese purchaser kept the name. However see discussion below on the name Fuleen.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/840102

[sgordon]

A quick search of the NYS liquor authority suggests that the restaurant did change hands sometime around 2008. Ther'e a record from '05 for that location for a company called Bosheng Inc, with a principal named San Lan Yuen. The last license issued was in '08 to Xian Yi Tian Restaurant Corp, principal Zheng Fen Chen.

I've been dining there for years, though, and haven't noticed any difference in the food. Could be new owners, kept the same chef? If anyone who speaks more Chinese than I knows if there's any meaning to Bosheng and/or Xian Yi Tian, it might give a hint to the owner's provenance at least.

[sgordon]

And yet another interesting note: in Ann Volkwein's book "Chinatown New York" she mentions one of the owners of Fuleen at the time - a Michael Lau - and that he was the Chinatown liaison for the DA of Manhattan's Racketeering Bureau...

Hmm... maybe those tales of gangsters hanging out in Fuleen are true, after all...

[Lau]

haha maybe some super distant relative of mine

[squid kun]

>Ther'e a record from '05 for that location for a company called Bosheng Inc, with a principal named San Lan Yuen.

Dorina Yuen, who hung around Fuleen as a kid when her Cantonese-American family owned it, went on to open Oro, a nice little bakery-bar on Broome.

[sing me a bar]

Oriental Garden is closed, sadly.

[Sneakeater]

OMIGOD, is it???????????????????????? Their website is still up and current:

http://orientalgardenny.tumblr.com/

This is horrible if correct!

[Lau]

wow i think like all of the restaurants that are on the block / building might be closing assuming this is correct.

south china garden
danny ng's
oriental garden

this is too bad as they are some of the better restaurants in chinatown

[Pan]

Yeah, really terrible. I'll have to find somewhere else to have a Cantonese banquet on my next birthday in February.

[sgordon]

Holy crap! Really!?

Ugh. I suspected it might be on the chopping block, after what went down with SCG. I can only imagine Jing Fong is next...

Wow. Down to Ping's and Fuleen for me for that style, at least in Manhattan.

Though it's odd - their website was just updated this afternoon. Maybe they were closed temporarily for something else?

[swannee]

OMG, were you actually there and saw OG closed? I found Fuleen to be scary--- full of gangs doing "business" with the waitstaff cowering in attendance and ignoring us. It was sinister, and I love the most obscure holes in the wall. Has no one else found this? But without OG, Cantonese upscale is pretty much disappearing in Ctown.

[Lau]

gangs? umm c'mon haha, chinatown is not in the least bit scary or dangerous

im going to go walk around chinatown this weekend and confirm all these places are closed

hopefully some of the chefs open up some new restaurants, i find it hard to believe that alot of the most popular restaurants in chinatown will close and no one will replace them

[sgordon]

UPDATE: Oriental Garden is NOT CLOSED. I just got an email from Cynthia, their Marketing director. Repeat: NOT CLOSED. VERY MUCH OPEN.

In other news, she hasn't heard anything about any hotel construction - so it looks like the one that caused SCG to shut down (and I'm assuming Danny Ng's as well) isn't affecting them. Whew!

Maybe SMAB was thinking of the other, older place with the same name? Can't remember the location, but that one hasn't been around for awhile.

[Lau]

oh thats good at least

[Pan]

Thank you for posting this.

[squid kun]

I thought sing me a bar might have meant South China Garden (previously Cantoon Garden, previously something else).

[thegforceny]

Here is a recent thread that might help:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/861956