Simone Tong, chef and owner of Little Tong (and soon Silver Apricot): It was survival. The forbidding city For generations, Chinese restaurants scraped by in hopes of getting ahead. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. With so many closures, the pressure is on for young entrepreneurial chefs to expand just to make up the shortfall.įortune spoke with many of them and other major voices in the community to make some sense of these unprecedented culinary, cultural, and economic shifts. They talk about, for example, the economics of ghost kitchens with Zuul or delivery options with Uber. Cecilia Chiang, the godmother of Chinese restaurants in America, has addressed the group, as has her son Philip (the P in P.F. But just as a culinary renaissance is flourishing in the Chinese restaurants of Los Angeles- “knockout” mapo tofu lasagna, y’all!-an economic and even spiritual revolution is seizing young Chinese entrepreneurs in New York.ĭuring low-key meetings at the Bank of China along Bryant Park and the China Institute in the Financial District, CHATT has gathered forces from 21 local restaurants-including Cafe China, Grain House, Junzi Kitchen, Little Tong, and MáLà Project-as well as four tea shops and half a dozen industry heavyweights, including Chowbus and Hall PR, all specifically to brainstorm and strategize for their futures. Chinese cooking is an art again, and gastro-impressionists are everywhere. The crisis, though, is also an opportunity, not just to reshape the landscape and palate, but to unveil a joy shrouded for centuries: a truly Chinese approach to food in this country, free from American habits and the white gaze. “The common reasons mentioned were upcoming retirement, long working hours, and diminishing sales.” “I would say more than 60% of these restaurants are selling or the owners are considering the possibility of selling,” he says. In recent weeks, whenever he went on location-scouting trips in some of New York’s most popular neighborhoods for Chinese restaurants-including the East Village, Harlem, Midtown West, and Two Bridges, among others-Xuhui Zhang, Junzi Kitchen’s head of real estate development, routinely encountered an alarming urgency.
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