of Chinatown who had recently, and
reluctantly, left the neighborhood for
1
TABLES FOR TWO
Great N.Y. Noodletown
28 Bowery
The other night in Chinatown, as I made
my way down the Bowery, I was sud-
denly enveloped by a pack of beautiful
twentysomething women, galloping
around me like wild horses. My chest
tightened. Could they be headed to the
same place that I was, and would they
beat me to the last table?
As it turned out, the women were not
bolting to Great N.Y. Noodletown—
but they could have been! They should
have been. In March, the intensely
beloved fifty-eight-year-old Canton-
ese restaurant, which seemed to have
weathered the pandemic O.K., closed
abruptly. Though a notice on the façade
explained that the closure was only for
renovations, and offered assurance that
the restaurant would reopen on the first
of June, under the same management,
some passionate patrons grew concerned
as June came and went. In early Septem-
ber, when the metal gates were finally
raised: rejoicement.
For my first dinner back, I was meet-
ing a range of Noodletown aficionados.
There was a Taiwanese American son
12 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 17, 2022
tening golden ducks and swaths of sparkly
suckling-pig skin into precise rectangles.
Brooklyn, and a friend who, as a teen-
ager living in Westchester, had been
led on a Noodletown pilgrimage by a
worldlier Manhattanite peer. There was
a former barfly who had fended off many
a hangover here, arriving just before the
kitchen’s 4 A.M. closing time.
As has been lamented of late, New
York is, at least for the moment, not
quite the city that never sleeps. These
days, the kitchen closes at ten o’clock
Sunday through Thursday, and at eleven
on Fridays and Saturdays; during two
recent visits, employees began stacking
chairs the second the clock turned over,
dropping checks with gruff apologies.
It was just as well: the barfly has a
baby now. More important, the food
was as good as—if not better than—
anyone remembered. I’d last been there
in 2017, on an awkward double date
with a couple whose obvious disharmony
had not detracted from the lo mein with
ginger and scallion, a slippery mass of
thin, curly noodles which activated taste
buds on the back of my tongue that I
wouldn’t otherwise know were there.
What a pleasure it was to be re-
united with that sensation, and to be
served a bowl of clear, fragrant broth
dense with wontons bobbing like jelly-
fish, their ruffled bellies stuffed tightly
with shrimp, their slippery wrap-
pers trailing like tentacles. Behind
the front counter, a man with a cleaver
stood before a cylindrical wooden chop-
ping block, upon which he hacked glis-
A handwritten bilingual sign an-
nouncing the return of soft-shell-crab
season was tacked to a freshly painted
wall. (The changes to the dining room
appear to be mostly cosmetic—new
flooring and wall tiles, new chandeliers
offering brighter, cleaner light.) Each
salt-baked crab was neatly quartered
into segments, the delicate crunch of
chitin and fresh green chili giving way
to fleeting bits of sweet flesh.
Among old favorites I found new
ones: thick e-fu noodles—made springy,
traditionally, from the addition of car-
bonated water to their dough—strewn
over a lobster chopped in its shell; a
PHOTOGRAPH BY TONJE THILESEN FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
ceramic crock overflowing with clams,
steamed in rice wine with great hunks
of ginger and scallion, piled atop glass
noodles. Long strips of sweet, but-
tery-fleshed eggplant were flecked with
diced chicken and bits of salted fish, as
funky and intoxicating as the finest aged
cheese. Deeply bronzed eggrolls, fried to
the edge of reason, shattered to release
a generously packed mix of flowering
chives and mushrooms.
A complimentary plate of orange slices
signalled that our time was up. Tsingtaos
drained, we stood on the corner plotting
our next moves. “Is it raining?” someone
wondered, puzzled by a rhythmic noise.
The sky was clear. It was only the wind,
rustling the multicolored pennants that
had been strung to herald the grand—the
great—reopening. (Dishes $3.95-$38.95.)
—Hannah Goldfield