Manhattan's Chinatown
One of the oldest and densest Chinatowns in the western hemisphere — still a working neighborhood, still the cheapest good eating in Manhattan, and best explored on the side streets.
- What it costs
- Free to walk. Some of the cheapest genuinely good food in Manhattan; several places are cash-only.
- Best in
- Any season
- Where
- Mott Street & Canal Street, New York, NY 10013
- Official site
- nycgovparks.org
Get off Canal Street
Canal Street itself is the worst of it — counterfeit handbags, crowds, and shops aimed squarely at people who will never come back.
The actual neighborhood is on Mott, Mulberry, Bayard, Pell, Doyers and Elizabeth streets. Doyers Street in particular is a sharp, narrow bend with a genuinely strange history and it is thirty seconds off the main drag.
Columbus Park at the southern end is where the neighborhood actually spends its mornings — tai chi, cards, Chinese opera being sung under a shelter. It's free and it's the most real thing in the area.
What to eat
The historical core is Cantonese, with dim sum, roast meats hanging in windows, and noodle shops. Later arrivals brought Fujianese food — the cheapest good eating in Manhattan, often in small shops with limited English menus and prices that seem like typos.
Hand-pulled noodles, soup dumplings, roast pork and duck over rice, and egg tarts from a bakery are the reliable entry points.
Carry cash. A meaningful number of the best places still don't take cards.
Chinatown or Flushing?
If you have one meal, and you're already downtown: Manhattan's Chinatown for Cantonese and for the neighborhood itself.
If you have an afternoon and care about food above all: Flushing in Queens is the larger, newer, more regionally diverse Chinese food destination and it is better. It is also 35 minutes further out.
Both are worth doing. They are not substitutes for each other.
Getting there
The N, Q, R, W, J, Z or 6 to Canal Street drops you at the northern edge. About 15 minutes from Midtown.
The B or D to Grand Street puts you nearer the middle and is a better entrance.
Walk south from Canal on Mott or Mulberry and the neighborhood improves the further you get from the tourist stretch.
Getting around once you're there
Flat, but the sidewalks are narrow, crowded and often obstructed by market displays and deliveries. Many restaurants are up or down a step and are tightly packed. Canal Street stations are largely not accessible; Grand Street on the B/D is.