How to Get a Free Meal at Wo Hop

I promise you this is not a tease.

Wo Hop
17 Mott St.
Chinatown
Open since: 1938 (!!)
Price: $
What to order: Duck chow fun
Jeff's Rating: 9.1/10

In the pantheon of "Chinese-American food," look no further.

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What more could be written about Wo Hop? Much ink has been spilled concerning the Chinatown staple, still standing on 17 Mott Street since 1938. You could browse the quasi-eulogies of a bygone era, celebrating Wo Hop as the last great Cantonese joint in a time where Szechuan and Hunan reign supreme over the New York Chinese food scene. You could also read the “rivalry reviews,” a series of articles painting the fans of the upstairs and downstairs versions of the restaurant as akin to foot soldiers in feuding gangs (downstairs is superior, obviously). Speaking of, there are also the supposed sightings of mafia members dining there at 3 in the morning, not to mention the local celebrities and all manner of Central Casting Law and Order stand-in types. And of course, there’s the restaurant itself, a basement room that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t changed its décor in over half a century, yet seems timeless rather than antiquated.  

The most interesting thing about all these talking points is that they’re the same ones people have brought up for years.  Check out the reviews spanning decades, all lavishing praise on Wo Hop, “not only for the food, but for the atmosphere.” Look up “Wo Hop” on YouTube, and you’ll see a series of nearly identical videos stretching back to at least the 1990s of people with vague outer borough accents recording their experience, chronicling their journey to the promised land and alluding to those same somewhat-hackneyed stereotypes.

In that sense, Wo Hop can really be defined as a cultural memory. It’s a piece of New York’s collective unconscious: the archetypal Chinese restaurant. It’s the place where your parents went to eat Chinese food, and their parents before them. And it is, of course, delicious.

But for those of you who haven’t had the fortune of familiarizing yourselves, allow me to set the scene. It’s mid-December, and the holidays are right around the corner. I’m just off the A train at Canal Street and on the way to meet the Restaurant Club – yes, the one that lends its name to this blog – for an early Jewish Christmas. I’m somewhat late, as usual (I blame the subway, as usual), and when I arrive on Mott I see a crowd spilling up from Wo Hop’s red-tiled entry corridor and out onto the street.

It's a Friday night, and the restaurant is bumping, but luckily some of my more punctual companions have camped out on the stairs. I join them and we wait. There are no reservations here. A chill sets in on this 35-degree December evening, and we wait some more. We start to shiver. The fluorescent lights beckon. I glance at an ATM just inside the entryway to the restaurant. Wo Hop is cash only, and now seems like as good a time as ever to warm up and withdraw.

After about a half an hour, the Restaurant Club finally gets a table. The tables at Wo Hop are a sort of pale Formica material with fake wood trim. Faux marble panels adorn the walls and don’t stand even the most cursory of eye tests – that is, when you can see them. Throughout most of the restaurant, they’re covered by fading headshots of famous or not-so-famous actors and first responder patches from Long Island and Westchester, along with mirrors to make the subterranean space look just a tad bigger. Elderly waiters wearing powder blue jackets and scrawling handwritten checks in Chinese frantically dart from table to table with comically large trays of food.  Getting their attention is difficult, especially tonight, where the ambient noise of the crowded room approaches a low rumble. It doesn’t help matters that we’re all starving.

We eventually order, and it’s well worth the wait.

The food at Wo Hop is the platonic ideal of takeout Chinese food – the waiters weave through crowds as they bring us steaming piles of duck chow fun, chicken lo mein, and wonton soup. Crispy fish in a white sauce and beef with broccoli in a brown sauce come out next, followed by a sort of chicken and eggplant dish that I didn’t catch the name of, but that I’m guessing they call something along the lines of “chicken with eggplant.” We may have miscalculated here on the amount of food to order, but that’s what to-go boxes are for.

The duck chow fun is warm and comforting – it’s monotone and the color of lightly stained wood, with small beads of condensing steam beginning to form on the wide noodles. The lo mein, a bit darker, but just as familiar. The noodle dishes pack the sort of flavor that could only come from being charred in a wok that’s been cooking these same dishes for over three quarters of a century. The duck and chicken are each tender, but not overly so, and the duck in particular conveys an almost earthy flavor.

The fish dish is very good, but not great. As expected, the breading on the fish becomes just a bit soggy under the weight of the sauce, but the fish itself is white, flaky, and breaks apart easily without a knife. The beef tastes fantastic, full-bodied, and again, like something you might have had before, though its broccoli accompaniment leaves a bit to be desired, largely flavorless under the savory sauce. No matter, I’m not at a place like this for vegetables. The soup is piping hot (always a good sign), a clear, slightly salty broth with juicy wontons larger than golf balls floating patiently, waiting to be eaten.

The conversation leaps from topic to topic, and we speak in slightly raised voices to be heard over the din of the crowd. Holiday plans – whether Mitchell, Claire, and I would travel to Florida for Christmas, or only for New Year’s Eve. First date ideas – is a stand up comedy show “too much” when you haven’t even met the person before? Megan’s thoughts on the best ice cream in the city (the subject of a future post, no doubt).

And then, I see it out of the corner of my vision. Mitchell’s eyes get large and I turn just in time to watch it in slow motion. A patron, hunched over to tie his shoe. A waiter, not seeing the obstacle in time, colliding with the man and slowly, ever so slowly tipping towards me. There’s nothing I can do, not enough time to get away – the waiter wobbles, a sturdy oak tree giving one last shudder before the lumberjack’s axe strikes it for a final time to bring it down, except this tree has no leaves, only a plate of iridescent yellow pineapple chicken sledding off the waiter’s tray and onto my torso.

I can see the individual fibers of the pineapple rings adorning the top of the plate as the dish careens off the tray. And then the impact. Hot. And sticky. Somewhere between aloe vera and napalm, the pineapple sauce adheres to every part of my body. It drenches my hair. It totals my knit scarf. My sweater, surely, will have to go to the dry cleaner. My shoes, immediately, become glued to the floor.

My misery continues. Every earthquake must have an aftershock, and in a cruel twist of fate, some sort of demented Christmas miracle, the pineapple chicken was followed closely behind by a bowl of freshly prepared fried rice.

An avalanche ensues. Thousands of rice grains pour onto me and stick to the pineapple sauce like flies in a trap. I am tarred and feathered. No part of the left side of my body is spared – I look like I’ve been rolled in rice like some sort of human sized hand roll. The waiter pats me down with a dishrag apologetically, achieving nothing save for spreading the sauce deeper into the fibers of my clothes – it’s not his fault, and we both know it. I silently gaze around the table and lock eyes with each member of the Restaurant Club before slowly turning to the congealing pineapple-rice mixture that my body has become. I glance up at the waiter one more time.

The meal was free.