The Last Cha Chaan Teng on the Block

A bitter eulogy for Ming's Caffe.

Over condensed milk toast and honey ginger tea at Ming’s Caffe last fall, my auntie Sui Ling told me that artists need somewhere to live too. I stared out the window at the skaters ripping down Canal Street, Sandy Liang-clad creatives flitting from the third-wave coffee shop to the Chinese-owned deli across the way to sit on the pallets outside and drink fruit ice.

I’d met her at one of the neighborhood’s coziest haunts to discuss what I viewed as an affliction upon the neighborhood she’d grown up (and still lives) in; namely, the proliferation of cheugy designer boutiques on Orchard Street, a $725/night VC-backed hotel in the old Jarmulowsky Bank building, and closure of API-owned businesses in the area. She told me that, at this point, much of the community has moved away from Manhattan’s Chinatown to marginally more affordable rents in places like Bensonhurst, Elmhurst, or Sunset Park. I expected her to share the same outrage for displacement that her daughter, Xola, did, whose commentary included mostly vitriolic observations about any trendy passers-by.

Ming’s in 2018

Ming’s Caffe was the last cha chaan teng on this side of Chinatown. To liken a cha chaan teng, otherwise known as a Hong Kong cafe, to your prototypical American greasy spoon diner wouldn’t be inaccurate—both peddle a vast and affordable menu of ingredient-sharing dishes that represent a place’s casual dining canon and act as a community gathering place, but rather than waffles and sausage, you’ll find curry squid and condensed milk French toast. You might still find waffles and sausage too.

Ben, Ming’s second-generation owner, came over to us and asked us how we were doing; his eyes darted around as he listened, his business owner mind running through the day’s remaining tasks even though the restaurant was largely empty. He smiled as he recognized his regulars, commenting in English on how much Xola had grown since the last time they were in, his accent inflected with the sing-song tones of a native Cantonese speaker. It was a beautiful feeling, to indulge in such a steady moment within a neighborhood so transient.

Though Ming’s had been in business “forever”, as my auntie Lily once put it, the building owners raised the rent just enough to kick Ben out while raising the ceiling on who could afford to leverage the space. Ming’s was a gathering place for old Chinatown aunties and uncles, construction workers, and even the downtown it-kid crowd, who all shared an appreciation for its affordability and lack of pretense. Parcelle Wine, a bar and shop a few doors down with almost certain access to more funds than Ming’s, took over the space earlier this year, quickly standing it back up as a business inaccessible to the surrounding immigrant community. Per Lower East Side news site, The Lo-Down, “the new project will be led by Ronald Yan, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, who’s executive chef at Parcelle, the well-regarded wine bar located at 135 Division St., just a few steps away from the proposed new destination.” Grant “Definitely a White Guy” Reynolds who runs Parcelle, is also listed as a principal. They’ll own the whole block soon, I’m sure.

It’s funny when someone refers to a business as a “project”—as if the goal is to garner a passing grade in class through positive restaurant reviews or high traffic. It’s too open-ended—once this project ends, another will begin somewhere else. Another transient venture growing from the corpse of a former community cornerstone. To think of Ming’s Cafe as a project would have diluted its core contribution to the neighborhood; if Ben had a project, it was only to be a constant within his community, feeding and servicing customers until he either got tired or was priced out. The press around this new place’s grand opening left Ming’s Caffe with mainly footnote mentions, a legacy brushed aside to make room for more clicks and shares.

28 Canal Street always seemed to me a resolute landmark in a fluid place, one quickly being overwritten and rebuilt into a playground for the wealthy. I thought Ming’s Caffe, like Wu’s Wonton King down the block, might be immune to the precarity facing other immigrant-owned institutions in the area. Unlike Wu’s, Ming’s didn’t have the benefit of being a BYO dim sum restaurant, that shallow pool that white people and Chinatown tourists generally love to dip their toes into. Ming’s Caffe closed permanently this past February. It took about 8 months for Parcelle’s wine bar (with those all-important small plates) called Tolo to take over the space. There are 17 items on Tolo’s food menu, none of which will run you under $10 after tax unless you enjoy boiled peanuts. Ming’s Caffe had 308 items on its menu, many of which could entirely sate your hunger for the price of a coconut water at the deli across the street.

The plight of this small corner of Chinatown is born of its erasure; the neighborhood has been colloquially renamed after one of its initial gentrifying businesses (a health food restaurant that doesn’t need to be written about). Last fall, media outlets like Bon Appetit and The New Yorker jumped at the opportunity to write about the area, subtly dissing its influencers while also trying to appear in the know. They came across like Steve Buscemi in 30 Rock (“How do you do, fellow kids?”), and served only to attract more tourists—I once met a visiting Scotsman at Clandestino who had picked this block to stay on because of an article he read in Vanity Fair. Just who is all of this for, anyway? “It’s about a world where money and influence dictate who gets in and who stays out,” posits Yasmin Nair in her poignant culture critique of this neo-hipster daycare. “[It’s] about everyone deciding to ignore obvious questions like, ‘Who’s paying for all this?’ Or, ‘Who are these people anyway, and how did they get here?’” At the risk of spiraling too far down the D*mes Sq*are rabbit hole, I’ll also direct you to this piece by Will Harrison, who surveys and critiques this “grim carnival” taking place in a disappearing Chinatown.

In the last decade, I’ve watched two of the city’s few remaining working-class neighborhoods, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, where my mother and Sui Ling grew up, morph into something unrecognizable to them. I understand that this city must change—as Sui-Ling, who over the decades watched Manhattan’s creative class move from a rapidly gentrifying Greenwich Village to the East Village, down to the Lower East Side and now Chinatown, noted, New York’s very way is change. I am certainly not calling for a return to the Chinatown of decades prior, when my grandmother worked in an East Broadway sweatshop, Asian bodies were seen as disposable (they still are), and the Flying Dragons and Division Street Boys vied for control of the block. But there is a dire need for preservation, regeneration, and stewardship within a culturally rich neighborhood, and the largely white-owned downtown business owner cohort, along with Chinatown mega-landlords and developers, are motivated primarily by money and expansion, all else consigned to oblivion.

Reopening a business at 28 Canal Street with a Chinese head chef and giving its interior decor a modern “Far East” flare does not absolve the owners of overwriting another Chinatown institution in the name of downtown nightlife. The proliferation of liquor licenses is a form of state-sanctioned gentrification and, per WOW Project, provides “legal ways to funnel money from white, wealthy nightlife clientele into the pockets of outside developers.” These venues disproportionately impact communities of color, where income levels rarely match the people these developments attract.

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If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. More and more businesses knowingly appropriate the neighborhood’s countenance, like Tolo’s older neighbor, Kiki’s, opening in an old Chinese print shop and keeping the original awning up. This is an intentional move to cater to upper-class clientele, who do not take an interest in learning about our history and culture but wish only to consume the allure and aesthetics. Tolo, too, has kept Ming’s bright yellow awning, like a gruesome trophy after a successful hunt.

And no, I haven’t been to eat at Tolo yet. I don’t like boiled peanuts.