 When you talk about the future of Chinatown on the future of Chinatown, and I do not think that the future of Chinatown is changing with a lot of new concepts. Are people ever surprised to see a Chinese girl making pizza? Food is the main reason why most people visit Chinatown, New York. So when you talk about the neighborhood evolving, you have to look at the new guys that are opening restaurants. It'll give you an idea of who's leading the next generation. So which classic spots will stay? Maybe there's new classics. Will it all be ran by hipsters? Maybe it's Asian hipsters. Well, let's go find out because this is the future of Chinatown. All right, you guys, you guys know the Poplar Club is all about reimagining Cantonese classics through an ABC lens. This is Gantau Aohal, Gantau New He, Mandarin, except of course it's been reimagined. It's got a few more spices on it, but as you can see for the most part, you can make out that that is beef chow fun. Over here though, you see something that looks much more southern on the outside. This is actually Ziyu yimgai, almost flavored things with scallion biscuits, but this looks more southern than anything. So let's get into it. I think the main thing that you can tell right here is that the haoh fun, this rice noodle has been burned, it's rolled up and that's adding something completely new to it. Of course you've got big thick pieces of beef here. You guys know a lot of Chinatown spots, which I love. Do beef too good and they're not using the highest grade, but they've got the high grade stuff here. Honestly, this is one of the best beef chow funs I've ever had. Like we said, this dish looks a little bit more southern, but you can see the chung right here, the green onion inside of the biscuit. We're going to go ahead and dip this inside of the jelly. This actually, I believe, is some raspberry jam infused with laokanma, southern fried chicken, but with some Chinese spices. I'd say this is almost 75% western, 25% Asian. I think everybody's going to love these two dishes. One's a little bit more Asian, one's a little bit more western, but they're both delicious. So David had one dish that was more western looking and one dish that was more eastern looking. This is my eastern dish. This is your classic haoha, like their take on the walnut prawns. And then here I have the drunken chicken, and this looks like a green sauce maybe from Latin America, but let me tell you this, this is blended up ginger scallion sauce. All right. This is a tiger prawn, walnut prawn, a little bit of a spicy aioli instead of your just regular, you know, sweet mayo, which is still good. And I still might like that a lot, but let's try this one. Those might be some of the biggest prawns I've ever had in a honey walnut shrimp. I know everybody likes the rock shrimp at Nobu, Budakon, and say less, but man, you got to try these here at Potluck Club. Here you got the drunken roast chicken. I know this green sauce kind of looks like a Peruvian, like Ajiverde, but this is a ginger scallion oil. Let me just lather that on. Let me just bathe you. Yeah, there you go, chicken. Yes. Perfectly super juicy. I would say this dish to me, because I really love the Peruvian roast chicken. And by the way, like all cultures have a roast chicken. I would say it almost feels 50-50 to me as far as the chicken goes. It's still really juicy. I can taste some of that roasted five spice, but man, something about it is definitely a little bit new, and I'm loving it, man. It's super juicy. It looks cool. Look at this sauce. Now to end it off with something fresh and sweet. I know that this is usually an appetizer, but I'm going with this last. This is one of their salads right here. It's got its own twist, man. It's got a lot of fruit and dragon fruit in there. By the way, if you've never eaten endives in a salad, they're super juicy. What I would say, man, Cori and the team, what they're doing here is so cool, because a lot of people try to pull off fusion, and a lot of people want to build this cool, new vibe and blend their culture with that culture and be like, oh, this is what I ate growing up. But I don't know, this iteration, the way they pulled it off is top notch. It comes from a real place. They're really from Chinatown. They're really Cantonese, but they really did grow up in New York, so they have all these other influences, Mediterranean, Italian, a little Latin maybe. Guys, I think it's so cool, and it's called Potluck Club. You know what potlucks are. It's bringing people together. So I think Perry's having a potluck there right now, essentially. I'm cooking for about 10 years now, and I'm heavily influenced by Mediterranean and Italian cuisine. There are a lot of similarities between the two, farm to table, and I just use all that knowledge and apply it to all the dishes that you have here today. You know, this has been a passion project. I've been working with my friends, revolving friends, if you're a young teenager, we're all kids from Chinatown, and we wanted to build a space that kind of truly represented us. And most Chinatowns around the world are Cantonese, and one of the most important things in any sort of Cantonese enclave is the Tatanteng, which is the Hong Kong cafe. And we're here at Cha Kee, and when we're talking about the future of Chinatown, we're also talking about the future of technology. So here you sit down at the table, you got the QR code, and we're going to order off the app, and then the food's going to come to your table. Art, you guys, to show you the future of Chinatown, we also have to show you old spots that are renovating and upgrading and trying to be more cutting edge. We're at Ta Kee, this is an elevated Tatanteng, you know, Tatantengs are so essential to the Cantonese enclave experience. Andrew, we have some old things, and then we also have some modern things, Andrew. This is a truffle toast. Andrew, you can't find this in every Tatanteng. No, no, no, guys, and just like any cuisine, they are going through an evolution. And we are going in, this is something that a lot of people probably have never had or never would believe would be at a Tatanteng. A quintessential dish of HK cafes is something having to do with toast. Nice simple white pepper kick, a little bit of truffle, so good. Of course, we have the most classic soups you can get at a Tatanteng. I've got the cream of mushroom. And then here I have the classic HK borscht, comes from the British, from the Russians, you know how it goes, guys. David, I'm shocked that your favorite version of borscht is made by Chinese people. Tomatoes, sweet beefy, can't go wrong. Last but not least, Andrew, we've got the Coca-Cola chicken wings, the hola kaya. And then I have the satay gong zai min with an egg on top. Is Coca-Cola just like the best marinade or something? Like we said, a lot of the future in Chinatown actually lies with the owners that are running these traditional spots, but just kind of updating it, changing the decor and, you know, adding some new twists to their menu. Our next spot on the future of Chinatown is hypebeast.com's HBX store on Division Street, guys. I know this is a very unassuming street. You would not think that this street where mogul conglomerate is opening up a retail store on here, but it is. It's Asian-owned. They've got a coffee shop. They've got everything from Japan, Korea, all types of cool stuff. Let's check it out. And of course, they got the mochi donuts from Alimama. Hypebeast hype, beans hype, donuts. All right, I'm here at the brand new HBX store. I'm about to try the Forest Matcha Latte from Sawada Hiroshi, a famous Japanese coffee maker on Japan. Oh, even the coffee's hype, they got to tell you why the coffee's hype is... Man, that matcha is super high grade. There's two shots of espresso. It's actually really tasty. Got a nice little sweetness on top. Shout out to Sawada Hiroshi. There's a popular bakery in Chinatown called Alimama. They made special-size mochi donuts here for HBX. I'm about to dip it in the matcha latte. Guys, even if you come here, even if you don't cop any clothes, cop the donut in the latte. All right, you guys, as much as Chinatown is changing, sometimes they're just remixing old spots. Today with us, we have Marco NYC. It's good, what's good? Marco, you tell us about West New Malaysia because we just moved locations, but you've been coming here for, like, decades. So it used to be in a tunnel where only the locals knew about. And now they have a new location. It's awesome because you're getting the tourists now here. I've never seen Australian people eat Malaysian food on any of the tunnel, but they even get it here on Bay Art Street. All right, Marco, man, we got the food here. It's feeling super Malaysian because we got the giant prawns and aromatic sauce. I've never heard of the word aromatic before, and those shrimp are gigantic. All right, they even give you hand wipes because they know you're about to get down and dirty. So let's grab it. Oh, my God. Marco's been here for 20 years, but he never tried this. Never had the fun. I think about New West, but you never had this dish. Come on. All right, I'm about to pop off the shrimp. Let's go. Giant prawns. Wow, it's dripping. Wow, I got some skin on there, but you know what? It's all good. Look, we got another Fumbro classic guest here. Jack Leigh-Yang in the building. What is the time? I don't know how y'all had... It's really cool. They updated that brand. I'm trying new dishes I've never had before, and you guys are opening up my palette. Oh, the classic satay skewers. Let's get it. I love their sauce. It's chunky. It's not smooth. It's not like that liquid sauce. It's feeling authentic. There's just something about food on a stick. It's just, I don't know. It just tastes so much better. It's fine. I haven't had this in like five years. Okay, Marco, you got the rode canai. Is it any different than the one that you used to have? We're gonna find out. I mean, it looks the same. I'm definitely the only Italian guy in New York City that eats Malaysian food. Come on. I'm one of a kind. I'm one of a kind. I love how I can taste the Indian, the Malay, the Chinese. I can taste it all. I love it. And last but not least, we got our final dishes. We got the Malaysian one ton mean. All right. Go ahead, try it, man. Tell me how it does compare to the regular canton. The regular canton one ton. Is the Malaysian one any different? Soup is different. It's way better here, actually. I'm gonna say this. The most underrated wonton soup in the city. All right, here I got the fried egg tofu, the yuk jih tau fu, and man, this is a classic dish. Oftentimes you'll probably eat it over like fried chow mein, and that's really crispy, but we just eat it straight up. This tofu is made in-house and fried in-house. Oh, spoke a little too soon. That was not the last. House combination of rice. That's the aulam, kale aulam. Man, look at how much beef brisket they're giving you here. A little fatty, a little lean. Can't hurt anybody. Yo, I feel like I'm at a hawker stall right now. That was so good. I would say maybe that was my favorite dish here. Killed it. And that's one thing that we wanted to do in this video is not just cover just the nice new spots. This new West Malaysia actually is not new. It was an OG spot, but it was in a weird little alleyway, kinda tucked away from everybody, and now they kinda got a revamp, so you think it's new, but it's not. It's the same people, and that's what I love. Yeah, I mean, listen, they definitely rebranded themselves, and I think they're getting more people that aren't from here to check the spot out, to see how great this spot is, and I think that's the beauty of it. And also Chinatown's evolving, so that's just, you know. And this still does qualify as the cheap eat, cause the price is pretty good. Hey, it's the same heart and soul that it was from before. This goes to show that Chinatown is evolving. This restaurant used to be 6'9", it used to be open till like 6 a.m. in the morning, and now it's this new Malaysian restaurant that I used to eat at the tunnel, and it's just happy to see that it's still around, and it's upgrading, it has some new recipes, it has some new ingredients. When it comes to the future of Chinatown, I think New West Malaysia is one of the models where it was an old spot, they had the recipes down, they got their market down, they have their audience, but they're just giving it a new look, and they're maybe able to charge us a little bit more, but elevate the experience, and I think that's totally cool, because you know what, that's still someone from Chinatown, still staying in Chinatown. All right, our next spot is a spot called Jangnan on Bowery. It took the place of one of our favorite old Dongbei Shao Kao spots friendship, BBQ, but it's here now part of the same group that comes from Flushing, and their goal is to serve like modern Chinese dishes that they're eating in China, that's why aesthetically, it also looks like a restaurant in China. And by the way guys, Jangnan just means the area immediate south of the Yangtze River, let's go. All right everybody, the food has came here at Jangnan, and there's so many dishes that are flying out, but I'm just gonna start with some of my favorites right here. We have this steamed shrimp with garlic sauce over vermicelli. Now, when it comes to whether this is Zhejiang food, or Zhejiang food, it's definitely gonna be a mix, but this is more on the Zhejiang side. Check this out. This is also something you'll find at a lot of Cantonese restaurants, so I think it could also be Cantonese. Steamed shrimp and vermicelli. This is one of my favorite dishes in the world, but I don't order it that often because it's kind of expensive. Steamed shrimp with garlic and vermicelli. Woo! All right, here we got some braised duck, and this is definitely gonna be coming from your Nanjing slash Zhejiang region, where they really, really value their braised poultry. In classic Nanjing style, it's gonna be served a little bit cold, room temperature, but it's still nice. It's got this layer of gelatin, very salty and a little bit sweet. So you have to understand, when you come to a Zhejiang restaurant, you're actually kind of usually eating a lot of like royalty food, so this is not necessarily the food that your mom made at home because this right here is a very delicate, steamed egg with truffle on the inside. Never had Chinese steamed egg with that super umami little truffle oil on top. That's crazy. Yo! Bro! He did not wanna warn us at all. Everybody, so just because it's called dangnan, they also have dishes from all over China. This one is definitely gonna be representing your Beijing region. This is a spicy cumin lamb dish that I actually had, I had it in the Hu Tongs before. It's got a lot of peppers. It comes on a hot-ass plate and lots of onions. Beijing lamb. Some of the capitals of the dynasties was located in Jiangsu. Some of them were located in Beijing. Obviously right now it's in Beijing and obviously the Beijing one got more Mongolian influence. And even Hu Tong is a Mongolian word, by the way. This is fire. As you guys may or may not know, we are a quarter Shanghainese. It's on Hainan. And here we go. This is the Longjing Shrimp, very classic Shanghainese dish. Some people think this dish might have no flavor, but honestly it's so subtle and it's so delicate. It really brings you back to how a shrimp should taste. Obviously these are like kind of like imperial soups. This reminds me almost of a Beijing imperial soup. So yeah, I mean, obviously you cannot find this in Chinatown until now. Honestly, you can see that the quality's there and the prices are gonna reflect the quality because this is a royal dish with some royal prices. As you guys may know from previous videos, Jiangnan cuisine is more of the royal cuisine from the Jiangsu Nanjing region. The knife work is very highly prized. It's called a squirrel fish because it looks like a pine cone and squirrels eat pine cones. You see the connection. I probably have this dish at like five different spots in Chinatown and honestly this is ranking like pretty high up there near number one, but to be fair it is also one of the most expensive. One of the things I think that they set up to accomplish here at Jiangnan and I think they are executing on it. It's just cooking a lot of dishes you cannot get at home. These are banquet style dishes. You do need a pro chef with a pro kitchen to execute these. And listen guys, they're doing a pretty good spot on job of Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and a little bit of Cantonese food. And by the way guys, there's no way you're cooking Peking duck at home, I guarantee it. Peking duck here at Jiangnan. I just realized that pineapple works in Peking duck. Guys, I'm splitting the pineapple up. I've never had pineapple in my Peking duck before I got to take a picture. Hit them with a little bit of strong. Tan man, Zhang. I think you can put anything in Peking duck now. It is now reaching sandwich level. Look guys, we're in Guangdong, we're all the way in Shanghai, now Nanjing, now Beijing. We got all the provinces covered and they're all executed so well. Very impressive. And I do not think that the future of Chinatown is just these new elevated spots manned by some hot shot chef. Sometimes you just gotta pay homage and respect and just acknowledge that some of the most delicious, if not the most delicious food in Chinatown is at these traditional banquet spots. You know, classic HK Guangzhou, you know, chef's 70 years old pings. It's been around for 20 years. You are looking at a Cantonese, guangcheng hai, which is just a, you know, guangcheng crab, you know, that's the flavor, ginger scallion. This is a vegetarian one. This is just hall fun with a little bit of egg on top. This is egg whites right here. This is an incredibly difficult dish to make if you really know what went into it. Of course, you've got a sea food, seal my. And of course, you've got the Cantonese scallops. Listen guys, this is a lot of people's favorite way to eat crab in the entire world. You look at the expensive wrapper spots, Hakusam Budokan, they're all cooking it some variation of this way. It ain't pretty, but it tastes beautiful. As with any traditional Cantonese spot, the primary emphasis of all the proteins is gonna be seafood, poisin, or mandarin, haishian. Listen guys, some of these big banquet halls come and some of them they go, but the ones that stick around for 20, 30, 40, 50 years like pings, they're here for a reason. Here we have the egg white with shrimp and crab roe. Such a delicate dish, got a little pine nuts on top. There is a traditional, this right here is a traditional dish because it's super, super light in flavor. I know a lot of the new chefs, they want to throw this and that, those spices in there, this sauce, this reduction, whatever, but sometimes you can't beat the classic. All right, here you got a stir-fried hall fun dish. It's not gongchang hall, but it's very, very similar, but they keep the rolls together and that's what I like guys. I mean, you got all different types of dishes here at Pings, man. Mm. You guys know, we have gone to a lot of those like new hipster chef spots and man, I think the food is great, but a lot of them aren't cooking this dish. So who's going to do it for the next generation? Huh? Cause some of these chefs are kind of old. $40 a pound, it's worth it. Let me put a little scallie on top. Oh, good man. Classy. When you talk about the future of Chinatown, you can't just talk about these brand new concepts that are coming from China or these brand new like ABC kind of fusion updated concepts. You've got to talk about elevated toy saun food and that's what Uncle Luz is doing. Obviously the low waqio, as they call themselves, the older diaspora Chinese that were mostly toy saun that built up Chinatown for the past like 120 years, they have their own subdivision of Cantonese food that's kind of different. And we are looking at three dishes right now. We are looking at garlic chicken. This dish is a 10 out of 10 bangerad. Didn't even need to try it. Let me tell you that. Look how juicy it is. These are actually two dishes that me and you have never had before. Yeah, guys, this is a garlic chive stir fry and here you kind of have salted fish and clams and then here you have this silver fish dish. Now I know these dishes look similar, but guys, garlic chive stir fry, man. It's a very, very Cantonese food. I mean, Andrew, it kind of goes to show you that even some of the deep cut more like, I guess, village toy saun foods, me and you are not fully familiar with it. Guys, and what I like about it is that, you know, this is a type of food that people always come to Chinatown for, but yes, at some point, some of the decor is going to need to be updated, you know, for the future generations. So this is definitely part of the future of Chinatown. Oh my goodness, you guys, I think that this is probably one of the best dishes in New York City right now. Look how juicy that is. Let's go. Crispy garlic chicken. That's a tzatziki, Andrew. It's tzatziki fire because it's fire. Now this is a dish I didn't even really grow up eating. These are clams with exo and black bean sauce with the garlic chive stir fry. Let's go. Just gonna scoop it in my mouth. Andrew, we're looking at the steamed chilean sea bass and with lots of copious amounts of gherm chung on top, which is the ginger scallion. I know this is your favorite, but I think that it's so important to have modern toy saun spots because people love that hop-wool hop-lee, wall hop vibe, but it's sort of in that lineage, but it's only like modern derivative. Guys, Uncle Luz is widely being known as one of the best new spots in Chinatown that's also keeping it traditional. I think every Chinatown in America could use the Uncle Luz. So the future of Chinatown is gonna have all types of Asian businesses and even some non-Asian businesses, but one type of restaurant that Koreans and Chinese can agree on opening is Japanese spots. This spot is a brand new, kind of mid to higher mid-level yakiniku and omakase level. Guys, I'm gonna start with the sushi. One of the chefs is from Fujian and one of the chefs is from Japan. Let's go with the salmon, guys. They cut the slits in it so the soyscots could seep into it. Looks really good. I have noticed that Fujini's own sushi spots have gotten way better over the years and this is like the nicest build-out I've ever seen, guys. What I got was an omakase and barbecue set for 88 bucks. So I'm gonna get some meat and I got some sushi here. Sushi is solid. All right, we got rin oiling up the yakiniku grill, guys. Yakiniku is definitely something new to any Chinatown that I've ever personally been to. I know sometimes they're Korean barbecue spots but yakiniku, as you can see, the vacuum actually sucks inwards so there's really no flame that emanates. Japanese yakiniku in Chinatown. It's a little bit different than Korean barbecue, guys. You don't have all the side dishes and stuff like that. If you guys are familiar with Japanese yakiniku, you'll know that it's extremely similar to Korean barbecue. However, it's definitely a lot lighter. The sauces are a little bit lighter. There's less sesame oil dips. There's none of the samjang but what I am going to do is they kind of give you what seems to be some panjang. They give you some kind of like jalapenos. Definitely some people are gonna like yakiniku over Korean barbecue. I do think it's a different experience. It's a lot more quiet, nice, like Japanese spots are but I could see a lot of people still liking Korean barbecue too. One cool thing about this spot is that although it is Japanese, it may not be 100% Japanese because they do give you kimchi and this kind of like cumin spice on the side. You know, they are in Chinatown after all so it's okay to fuse stuff a little bit. Overall, I think one of the futures of Chinatown are Chinese-owned, non-Chinese restaurants and especially high-end concepts like this. Guys, I can see more of them coming. I mean, look at the quality. You guys, this is kind of like a very popular flavor right now, strawberry, matcha, creme brulee. You see it in boba's all the time but here's the real thing. You know what, it's not Chinese cuisine but I'm sure Gladys in Chinatown. As we've been documenting in this video guys, Chinatown is changing with a lot of new concepts. However, sometimes there is also time for old concepts to get remixed in a more Chinatown way. So for example, Elias Pizza was around for like 15 years but you gotta take a look at the new ownership. A pepperoni slice. Amy's making pizzas here at LES Pizza. Shout out to Amy. Amy, I think you are the only Asian girl pizza maker maybe in Manhattan. Amy, are people ever surprised to see a Chinese girl making pizza? Yeah. What did they say? It's like, is there any Chinese food here? What do you love about making pizza? Like what draws you to it? It's fun most of the time because you're learning new things and I like to learn new things myself. So, and my dad's a chef so I do like to learn like making new things and all of that. All right, so we're on the outskirts of Chinatown. We're in the LES and I'm eating a pepperoni pizza made by a Chinese American. Great job Amy. To be honest, every new spot is bringing something different adding to this ever-evolving melting pot of Chinatown stew. While the future of Chinatown will not only be traditional Cantonese or even Chinese, that doesn't mean it still won't be Chinatown. What always made this neighborhood unique was its inclusion of other cultures of foods, especially those from the larger diaspora. As long as people got the community in mind and the products are good, then the future is looking bright.