Big Wong Energy
Christmas Dinner in Chinatown.
If you’re looking for a party atmosphere in New York City on Christmas Day, head to Chinatown. Everywhere else in the city, you’ll encounter deserted streets and shuttered restaurants—confirmation that everyone else is either out of town; gathering with friends and family; or home by their hearth or steam radiator. Go to Mott Street below Canal and you might think the Giants just won the Super Bowl. Every restaurant is either full and has a line outside the door, and the street is an ongoing skirmish between cars and pedestrians.
The past few years, we’ve made a trip to Chinatown over Christmas. Typically, it was on Christmas Eve, with past destinations being Wo Hop and Great N.Y. Noodletown. This year, circumstances were such that Christmas proper never quite happened, so we ended up there on Christmas Day night, and the choice was Big Wong.
I had been to the Cantonese mainstay, which opened in 1978, only once before and enjoyed it. This was despite my dislike for its specialty, congee, which is an Asian rice porridge. Congee neatly falls in that category of things I do not care for because of texture, including polenta and grits.
