The Art Of The Slurp

The Chinese-food scene has never been better, and the elegant Hunan Slurp in the East Village is the latest reason why.

- Adam Platt

NEW YORK’S INCREASINGLY pricey, fraught dining landscape is filled with many challenges these days, but for lovers of that old totem of the local dining scene, Chinese food, the eating has never been better. Thanks to an influx of sophisticated young chefs and restaurateurs from the old country, the city is awash in more traditional and fusion delicacies than at any time since the Great Sesame Noodle Awakening of the mid-1960s. This is especially true down in the East Village, a region that my colleagues at the Underground Gourmet have christened “Chinatown North.” Wander the avenues below East 14th Street and you’ll find Yunnanese rice-noodle restaurants (Little Tong, Dian Kitchen), Taiwanese beef-soup parlors (the Tang, Ho Foods), newfangled “dry pot” and shellfish-boil establishments (Málà Project, Le Sia), and one-stop shops serving a veritable festival of the kind of dumplings, rice pots, and sticky-sweet desserts that are popular on the streets of booming food capitals like Taipei, Beijing, and Hong Kong.