While New Yorkers can continue to order the restaurant’s food for pickup and delivery (Jing Fong’s Upper West Side offshoot will also remain open), the experience will be lacking. With red-paneled walls, soaring chandeliered ceilings, and rows of giant round tables, the bustling restaurants are not only venues for countless celebrations-birthdays, weddings, and babies’ 100-day milestones-but act as a community hub, a place where news and gossip are shared, where introductions between recent and longtime immigrants are made, and where first-generation Chinese-American kids like myself try to maintain the oft-tenuous ties to our roots. It’s not an exaggeration to say I grew up in those Chinese banquet halls. Depending on where this friend lived, we’d meet on a nearby corner and meander our way to the week’s massive restaurant of choice-usually to what’s currently known as Pacificana, but occasionally to Park Asia or the now closed East Harbor.
Every Sunday, I’d eagerly wait for my mom to wake up and dial the number of a family friend to confirm a time and a place. Growing up in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park-one of NYC’s largest Chinese communities-dim sum was as much a part of my weekly routine as school and Saturday morning cartoons.
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