![]() The result is exotic without being cliched or garish. They spent “millions” to create a three-level, 21st-century Hwa Yuan. “We knew it would be a lot of work, but we decided to do it 2¹/₂ years ago,” James adds. ![]() “My dad knew so much of Manhattan’s Chinese food was crap,” says James - undercut by immigration laws that made it almost impossible for chefs from China to move here, among other factors. There are fewer eateries of any kind than in the past, and many new ones serve Japanese, Vietnamese or Thai food.Ĭhen Lieh was quick to take Chen’s advice. He said Chinatown needed new restaurants” - which it did. “At first, we thought we’d put in another bank, the easiest kind of tenant.”īut then, James recalls, “Wellington Chen, the head of the Chinatown business improvement district, suggested to my father that he reopen the restaurant. “The building was a complete money pit,” says James, a son of Chen Lieh who is an investment banker, as well as a partner in the new Hwa Yuan. ![]() Inside the new Hwa Yuan space Stefano Giovannini When the lease was up a few years ago, the family wasn’t sure what to do with it. The Tang family owned the building and leased it to a Bank of China branch. Shorty passed away at age 50 in 1974, and Chen Lieh took over until it closed. He plunged into his father’s business at Hwa Yuan, “doing every job,” he told us. He came to New York in 1955 and, with the help of a “garmento,” his grandson James Tang says, launched Hwa Yuan in a former textile factory.Īlthough Shorty moved to the US when Chen Lieh was 13, he wasn’t able to leave Taiwan until he was 21. Shorty Tang was born in Sichuan province and fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the Communists took over mainland. The seminal dish - invented by Chen Lieh’s late father, the legendary “Shorty” Tang - helped catalyze the great regional-Chinese boom that also introduced New Yorkers to Hunanese, Fujian and Shanghai-style cooking. James Tang (left) with his father, chef and owner Chen Lieh Tang. The master, who’s 65, is back in the kitchen at this unrecognizably larger and more opulent version. Now, it’s been spectacularly reborn - with chef Chen Lieh Tang’s spicy cold sesame noodles on the menu. The restaurant, beloved by Chinese food lovers, including David Letterman, Woody Allen and Steve McQueen, closed in late 1992. The Sichuanese noodle I’ve been chasing since “Cheers” went off the air is back at last where it belongs - 42 East Broadway, site of the original Hwa Yuan, which opened in 1968 and pioneered the craze for fiery Sichuanese in a city that then knew “Chinese” mostly as starchy, Americanized Cantonese.
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