NYC NOW - May 22, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams continues his push to find new shelter spaces for migrants, while Governor Hochul asks the federal government for help in expediting work permits for them. And, WNYC’s David Furst chats with senior food critic at Eater, Robert Sietsema about what appears to be a new trend of Chinese restaurants coming to Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan.

NYC. Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Monday, May 22nd. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. On WNYC, hundreds of migrants continue to arrive in the city every day. And Mayor Eric Adams is scrambling to find new shelter spaces. WNIC's Elizabeth Kim explains why his response is increasingly under criticism. The city has considered cruise ships, tents, office spaces, and even a jail on Rikers. Mayor Adams has earned sympathy for dealing with a humanitarian crisis with little help from Washington. But following a botched plan to use school gyms, some New Yorkers are losing patience.

It's an issue that could wind up defining Adams as a leader. He's been criticized for poor communication and polarizing rhetoric, describing migrants as undermining the city. A spokesperson for the mayor says Adams welcomes all suggestions and that he needs solutions, not complaints. Governor Kathy Holcomb wants migrants arriving to New York to get legal work permits faster when she's asking the federal government for help. Right now getting a legal work permit takes months for asylum seekers, but putting them in tough spots, Hockel says there are thousands of jobs ready to be filled, including those in agriculture. There are over 5,000 farm jobs.

5,000 farm jobs open as we speak. The cows don't wait to be milked. The plants need to be maintained and harvested in a few months. The crops. We've more than 5,000 food service jobs right now. In New York City, about 42,000 migrants are under the city's care. 72 and mostly sunny right now, sunny and 73 for a high today. Tomorrow's sunny and 70, kind of a theme all week.

dry, sunshine, high temperatures in the 70s. Again, 72 and mostly sunny now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. As we're already starting to make lunch plans around here, we turn our attention to Manhattan's Chinatown, but not the one bordering Little Italy and the Lower East Side. Food critic Robert Sietzima argues that a new Chinatown is forming in Hell's Kitchen. The senior critic at Eater, New York, talked with WNYC's David. first. Now, you just wrote about this for Eater, New York, and you say that when it comes to restaurants, this is really a neighborhood in transition. It is indeed. 10 years ago, I was walking the strip of

Hell's Kitchen on 9th Avenue between 37th and 53rd, which is one of the city's greatest restaurant rows. I counted 33 Thai restaurants on that strip and, you know, kind of spilling off onto the side streets a bit sometimes. I would estimate there's probably about 130 restaurants altogether on that strip. So it was a large proportion, and indeed, that was one of two or three destinations at the time for Thai food. Unfortunately, the number of Thai restaurants has slipped as of two weeks ago to 13, and they are now outnumbered by two with a total of 15 Chinese restaurants. some sophisticated, some old-fashioned, some aimed at the masses, some aimed at the upscale Chinese food consumer.

Why do you think there is this new concentration of Chinese restaurants here? I can think of three reasons. One of them, perhaps the most obvious, is that the new Chinese consulate is at 12th Avenue and 42nd Street. This is the closest strip, concentrated strip of restaurants where people who have business at the consulate, and it's a lot of people, can find Chinese food to eat. Number two, it is so near all of these different transportation hubs, and historically, the Chinese American population has really spread out across the five boroughs and across Jersey and Westchester. So here we are on 9th Avenue near Times Square and its subways, near the Port Authority, and near Penn Station. And the last reason is that Chinese food has become wildly popular, even more popular than certain other kinds of foods.

It's fighting neck and neck with Mexican food to be the city's favorite kind of food. All right. So tell us about the food. What should we check out? Let's take Big Wong, which just appeared about three weeks ago near the corner of 47th Street 9th Avenue. Big Wong, you may recognize as a standard restaurant to go to in Chinatown. It's a Cantonese and Chinese American restaurant,

specializing in ducks in the window and wantan soup and chalmain. So they have this classic cuisine, Chinese American, and they have brought it bodily up to 9th Avenue. There is also another place called tasty hand-pulled noodles, where the original is on Dyer Street, and they specialize in those noodles where people are like pulling them apart as you watch and slapping them with a loud, resounding smack onto the table. And this one is called tasty hand-pulled noodles too.

Exactly. The second branch, and once again, what a surprise that it got out of the original Chinatown. And the first version appears not in Sunset Park, not in Homecrest, not in Flushing, but on 9th Avenue. Whether you want to call this Chinatown or not, I don't know. The restaurants are spread out, but there's a lot of them and they're very good. But there are no Chinese markets. So people are not shopping for vegetables and fish here. And maybe one more place?

Tim Hoan is the famous dim sum restaurant from Hong Kong that caused a sensation when it appeared on 4th Avenue. And what a surprise. The second version is right there on 9th Avenue at 43rd Street. And the dim sum that comes out of Hong Kong is a little bit different than our own. I mean, I'm very, very proud of New York's dim sum. this is a little bit different, like they put sugar on their pork bough. And also, chai, which is down at 37th and 9th, it's one of the most upscale Chinese restaurants in the entire city. Just fascinating place. Now, these new restaurants opening along 9th Avenue, does this mean restaurants are closing in Manhattan's

traditional Chinatown? It does, unfortunately, although there's a lot of energy still there and there's new kinds of places opening. We've seen more Hong Kong-style coffee houses and a lot of things that are like from the get-go cross-cultural. You know, and I believe that no matter how much tumult occurs in Chinatown and turnover of businesses, that there will always remain the touristic core and the lower couple of blocks of Mott Street, where we have places like Pings, you know, in Namwa, around the corner on Doyer Street. There will always be that picturesque 19th century Chinatown still lurking there. Robert Seitzim, a senior critic at Eater, New York.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, David. And for more information on the places Robert just mentioned along 9th Avenue in Hells Kitchen, you can visit WNYC.org. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe.

you get your podcasts. More this evening.