Potluck Club – Chinatown's childhood, replated

Potluck Club sits at the point where Chinatown, the Lower East Side and Nolita run into one another, and the restaurant wears that overlap easily. Potluck Club is a Cantonese-American restaurant located in the bustling cross-section of Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and Nolita. Located at 133 Chrystie St., Potluck Club is a Cantonese-American restaurant that opened for business in July 2022. It was built by co-owner Cory Ng together with childhood friends Kimberly Ho, Justin Siu and Ricky Nguyen, with Zhan Chen as executive chef and Peter Chen as sous chef, his brother. The menu and the room both draw on what it felt like growing up in Chinatown — round tables built for sharing, a dining room that borrows its visual language from Hong Kong cinema, and cooking that lets Cantonese staples sit beside ingredients its young chefs picked up elsewhere in New York. It holds the MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, the Guide's distinction for good quality, good value cooking, in the 2025 selection.

01The room and the setting

The room doesn't undersell its references. The stylish room leans on a Hong Kong cinema motif, with posters and stills from classic films and a glowing marquee above the chef's station. Round tables fill the floor, built for the kind of family-style eating a 'potluck' implies, and the drinks list carries its own in-joke: a cocktail named for the hair-curler-crowned landlady character from the Stephen Chow film Kung Fu Hustle, built from Sprite mixed with salted plum and strawberries, a nod to the character co-owner Cory Ng calls baojopo. It is a loud, bright room by design, and it's tough getting in the door, with tables tight and seats coveted by walk-in groups, families and couples alike.

02The chef

Executive chef Zhan Chen runs the kitchen with his brother, sous chef Peter Chen; both built their early careers in Italian and American dining rooms rather than Cantonese ones, a background that shows in a menu that borrows technique as freely as it borrows nostalgia. Co-owner Cory Ng, who grew up in the neighbourhood, had already spent years in the food trade: born and raised in Manhattan's Chinatown, Ng began his restauranteur journey with Milk & Cream bar on Mott St back in 2017, before turning to Cantonese-American cooking with his childhood friends.

Insider tip

Dinner Wed–Sun from 5:30pm; walk-ins welcome but reservations advised; no brunch service.

03The cooking

The kitchen's method is consistent: take a Cantonese standard and let one borrowed idea push it sideways. The menu offers inventive twists on classic Cantonese dishes, such as pan-seared pot stickers filled with Berkshire pork and chives, and salt and pepper fried chicken served with scallion biscuits and chili-plum jam. Elsewhere, tiger shrimp with walnuts are tossed in a Calabrian chile aioli, chefs Zhan and Peter Chen's answer to the walnut shrimp found on most Cantonese banquet menus.

04What to order

Start with the endive salad, which has dragonfruit, blood orange, pistachio, and pecorino, and the oyster mushroom rice roll noodles, which get sauteed with an optional addition of hangar steak. The salt & pepper chicken with scallion biscuits is a clear standout, repeatedly praised by guests as one of the must-order dishes, alongside XO fried rice and the Berkshire pork and chive potstickers. Finish with soft serve with bolo bao (pineapple bun) crumble, a dessert built from the kitchen's favourite American and Chinese snacks.

05When to go and booking

Dinner runs Wednesday to Sunday, from 5:30pm with last seating at 9pm; Potluck Club no longer runs a brunch service and now flags any pop-ups through Instagram instead. Reservations are recommended, walk-ins are welcomed, and there is a ten-minute grace period for all reservations, with table time limits running from 75 minutes for one to two guests up to two hours for parties of six or more. Parties of eight or more are steered toward a prix-fixe menu arranged by email. The closest train station is Second Avenue.

06The neighbourhood

Potluck Club is, by its own account, a homage to Chinatown and its small businesses, which the co-owners frequented while growing up in the neighborhood. Its sister restaurant, Phoenix Palace, sits a few blocks away at 85 Bowery — a second, more ambitious restaurant that built on the success of the dishes served at Potluck Club. Between the two addresses, Chrystie Street and the Bowery have become a small, Chinatown-raised answer to a city where Cantonese cooking has too often been left to decades-old formats.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.