Tolo – a Hong Kong harbour's name above a Canal Street wok

Tolo occupies a narrow shopfront where Rutgers Street meets Canal, on the seam between Chinatown's wet markets and the gallery-and-natural-wine crowd of Dimes Square. It is chef Ron Yan's first restaurant under his own name, opened in November 2023 after a decade of cooking and pouring wine around downtown Manhattan, including a stretch behind the bottles at Parcelle. He named the place after Tolo Harbour, the stretch of water in Hong Kong where he spent part of his childhood, and built a menu that moves freely across the regions of China he has cooked through in New York: raw seafood and rice noodles, dry pot and a sweet and sour crispy fish that regulars order without looking at the menu. It holds a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, the Guide's distinction for carefully cooked food at a moderate spend, backed by a wine list run with the sommeliers of Parcelle next door.

01The room and the setting

Tolo hides behind a red-and-yellow awning left over from the cafe that occupied the corner before it, lit inside by candles and brass lamps rather than neon. Rattan stools line a bar that faces straight into the open kitchen, where the flare of the wok throws light back off a mirrored splashback. The furniture is older than the restaurant: antique Chinese cabinets and other pieces gathered at flea markets and auctions sit against the custom banquettes.

The room itself is small, and it sits close to Seward Park on the Lower Manhattan side of Canal Street; tables fill quickly once the kitchen starts sending out plates, which is a detail worth planning around rather than just atmosphere.

02The chef

Ron Yan has spent a decade working New York's restaurant and wine-bar scene, including time on the team behind Parcelle, before opening Tolo under his own name. Hong Kong-born, he drew the restaurant's name from Tolo Harbour, where he spent part of his childhood, and built a menu that leans on the cuisines of Yangzhou, Hong Kong and Sichuan rather than settling on one regional style. The result is a kitchen that treats familiar Cantonese and Sichuan dishes with a chef's precision rather than a canteen's speed.

Insider tip

Small room, booking recommended; closest subway is East Broadway on the F train, cross street Essex Street.

03The cooking

The menu runs from raw seafood through rice and noodles to a short run of larger plates, served amidst the vintage furniture and open-kitchen backdrop that define the room. Dishes mix and match across regions, a structure built to showcase the breadth of Yan's training rather than a single province's repertoire, with familiar plates given sharper, more refined treatment than their Chinatown neighbours typically offer.

04What to order

The sweet and sour crispy fish is the dish most associated with the restaurant, a crisp, lightly sauced plate that anchors the larger-format side of the menu. Typhoon Shelter-style fried chicken and crab fried rice are the two most acclaimed plates, praised for their seasoning and the wine list that is built to sit alongside them. For something smaller, cold poached chicken in a numbing málà chili oil is the kind of dish the Parcelle wine team likes to pour against an earthy, zippy Alsatian pinot noir.

05Wine and drinks

The list runs to more than 300 selections, curated by the team at Parcelle, and spans small natural producers alongside a deep bench of traditional, harder-to-find bottles. Wine is served in Zalto glassware, a detail that signals a program built with the same seriousness as the kitchen rather than as an afterthought to a Chinese menu. That seriousness has been recognised with a Star Wine List White Star, on top of the restaurant's MICHELIN Bib Gourmand and an Esquire nod among the best new restaurants of its opening year.

06The neighbourhood and booking

Tolo sits at the edge of Dimes Square, the small, sceney strip of Chinatown known as much for its natural-wine crowd as its food, and the restaurant has carved out a quieter corner within it, built for conversation rather than spectacle. It is a short walk from the East Broadway stop on the F train, with Essex Street as the nearest cross street.

Current hours run Sunday to Wednesday from 5:00pm to 9:30pm and Thursday to Saturday from 5:00pm to 10:00pm, with reservations taken through OpenTable and same-day requests handled by text. Given the size of the room, booking ahead is the safer route, particularly later in the week.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.