In Chinatown, the Next Generation’s Restaurant Phoenix Rises

When Phoenix Palace, a new restaurant from the Potluck Club team, opens on August 1, a passerby might confuse it for a functioning movie theater. A marquee sign displays the name and the host stand is built inside a box office. That’s no accident: Its address at 85 Bowery, near Hester Street, is the same block that used to be Music Palace, Chinatown’s last remaining movie theater, which closed in 2000. Today, it’s a chain hotel.

Since opening Potluck Club in 2022, Cory Ng, Kimberly Ho, Ricky Nguyen, Justin Siu, and chef Zhan Chen — longtime friends who grew up together in Chinatown — have become some of the torchbearers for the next generation of the neighborhood. It’s a role they don’t take lightly.

“It was the kind of place some kids would go cut school and watch a movie at,” says Ng of Music Palace. Nguyen adds: “It was a cultural institution.”

When the friends decided to open Potluck Club, Chen had never cooked Cantonese food professionally, having worked in kitchens like Jams from Jonathan Waxman and Pheasant in Williamsburg. Those experiences gave him a vantage point, allowing him to pull from the other cuisines, mixed with his memories. “My father cooked every day after working 12 hours a day in a garment factory, and so did my mom. They always found time to steam a fish and put some rice in a rice cooker,” says Chen. “Cantonese is always the food I’m craving whenever I miss home.”

The result was Potluck Club’s Cantonese American menu, which spoke to the younger generation that grew up in Chinatown. Soon, it caught the attention of critics and a Michelin nod.

Phoenix Palace is a continuation of Potluck Club, only a more dressed-up, 65-seat space. “This menu is a bit more adventurous,” says Chen. The menu includes dishes like olive youtiao with Chinese sausage jam and fig mostarda; steak tartare with black sesame aioli and Asian pear; salt and pepper cuttlefish with heirloom tomato jam; and duck breast with a hoisin-romesco sauce; plus, chile crab noodles and lobster fried rice. Chen says dining with his family at places like banquet halls shaped the menu.

The drink side features natural wine and beer (there’s one by Young Master, a Hong Kong craft beer maker, brewed with green Sichuan peppercorns). Nguyen is excited to showcase that natural wine “complements Chinese cuisine — the lightness of natural wine cuts through the fat,” he says. Pairing wine with Chinese cooking is something that this new wave of restaurants, like Bonnie’s and Tolo, have also emphasized.

“We’re just happy to be a part of the conversation of what it means to be a Cantonese American restaurant — we’re excited to be in open dialogue with the other restaurants. Only time will tell what the cuisine can be,” says Nguyen.

Family history courses through the wings of Phoenix Palace: From the walls covered with wedding photos of grandparents, down to the fact that Ng’s father, an interior designer who also handles construction, helped build out the space — as he did with Potluck Club.

Ng said a few weeks before opening Potluck Club his stomach “turned into a knot” as he wondered whether the room — with its vending machine with household items and other bold build-outs — would land as gimmicky. “Did we build a Mars 2112, a Rainforest Cafe? We didn’t want to be too theme-y,” he said. The biggest compliment was getting customers who spoke of the nostalgia the space brought up for them, he said. Similarly, at the entrance of Phoenix Place, a jukebox found on Craigslist houses songs that were formative for the friends.

As Chinatown gentrifies, the group’s mission has become even more potent. “We’re a part of the modernization. People hate that word. But for there to be a thriving Chinatown, there needs to be a renaissance, or else it will wither away,” Ng says, pointing to rising rents and the mega-jail as looming factors.

Part of that is ensuring they were sourcing from the neighborhood wherever possible, be it Wing On Wo & Co. for plates, or rescuing pieces from the now-closed Sang Kung Restaurant & Kitchen Supplies.

As they do at Potluck Club, they plan to host local Chinatown elders at Phoenix Palace and set aside days to ensure those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to dine there have a way to enjoy it. Logistics are still being worked out.

“We’re hoping [our restaurants] can be around for at least 20, 30 years and become institutions themselves,” says Ng. “We want to pay homage to the generation that raised us, and who made Chinatown what it is.”