“It’s really sad to see it go,” says Wilson Tang, owner of Nom Wah Tea Parlor, another Chinatown institution. Once the dining room goes dark, Jing Fong will only operate as a ghost kitchen. Andrew Cuomo announced today that restaurants can expand indoor dining to 35 percent beginning February 26, although it’s not clear whether the restaurant’s banquet hall setup will follow suit. It’s an atmosphere and volume game, otherwise it doesn’t work.”įor nostalgic New Yorkers, Jing Fong’s dining room will remain open until March 7, operating at 25 percent capacity per current state regulations. “Our restaurant is not set up to serve 200 seats a la carte,” says Lam. Large banquets and buyouts, which accounted for half of the pre-pandemic business, never returned. Even if those diners had returned, operating the Jing Fong dining room, with its dozens of dim sum carts being pushed around to various tables, was a losing proposition at 25 percent capacity. In October, the restaurant tried its hand at indoor dining, but reception was lukewarm: the tourists that made up the bulk of the pre-pandemic business had not yet returned to the city. “It’s an atmosphere and volume game, otherwise it doesn’t work,” said Lam. Socially distanced tables and barriers did not mesh with Jing Fong’s business model. Even if the restaurant could have expanded its patio, it would have taken an empty parking lot to bridge the gap in the number of seats lost from pre-pandemic times. Revenue returned with the addition of takeout and eventually outdoor dining, but the restaurant was never able to aggressively build out its patio seating like some other businesses around the city, perhaps in part because it is located directly across the street from the NYPD’s 5th Precinct station house. The dip in sales forced Jing Fong to shutter its dining room on March 10, a week earlier than mandated by New York State. At one point in mid-February 2020, Lam counted just 36 customers in a room that can legally hold 794. But even before any mandates to shut down indoor dining, the restaurant saw its daily check totals plummet, mainly a result of diminished tourism but also because of racism and xenophobia surrounding the coronavirus. Sales at Jing Fong are down 85 percent year-over-year, which translates to a loss of about $5 to 6 million, according to Lam. A satellite location on the Upper West Side, which opened in 2017, is unaffected by any of the changes. The iconic dim sum restaurant, which opened in 1978 but moved to its current location at 20 Elizabeth Street, between Canal and Bayard streets, in 1992, has worked out a deal with its landlord to use the kitchen rent-free on a month-to-month basis. “With our drastic decline in sales and mounting losses sustained over the course of a year, we needed to make the tough call to close our indoor dining space and redirect our resources in hopes to continue our operations,” the third-generation owner and manager Truman Lam said in a statement. Following a growing trend during the pandemic, the restaurant has plans to continue operating as a ghost kitchen to fulfill orders for takeout, delivery, and outdoor dining on its patio. I really feel like it's nice to fill your body with something nourishing and something inexpensive," another said.Jing Fong, the largest Chinese restaurant in Manhattan, announced today that it would permanently close its dining room on March 7 due to business loss as a result of COVID-19. "Usually the dim sum experience is with the cart rolling by, but it's the best we can have right now. Only one wok is in use these days and the dim sum cart is in long-term parking, even the escalator is turned off to save electricity. The menu of dim sum items has been edited down from 100 items to 35. Third-generation owner Truman Lam is all about keeping costs low right now. Just the manpower we need to run those 200 seats we would have to double the staff and we don't know if we would have that business," Lam said.ĮATS IN BROOKLYN: This NYC restaurant has expanded during the COVID pandemic Our main dining room is on the third floor, our kitchen is on the second floor, our lobby on the first floor. "Our space is too big we have 25-26,000 square feet inside. That's 97.5% reduction of seating and yet, the idea of re-opening Jing Fong for indoor dining is daunting. "We went from 800 seats inside to 20 seats outside," Jing Fong's Truman Lam said. In this latest edition of Neighborhood Eats, Lauren Glassberg gets a taste of Chinatown's Jing Fong and its famous dim sum.ĬHINATOWN, Manhattan (WABC) - During the coronavirus pandemic, Jing Fong has continued to serve up its authentic Cantonese-style dim sum and family-style dishes in Chinatown while sticking with just outdoor dining.
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