Why Philadelphia's Chinatown Is Thriving

Why Philadelphia's Chinatown Is Thriving - Menuism Dining Blog, June 20, 2016

As readers of this series on Chinese restaurants across the country know, the general rule is that if a city has an existing 19^th or early 20^th century Chinatown, that Chinatown is almost certainly not the best place in town for a great Chinese meal.  However, like most general rules there are exceptions, and one prominent exception to the rule against dining in a downtown Chinatown is in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Chinatown is right in the lap of downtown Philadelphia, something which has led to a recurring danger of Chinatown being displaced for other uses as was the fate of historic Chinatowns in many other cities including Los Angeles (which did establish a nearby replacement)  Phoenix, San Diego, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, among many others.  However Philadelphia Chinatown has persevered and even as the bulk of the population Chinese population growth has occurred outside of Chinatown in recent years, Chinatown is still the undisputed focus for dining and community life for the Chinese in and around Philadelphia.  And the good news is that after successfully fighting off potential encroachment, including plans for a casino and for a baseball stadium to house the Philadelphia Phillies Philadelphia Chinatown is thriving.

Like every other historic Chinatown we have surveyed, Philadelphia’s Chinatown is Cantonese/Toishanese in origin, since it was this group of Chinese who originally migrated to California in the mid-19^th century and moved eastward later in the 19^th century.  These Cantonese/Toishanese migrants landed in Philadelphia and other eastern cities as a relative safe haven when anti-Chinese enmity and violence enveloped California and the Western United States in the latter 19^th century.   But unlike the bigger surviving center city Chinatowns like San Francisco and Los Angeles, which while enduring a few cracks in the wall, still remain unabashedly Cantonese, Philadelphia’s Chinatown is diversifying its regional base.

Though the geographic footprint of Philadelphia’s Chinatown hasn’t been significantly altered, today’s Philadelphia Chinatown is full of new activity and new restaurants.  Contrast this to Chinatowns in Los Angeles and San Francisco where the opening of any new Chinese restaurant is a rare event worthy of news headlines.  Even in Manhattan’s larger Chinatown, where new restaurant openings are a bit more common, new Chinese restaurant openings are newsworthy items.  Compare this to Philadelphia’s Chinatown, which has had dozens of new Chinese restaurants open in the last several years.   And just as significant, the new restaurants in Philadelphia Chinatown reflect the spectrum of new non-Cantonese face of most-Chinese American communities that has accelerated in the past decade.

 

 

Indeed the roster of new non-Cantonese restaurants populating Philadelphia’s Chinatown is highly impressive.  Just for starters, you can get Shaanxi cuisine at Xi’an Sizzling Woks, Northeastern Chinese kabobs at Solo, xiaolongbao (Shanghai soup dumplings) and Taiwanese at ShangHai 1, Sichuan at Traditional Szechuan and Red Kings 2, Hotpot at Nine Ting, Red Kings and Sakura-Mandarin, Fujian fish balls and fish cakes at Ming River Sidewalk Café, and hand pulled northern Chinese noodles at Spicy C.  You certainly won’t find this kind of variety in Los Angeles, San Francisco or even Manhattan Chinatowns, where these types of regional cuisines are most commonly found outside of the core central city Chinatown.  And for the younger crowd Philadelphia Chinatown is peppered with boba and snack shops, tea parlors, dessert shops and watering holes.    

A good example of how change has come to Philadelphia Chinatown is what may well be the most popular restaurant, Dim Sum Garden.  As you enter the restaurant, based on the name you would likely anticipate wonderful versions of bbq pork buns, ha gow, shu mai  and the like in a traditional Chinatown setting.  But in fact you’ll have none of that because Dim Sum Garden does not serve dim sum as most of us know it.  Rather you find a modern restaurant  packed with Millennial Asian and non-Asian diners, chowing down on  “Shanghai dim sum” which isn’t really dim sum at all, with a menu featuring items like xiaolongbao, all shades of potstickers, duck gizzards and pumpkin cakes.

This is not to say that you can’t get a nice Cantonese meal in Philadelphia.  There are plenty of Cantonese restaurants left in Philadelphia Chinatown, such as Jade Harbor, Ocean Harbor, David’s Mai Lai Wah, Joy Tsin Lau and Empress Garden.  But where Philadelphia Chinatown’s restaurants were once all of the Cantonese ilk, now they are in the minority.

But perhaps the most striking thing about Philadelphia’s Chinatown is the vast numbers of young Chinese crowding its streets and patronizing its restaurants and other eateries, reflective in good part of the influence of the growing number of Mainland Chinese college students attending local universities including Penn, Temple and Bryn Mawr.   Indeed, I can’t think of any central city Chinatown having such a high proportion of young Chinese, as well as other young people, so visibly present.   All this new blood, both with new restaurants representing the broad spectrum of Chinese cuisine, as well as a Millennial generation of Chinese consumers leads to an extra vibrant Chinatown.  This vitality struck me immediately during my recent visit to Philadelphia Chinatown, and was a stark contrast to the moribund Chinatown I remembered from my previous visit not that many years ago.

Of course Philadelphia Chinatown’s dominance is due largely to the lack of any apparent alternate Chinese locus like one finds in the San Gabriel Valley (Los Angeles), Richmond B.C. (Vancouver), or Flushing (New York).    However while there is no other publicized area of Chinese influence in Philadelphia, there is actually a “secret” second Chinatown taking root in Northeast Philadelphia.  About a dozen years ago, a fair number of Fujianese Chinese, priced out by New York’s skyrocketing real estate market, cast an eye on Northeast Philadelphia as being a destination with possibilities.  These Fujianese Philadelphians provide most of the capital and labor supporting the new generation of Chinese restaurants in Philadelphia Chinatown.  These migrants likely chose this neighborhood since it was most proximate part of the city to New York, and in addition, Northeast Philadelphia has a historic attraction for new immigrants of various stripes.   A number of Chinese businesses have popped up on Castor Ave., including a Chinese grocery store, jewelry store, hair salon, construction contractor, convenience store, real estate brokerage, and one authentic Chinese restaurant, Wang House.  Meanwhile, Chinatown’s Jade Harbor has opened a branch in Northeast Philadelphia a few blocks away from Castor Ave.  As we have commented in other city reports, authentic Chinese restaurants are slow to establish themselves in emerging Chinese-American communities, so it will be interesting to see if more Chinese restaurants open up in this neighborhood. 

And before wrapping up, mention needs to be made of Philadelphia’s own unique regional Chinese American dish, the Philly cheesesteak eggroll.   This dish appears to frequent Americanized Chinese restaurant menus outside of Chinatown.  You can imagine my disappointment when on my recent visit to Philadelphia Chinatown, the only Chinese restaurant where I found this item on the menu was out of the item.  But maybe next time.

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