Reassured that the restaurant that they long ago decided was the best in Chinatown is still there, and that the staff still remembers them. Many of the people who dine at Wo Hop go there just to be reassured. And they are not unhappy as that eat the small part of the serving that they can fit into their stomach. The devoted, however, tend to find the dishes that please and bring them comfort and stick to them. Many a foodie will tell you that this is some of the worst food in Chinatown. It's unreformed, Americanized Cantonese cuisine from the World War II era. There are huge amounts of it and you suspect a lot of it began life frozen. It's bland, hastily prepared and gloppy with sauce. And let me tell you- the food is no different. This time I went to the "right" Wo Hop, a cramped, harshly lit rectangle with low ceilings, ten tables and booths and about the same number of busy, blue-jacketed waiters.
(Chinatown must have more mysterious subterranean eateries and businesses than any other neighborhood in New York.) The upstairs joint is for tourists and suckers, and the food stinks, I was told. There are two spaces on Mott Street, you see, a roomy ground-level restaurant at 15 Mott, visible from the street, and a harder-to-spot basement place down a long flight of stairs at 17 Mott.
The first time I ever went to Wo Hop, the 72-year-old Chinatown restaurant, I was chastised by readers as having gone to the "wrong" Wo Hop. This is the latest edition of Who Goes There? a regular feature in which Lost City's Brooks of Sheffield cracks the doors on mysteriously enduring Gotham restaurants-unsung, curious neighborhood mainstays with the dusty, forgotten, determined look-to learn secrets of longevity and find out, who goes there.
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