Had something like this happened then, we would have been lost. You work so hard, the waitresses, the cooks to earn a living. My family owned a small steak-house restaurant on the south side in the 50s an 60s. I'm embarrassed to state the obvious, that the horrendous loss of lives in this pandemic is so awful, but I have a particular sadness for the loss of so many restaurants and jobs in the last year. As the Times put it, "The loss of Jing Fong hurts." Having only gone once, I couldn't develop too much of an attachment, and am more grateful I got there than sad it's gone, which is probably the best way to approach all loss. It's certainly a calamity for restaurant workers and owners, and to the community who celebrated their birthdays and wedding there, not to forget the precious fabric of ordinary daily life. Though it too is a loss, and no need to weigh each against the other. Honestly? With 527,000 Americans dead, at first it seems squishy to mourn a restaurant, like raising a monument to the pets lost in World War II. The splendid one Michelin star Thai place, Uncle Boon's, was the first. It's the second restaurant we went to that weekend to go belly up due to COVID. There was a big tribute in the Times, " Closing of Beloved Dim Sum Hall Leaves a ‘Crater’ in Reeling Chinatown: There’s just not a lot of foot traffic down there.I didn't think about Jing Fong again until this week, when the largest restaurant in New York's Chinatown closed forever last Sunday. Now, there’s no tourists, businesses are told to work from home, and the local community tend to prefer to eat at home. There’s not much residential around here. “We’re in a part of town that’s more tourist dependent. It’s not just rent, it’s just not neighborhood, it’s not just utilities. And even once restaurants were allowed to partially reopen, the 25 percent occupancy limit has proved difficult to navigate because the restaurant loses its volume and bustle, Lam noted to Gary He on Eater NY, According to a statement posted to the restaurant’s Instagram, Lam will seek to reopen Jing Fong elsewhere, and says in a statement they are “actively and quickly searching.” Jing Fong shut down on March 12 following Governor Andrew Cuomo’s order prohibiting large gatherings of 500 or more people. “Our type of restaurant, that does dim sum lunches and banquet hall stuff, everybody is struggling and just kind of trying to survive one day at a time.”Īt 800 seats, the restaurant’s size has presented issues since the start of the pandemic. “We are basically running the smallest part of our business, which is delivery, for a year,” he explains. Today, he says sales are down 85 percent, in part because the restaurant’s events business - once half of all sales - has completely evaporated. Last February, Lam said sales were down 25 to 50 percent, depending on the day, “The writing’s on the wall that it’s basically going to be down, we just don’t know how much,” he said at the time. Restaurants in Chinatowns were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic earlier than most because of a precipitous drop in tourism, growing concerns in the community over the coronavirus, and Sinophobia that also led to an alarming spike in hate crimes against Asian Americans. “At the end of the day, we’ve been dealing with this pandemic now, for us, over a year,” says Truman Lam, whose grandfather opened the restaurant. In 2017 the owners expanded with a second location on the Upper West Side, which will also remain open. Open since 1978, Jing Fong is Manhattan’s largest Chinese restaurant and one of the neighborhood’s more famous spots. The business will continue to operate its takeout and delivery business, as well as offer service on its outdoor, second-floor patio. Chinatown’s dim sum palace Jing Fong will close its sprawling indoor dining room, the owners announced today.
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