Chinatown and Little Italy Food Tour 7 Tastings 3 Neighborhoods

A Fuzhounese counter shop on Grand Street where almost nothing costs more than a few dollars and everything gets made fresh. Robert Sietsema called it the neighborhood’s favorite cheap eats destination, and The Infatuation rates it a 9.2. The owner left an engineering career in Toronto to come back and run the family shop, and he keeps the prices low on purpose so the neighborhood can still afford to eat here.(10 min)

Dumplings folded by hand at the window while you wait, cooked to order, northern style. The tell here is ginger, and they are not shy about it. Regulars can pick these out blind. The kitchen also turns out chive pancakes, hot and sour soup, and wonton noodle soup for the people who come in and sit down for an actual lunch.(10 min)

A Taishanese bakery that has been feeding Chinatown since 1968. In 2008 the New York Times published something close to an obituary for it. It reopened three months later, on an auspicious 8/8, and then outgrew the Bayard Street counter it had held for over fifty years and moved around the corner to a bigger room on Mott. The founders’ oral history sits in the Museum of Chinese in America.(10 min)

One family has been making one thing on Baxter Street since 1984, in more than thirty flavors, for about a dollar apiece. It is barely sweet, which is exactly why the neighborhood’s older residents have always favored it. A longtime customer bought the shop from the founder in 2009, and his daughter runs it today. She drew the cartoon characters on the wall herself, based on her own family.(10 min)

Fresh pasta rolled daily on the ground floor of an 1833 Federal-style house that New York City individually landmarked in 2010. The pasta business has occupied this storefront since before the Depression, more than a century of continuous business, and the Bertorelli family has run it for the last seventy years.(10 min)

A corner slice shop on Kenmare run by a guy who came from Bleecker Street Pizza, which is a stop on our Greenwich Village tour. He once spent five hours building a pizza with Pope Francis’s face on it, using ricotta and raspberries to get the skin tone right. His house pie is a Margherita with two upgrades, and he will happily argue for both of them. Gluten-free crust available.(10 min)

See a striking 1887 landmark that tells part of the neighborhood’s immigrant story.(pass by)

View this iconic bridge as you explore the streets and flavors of Chinatown.(pass by)

Follow Chinatown’s famous bend and hear the stories behind its notorious nickname.(pass by)

We finish on Mulberry Street at the one gelateria The Infatuation singled out as not a tourist trap, on the single most tourist-trapped block in New York. Authentic Sicilian cannoli, with both the shells and ricotta made in Palermo, Sicily.(10 min)