![]() At its peak, it represented 200 workers in Chinatown. The workers are fighting for their jobs but also to keep Chinatown’s only restaurant workers union alive.įirst established in 1980, after workers at the now-defunct Silver Palace restaurant organized against wage theft, 318 Restaurant Workers Union grew to become the only union representing Chinese restaurant workers. “This is not simply about a workplace, for many this a social institution in the community.” “During the good times the landlord made off like a bandit so this is the time that the landlord should do the right thing for the community and for the workers,” says Nelson Mar, president of 318 Restaurant Workers Union. Jing Fong’s second location on the Upper West Side will continue to operate as normal.Īccording to the union, Jing Fong’s lease with the Chus was unusual in that it required the restaurant not only to pay property taxes but also to share a portion of the restaurant’s profits with the landlord. ![]() In a statement shared with Documented, Truman Lam, Jing Fong’s current manager and operator stated that with the “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.” Documented was not able to reach the Chu family.Īlthough the dining room is slated to close, it will continue to operate the kitchen and provide customers with outdoor dining, takeout, and delivery options. Several of the new hotel developments in Chinatown are owned by the Chus and Jonathan Chu sits on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Chinese in America.Īccording to Jing Fong, during the pandemic, the restaurant’s sales drastically declined by 85 percent and the restaurant lost nearly $6 million. ![]() The Chu family, which owns East Bank, is one of the largest and most powerful families in Chinatown. Undeterred, workers and their supporters circled around the bank several times chanting “Save Jing Fong, Save Chinatown!” and “Shame on Alex Chu!“Īlso Read: Pearl River Mart Was Never Just a Store. Workers attempted to hand-deliver a letter stating their demands but were denied entry by bank employees with the assistance of the NYPD. On Tuesday, over one hundred people gathered outside East Bank on Canal and Centre Street, to demand Jing Fong’s landlord Alex Chu and his son Jonathan Chu keep the restaurant’s dining room open. Another NYC speakeasy, this one located behind an ice cream shop on the Upper East Side, has just reopened its doors to customers.Workers at Jing Fong are refusing to go down without a fight. Frankly Wines owner Liz Nicholson is seeking donations to get a new Tribeca wine shop off the ground. The lesson is $49.99 per screen, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Stop AAPI Hate. Chef Anita Lo is teaching a virtual cooking class on Friday, May 14 where participants will learn how to make Szechuan chopstick noodles with chili oil. Buzzy new Brooklyn tortilleria Sobre Masa is partnering and hosting the most popular birria destination in the city, Birria-Landia, for a pop-up on Thursday evening, where they’ll be adding bone marrow (!) to the birria. ![]() In a new interview, mayoral candidate Andrew Yang told the Post everything that NYC restaurant and bar owners want to hear right now: He supports dropping the restaurant and bar curfew, eliminating the food-with-drink rule, and wants to make takeout cocktails permanent. It is unclear whether any of Jing Fong’s unionized workers - who gathered together and protested publicly after news broke of the dining room shutdown - will be offered jobs at the new restaurant. Jing Fong - which also operates a second location on the Upper West Side - continued to offer outdoor dining, takeout, and delivery from the Chinatown restaurant after the dining room shut down, but those operations will stop at the end of May. The struggling Chinatown stalwart announced in March that it was closing its iconic dining room after being unable to work out a rent deal with the building’s landlords following a crushing year of plummeting sales due to the pandemic, plus ongoing anti-Asian rhetoric and xenophobic responses to the virus. Eater New York has reached out to Leo for more details. The address of the new outpost wasn’t disclosed in the report. ![]() In late June, Jing Fong plans to reopen at a smaller, 125-seat location. Jing Fong plans to reopen soon in a new locationĮight hundred-seat dim sum destination Jing Fong will permanently clear out of its longstanding Elizabeth Street home on May 31, but the Chinatown restaurant won’t be totally dark for long, marketing director Claudia Leo tells the New York Post. ![]()
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