- The art of dim sum has thousands of years of history,
but I think there's still a lot more creativity
out there in this world of dim sum.
For me, I have the mindset of change is inevitable.
It's gonna happen.
You either roll with it, or you get left behind.
I always saw operating this restaurant
in a Chinese diner format.
In 2011, we did a little minor construction.
We just reopened, and it really got the place back alive
because it's got 80, 90 years of history,
and it just brought everyone back out of the woodworks.
Old timers, new folks -- you name it, we had them in here.
Traditionally, dim sum is something that you kind of eat
with your eyes and in all those big banquet halls
there's the push carts, and you kind of smell it, you see it.
I took a page out of dim sum dining in Hong Kong
where you kind of order dim sum off of a sheet.
People were amazed that we had a menu,
and it had pictures, it had descriptions.
That kind of took on like wildfire.
(egg sizzling)
One of my favorite dishes, is the original egg roll.
My uncle swears that he invented it.
(laughs)
It's made with a crepe of egg
so we're almost making omelets,
and in this crepe of egg, it's mixed vegetables,
we use chicken, and it's rolled in this crepe.
When someone orders it, we lightly batter it,
and then we pop it into the fryer.
The result of this item is this very aromatic,
fresh, light, airy egg roll.
Everyone knows what an egg roll is.
It's synonymous with any Chinese-American
takeout restaurant,
and there's hundreds of variations to it.
Ours just happen to have real eggs in it.
Roast pork bun that we sell here
is slightly different than what's out in the market.
Our chef here has this formula from my uncle Wally
for over 30 years.
We use a dough that has yeast in it that rises,
and it gives this extra kind of texture
and airiness and fluffiness.
And the pork, it's our custom formula. We marinate
and roast the pork in-house,
and it's mixed with a house-made char siu sauce
and caramelized onions; it's a labor-intensive process.
Chicken feet is actually not that scary.
My parents always told me the more chicken feet you eat,
the stronger your own legs will be.
The process of making the chicken feet
is giving it a quick fry to kind of get some structure to it,
and then it's marinated, and then it's steamed.
After it's steamed, all the skin and the gelatin
and the knuckles, they really kind of melt together.
I guess to some people, it's a acquired taste
but I actually, personally, really like it. It tastes great.
It's a chewy, springy, a little salty kind of item.
Dim sum actually came from the south
where merchants traveling along the Silk Road
will stop off tea houses and have a snack,
and that's how dim sum really originated.
It's just a subcategory of Cantonese food.
"Yum cha," drinking tea,
is kind of synonymous with having dim sum.
The tea actually works really well with dim sum.
It really cuts down the natural fats that's in the dim sum.
You start the whole digestion process,
so you can actually go and eat again.
Trying to balance the old and the new
is actually really really hard to do.
This restaurant has over 90 years of history.
My family started working in this restaurant in 1950.
Everywhere else you look, there's a lot of development --
and it's a scary word, gentrification.
Chinatown is in the brink of massive change,
and I think it's one of the only neighborhoods
in Manhattan that had this resistance of change.
Nom Wah Tea Parlor is this tried-and-true OG place.
I compare it to one of the originals.
It's a brand that's moving forward
and trying to innovate and staying really New York.