• Chinatown Brasserie

  380 Lafayette St.; 212-533-7000

  With good Chinese chefs forever leaving town, and more and more of the potentially good ones staying in their homeland in the first place, the city’s Chinese-food aficionados are a beleaguered bunch these days. But mention the work of Mr. Joe Ng, the Hong Kong–born dim sum prodigy at Chinatown Brasserie, and their eyes light up, just like in the old days. Ng has more than a hundred varieties of dim sum in his impressive repertoire; many of the best seem to involve some form of shrimp. The perfect shrimp-themed feast begins with a platter or two of the steamy, delicate-skinned pork-and-shrimp dumplings, followed by a taste of shrimp dumplings stuffed with roast duck. After that, order the yellow-skinned, triangular shrimp-and-snow-pea–leaf dumplings, and then the little pouches of translucent wheat-and-potato skin stuffed with shrimp and Chinese chives. Get it while you can, before Joe Ng decides to skip town himself.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine