Sleek Chinatown restaurant inside a former movie palace, with a glowing marquee over the entrance. The menu elevates Cantonese banquet food – think inventive salt and pepper cuttlefish and lobster sticky rice meant for sharing.
Dinner
The glowing marquee lights hanging over the Bowery suggest a movie premiere, but the ticket booth entrance actually leads into Phoenix Palace. Occupying the footprint of the former Music Palace – Chinatown’s last neighborhood movie theater – this restaurant from the team behind Potluck Club retains the cinematic shell while shifting the focus to Cantonese-American cooking. Inside, the energy feels less like a hushed cinema and more like a condensed banquet hall. The 65-seat room is sleek but dense, lined with family photos and soundtracked by a jukebox playing hits from the owners’ youth. Chef John Chen’s menu takes the celebratory, large-format nature of banquet dining and adapts it for a nightly crowd. The cooking is intentionally hybrid, merging traditional technique with local influence; you might see bok choy finished with pecorino cheese or breakfast staples like *youtiao* (fried dough) reworked with olives as a dinner plate. Tables are packed tight and designed for sharing, a necessity for managing larger platters like the lobster sticky rice or chili crab noodles. Reservations are essential, as the dining room hits capacity quickly. Service wraps up with a nod to local nostalgia, dropping a small serving of gummy candies at the table along with the bill.
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