My Best Restaurants, Part 2: Spilled Milk #41

Plus my favorite sushi & Szechuan places in NYC

I recently did a podcast where they asked me about meals and restaurants that had resonated with me throughout the years. My conversation with the host (a dear friend of mine) took a lot of detours and never got to the list. But it got me thinking about the restaurants that made an impact on me as a child — places I dined at with my parents, or friends that influenced me greatly.

I had so many selections that I split it into two lists. Here’s Part 1.

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For Part 2, I highlighted some more influential restaurant experiences I had growing up in NYC, along with some suggestions for frequently asked questions on my favorite Sichuan restaurants and sushi bars for obvious reasons! 

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8. Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan…1974

Immigration laws changed in the mid-’60s, which allowed wealthy Chinese to come to the United States. Then in 1972, in the years before he resigned in disgrace, Richard Nixon (along with his Rasputin of a sidekick, Henry Kissinger) struck a détente with Mao’s China and created another very important trade and immigration program. Some of the first beneficiaries of all of those programs were NYC diners, as Chinese chefs from various regions other than Guangzhou (Canton) began to arrive in large numbers. The Chinese food scene in America would never again be the same. David Keh, Michael Tong (who opened the Shun Lee restaurants), and many others opened some amazing places in NYC.