One Glowing Star for Royal Seafood Restaurant, Jake

A few days after Hurricane Sandy, Pete Wells wrote "Why Downtown Needs Diners Now." The article pays homage to the southern end of Manhattan, where power was out for six days. "Chinatown alone is worth fighting for," he wrote, and in his favorable one-star review of Chinatown's Royal Seafood Restaurant today, he has this to say of a particular visit, "This was a week after the hurricane and a few days after the lights had come back on in downtown Manhattan. Chinatown was on my mind."

Wells highlights a dish he notices is not on any menu, but is on every table. He explains, "Chinatown veterans look around the dining room to see what others are eating." At Royal Seafood Restaurant, the answer is lobster. "It was hacked into sections and wok-fried with a sticky, time-honored Cantonese sauce of scallions and slivers of ginger."

The Times critic offers some advice for those looking to dine at RSF in the future, "The best strategy: sit on an aisle unless you speak some Cantonese. Tables are jammed together, and sitting too far from the trolleys puts you at risk of missing a favorite dumpling." "You can order from the menu all day," he continues, "but the best time to explore it is by night, when the dining room and presumably the kitchen are less frantic."