Eats from the East.(CITY DESK)(Chinese restaurants, Chinatown, New York)

WHEN I was young in the city, if you wanted fast Asian fare you ate Chinese. Now you eat sushi. Japan lost World War II, but it has won the grazing war. All the NYU kids and their employed elders eat in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Chinatown used to go from Chatham Square up to Canal Street. The streets there had been laid out pre-grid, and some of them--Doyer, Mosco--had the air, short or crooked, of secrets. There were a few expansive places that rang a gong when the Peking duck came out of the kitchen. But the typical Chinatown restaurant was no-frills. You reached it down a flight of stairs. The fan in the bathroom was coated with grease and asbestos. The urinals stank. The floor was linoleum. You sat in a booth, or at a flimsy table, which, in the suburbs, would have been reserved for a child's birthday party. Poker-faced waiters--all middle-aged men--took your orders. The tea was pure Lipton's, plunked down in plain metal pots. Only the table settings attempted decoration. The chopsticks came in sleeves with printed directions for use, whose simplicity was negated by the fact that they did not actually explain how to use them. The placemats told what years A.D. were years of the dragon or the rat. The meal ended with fortune cookies. New York magazine once ran a contest for bogus fortunes; the winner was WISHING YOU AND YOURS A JOYOUS YOM KIPPUR.

The food was pretty good. It was heavily Cantonese. Until 1965, it was entirely so, since before then immigration from China was practically restricted to the province in which Canton is located. After 1965, immigrants and restaurants began coming from Hunan and Sichuan, though in the days of Wade-Giles, the latter was spelled Szechuan. My favorite Chinese restaurant of the old days was Cuisine of Szechuan, in which I missed eating a whole pepper thanks only to the warning shriek of my girlfriend, now my wife.

Now Chinatown, like Beijing's influence, has swollen. Little Italy, directly north of it, is a stage set--an opera, perhaps--the streets lined with Italian restaurants and touts. But the buildings all house Chinese. Yet Chinatown itself has become something of a sham. Old women the color of leather still occupy their corners, calling out one dolla, one dolla over boxes of bitter melons or scurrying animate fur toys, but more and more of the storefronts sell T-shirts or other generica, while more and more of the restaurants are Vietnamese or Filipino. The Chinese themselves have been moving to Queens or someplace, but they may also have shifted to other lines of work, for there is now a different fast food of choice.

Unlike Los Angeles, New York has no Japantown, for the Japanese came here after 1965, in the great national open house. So why pick only one neighborhood? Their restaurants are governed by a different aesthetic. No cheesy we-hope-you-enjoy-our-strange-customs hospitality. The sign of ...