Cory Ng, a 37-year-old restaurateur, is passionate about preserving and investing in Manhattan’s Chinatown — the place he was born and raised.
In 2022, he and his wife Kimberly Ho, along with executive chef Zhan Chen, as well as his childhood friends Justin Siu, Tommy Leong and Ricky Nguyen, opened Potluck Club, a millennial Cantonese American restaurant that serves shatteringly crisp salt-and-pepper fried chicken and bumps late-’90s, early-’00s tunes.
“We want to celebrate our culture, honor it, but do it in a new flavor, a new fashion, make it ‘CrazySexyCool,’” Ng told Carson Daly on TODAY. “It’s a mix of both old and new.”
Ng describes his restaurant’s food as “Cantonese American” because it’s made by “Cantonese kids growing up in New York.”
Potluck Club stands on the site where Ng’s family and grandfather had a business for over 40 years selling produce and Chinese sausage.
“We weren’t born in Hong Kong, we were born here, so a lot of what we learned about our culture was through movies,” Ng said — and the restaurant’s decor reflects that, with nods to the Hong Kong and Taiwanese films he and his friends grew up watching, including a mural dedicated to the 1994 slapstick kung-fu movie “Shaolin Popey.”
Meanwhile, the music pulsing through the restaurant’s speakers reflects what he and his friends grew up listening to.
“We’re playing kind of ‘TRL’s’ greatest hits,” he told Carson.
“Juvenile’s ‘Back That Thang Up’?” Carson asked him, throwing it back to his VJ days.
“That’s my favorite song of all time,” Ng responded.
Ng describes Potluck Club as a “cultural space more than a restaurant.” Its name comes from the fact that everything is served family-style — from the salt and pepper chicken with scallion biscuits to the jellyfish salad and the oyster mushroom rice roll noodles. It’s also a nod to NYC’s famous (and dwindling) banquet halls.
And through this space — along with his most recent restaurant, Phoenix Palace, which opened in 2024 — he hopes to help his community continue to thrive in Chinatown, the place that raised him and his friends.
“If these condos and hotels see a future here in our neighborhood, why don’t we see a future here?” he said.
Chinatown’s landscape has changed, like much of New York City, by real estate developments. Many of his millennial peers have chosen to leave the neighborhood, while gentrification has pushed out many small businesses and older residents.
Chef Zhan sources the ingredients for the restaurant from local vendors, but they’re all on the verge of retirement.
“Very, very few people who get a college degree come back and make noodles,” he told Carson. “They are in all the corporate offices right now, but they do come back and support when they can.”
Witnessing his neighborhood change is both a “gift and a curse,” he said, as “a lot of cultural spaces go away.” And it’s critical to him to preserve his culture — something that’s been instilled in him by his grandma and the seniors in the community.
To give back to them, Ng and his team give out free meals and groceries to 250 neighborhood seniors once a month.
“We give them groceries, produce, fruit, and we give them hot meals,” he said, “but [it’s also] a space for them to hang out, meet their friends … some of them go on dates.”
Through Potluck Club’s partnership with local nonprofit More Than a Meal, local volunteers — including Carson — help pack and distribute the food to the community’s seniors.
