This place is on the coolest of old Chinatown streets, but it seems to me to be the victim of its own popularity. The last time I was there, the wait staff were the only Chinese people in the place, and the customers were probably mostly from New Jersey.

The time before that, there were mobs of hipsters.

It is a longtime family business, though, in the elbow of the historic Doyers Street, and the location alone makes it worth visiting. I just didn’t much like the service, or the tea, or the food.

According to what I read in a 2011 New York Times review by Ligaya Mishan, the owner, Wilson Tang, bought the restaurant from his uncle, who himself had started working there back in 1950, bought it in the 1970s, and then retired not long ago.

Tang himself can easily be identified in Nom Wah, because he towers over everyone else.