RIP China Chalet
China Chalet’s Financial District Store Front | Photo by Lucas Drumond
The news channel played from a projector onto a blank, white wall in the dining room of a mediocre dim sum restaurant. Meg Capone, then a freshman at The King’s College, sat alone in a booth. She was writing an article—her first article—on the curious over-priced restaurant-by-day/underground-club-by-night: China Chalet.
After ordering what would be mediocre fried rice, she asked the waiter if she could interview the manager. He delivered her request and returned promptly with the manager’s firm answer: no press.
But she needed that article. She sent him back to the manager with the message that she would write it regardless of the manager’s willingness to speak.
She proceeded to dramatically peer at her surroundings and carefully taste her food, all while taking notes in an exaggerated fashion. The goal was to strike fear in the heart of the manager, who very obviously stood at the other side of the room watching her. Maybe she could make him think she was the plotting, young journalist who would finally bring down his business.
And it worked.
After a few minutes of her charade, the manager walked over to her booth, sat down, and asked what she wanted to know. They talked for nearly 20 minutes.
“There’s something about writing on an institution without their comment that gives you a lot of power,” Capone reflected.
She finished her maiden voyage article, and it was published in the Empire State Tribune, the award-winning student news publication of which she is now editor-in-chief.
Capone frequented the China Chalet often after this event. She said it was one of the few places in the Financial District you could go for lunch without seeing other King’s students, or anyone for that matter, (as it was almost always empty). With little disruption, it secretly became her favorite place to write, earning a special space in her heart.
But Capone will frequent the dim sum restaurant no more—no more psychological tricks to play on the manager and no more articles to write at the white linen-covered tables—because China Chalet is closed… for good.
Ghislaine Maxwell at China Chalet | Photo courtesy of Reddit
New Yorkers first caught wind of its closure in July and responded with an outcry on Twitter, but the ‘For Lease’ signs only went up recently in October. Its website has also been recently disconnected.
In its glory days—or rather, glory nights—China Chalet boasted high-profile attendees at its restaurant-transformed-nightclub: from actor Timothée Chalamet to rappers Cardi B and Denzel Curry, to the infamous Ghislaine Maxwell. Not only did it become a haven for modern America’s gentry, but it welcomed the serfs as well; it didn’t cater to one community or genre of people.
“I will never forget the DJ party I attended a few years ago there,” journalist and professor Paul Glader said. “Hundreds of art and design people showed up to hang out in the back of the place at the dance floor and socialized at the dining booths. I remember Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter was there...”
The underwhelming restaurant warrants a funeral, but the overwhelming, all-inclusive nightclub deserves a celebration of life ceremony. One of the last great New York venues has died of COVID-19.
Journalist and professor Clemente Lisi mourned, “It opened in 1975. It was just 45 years old. Survived 9/11 and the 2009 recession. So young.”