Author Talk: 'The Nom Wah Cookbook' Authors on This Storied Restaurant (Plus Cookbook Recommendations)

By Sherri Machlin, Adult Librarian
June 24, 2022
Great Kills Library

Staff from the Great Kills Library (Senior Librarian Margaret Siggillino) and the Mulberry Street Library (Senior Librarian Sherri Machlin) hosted a presentation and virtual author talk on Thursday May 19, 2022 with Wilson Tang, owner and operator of the century old Nom Wah Tea Parlor in Manhattan's Chinatown, and Joshua David Stein, a Brooklyn-based editor and author of numerous cookbooks and children's books. Tang and Stein talked about dim sum, the history of this family-owned NYC restaurant, and the robust community center that revolved around Nom Wah Tea Parlor. The original location still exists on a crook in the arm of Doyers street in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown, but it has grown to include outposts in Nolita, the Essex Market on the Lower East Side, and Philadelphia. 

You can watch the recording of the Nom Wah Cookbook author talk with Wilson Tang and Joshua David Stein below. 

Additional Resources

The Harley Spiller Vintage Chinese Menu Collection (Vintage Menu Art)

Harley Spiller has such an enormous collection of Chinese menus that he’s been given a Guinness World Record. Now some of his best menus are available on the Vintage Menu Art online gallery. Dating from 1910, these menus are a fascinating record of how Chinese food became a staple of American cuisine and they’re immensely decorative with striking graphics and fabulous imagery.

Museum of the Chinese in America

The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) aims to engage audiences in an ongoing and historical dialogue, in which people of all backgrounds are able to see American history through a critical perspective, to reflect on their own experiences, and to make meaningful connections between: the past and the present, the global and the local, themselves and others.