Anyone here old enough to remember Wah Kee’s in NYC Chinatown?

When I was a young kid my father used to work in Manhattan and I’d occasionally get to go to dinner with him and a friend of his at Wah Kee, a tiny long gone restaurant on Doyer St. in Chinatown. Maybe 15 years ago I Googled and found a discussion about the place, but the guy who ran the blog has since moved on and the discussion is gone.

Some recent Googling has turned up a few more recent references to the place but, perhaps due to fading memories, some folks remember it was WO Kee or confuse it with a better known place in the same area called Nom Wah Tea Parlor

I’m posting a pic I found of the menu coffee and am just taking a flyer that someone else here is familiar with this place that lives in my memory


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Yes but I misremembered it as the “Wo Ki”. My boyhood best friend’s father worked in the city & introduced me & my sister to them with a combined family outing. (their house & ours were 4 feet apart, 4 kids in ea house-- comparable ages-- if you didn’t know us you couldn’t tell which set of kids belonged to which house. It was there I learned of the glory of chicken fried rice! Also egg rolls, good Moo Goo Gai Pan ( it can be insipid ) Moo Shu Pork. I always remembered the address as 17 Doyers St though the menu shows as 16 & 1/2b. Beginning about '66 me & my friend would go there at least once a month for 10 years.

Food & Restaurant critic Richard Gehman mentions it in his book The Haphazard Gourmet 1966. Great Book, the kind of food writing that keeps one opening the fridge. Not available as an e-book.

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I do remember it but not in any meaningful way. I think I only went there once. Wo Hop or Hong Ying (both on Mott) were where we went in the late '60s/early '70s.

I am processing an archive of a NYC resident from the 1960’s and in the correspondence a friend mentions this restaurant as Wo-Kee’s - I assume it’s the same but her words were “The only things I miss about New York is you and China town. I’ve been out for Chinese already but no place is like Wo-kee’s”

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Found this on line too.

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I was so delighted to see this… I remember Wah Kee so well. My family would go every Friday night and then to Ferraras for ices… I had my second grade birthday party at Wah Kee and it was most probably the first time most of the attendees had been in Chinatown,(All the parents wanted to come ) most had never experienced Chinese food… this was 1957… when I saw the picture it just brought all those memories back… and I believe one of the gentlemen in the picture was named Wing… we had so much fun there … thanks for posting and the food was delicious…

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