Route 66: Albuquerque New Mexico
Part 3: New Chinatown Restaurant
The family behind the New Chinatown Restaurant had deep roots in the community. In an oral history collected by the University of New Mexico, Kim Ong recalled that his parents, Wing Ong and Wong Lin Ong, arrived in the city in the late 1920s to work in a family grocery business. Wing Ong started to open restaurants, ultimately partnering with another Harry Jew, who had arrived in the US as a child in 1939, and later served in the US military during World War II. Following the war, Harry opened the Chinatown restaurant near the campus, and given its success, Ong and Jew partnered to create a newer, bigger restaurant space on East Central Avenue. The “New Chinatown” restaurant opened in October of 1958 and remained a successful venture for decades, serving as a location for banquets, community gatherings and university events. In 1991 the restaurant was voted “best Chinese food in Albuquerque.” In the 1980s, the restaurant hosted music events and stand up improvisational comedy in the restaurant’s “Lantern Room.”
The restaurant was rebuilt in 1977. Architecturally, the restaurant leaned into an aesthetic of “orientalist” fantasy. The Albuquerque Journal, running a review of the restaurant in 1977, talks about how Harry Jew and an interior designer for the restaurant spent months in Hong Kong purchasing architectural fabrics, decorations and furnishings for the restaurant at no insignificant cost. In 2003, when the surviving family members closed the restaurant, they recalled that the build had cost $750,000 dollars. Interior photographs show a grandly decorated space. The restaurant had two stories, with the upper story serving as banquet and event space. Interior spaces had names such as the “Moon Gate Bar”, the “Lantern Room” and the “Peacock Room” to add to the fantasy.
The FS Louie Ashtray from the New Chinatown Restaurant!
