Chinatown Restaurants You Can Walk To From the Financial District

Name: Nom Wah Tea Parlor
Price range: $$

By 17John Hotel · November 10, 2026

Quick answer

Chinatown is about a 15-minute walk north of the Financial District, which makes it the best dinner in easy reach of us and the reason we tell guests not to bother with a cab. Head up Nassau Street, cross Chatham Square, and you're on Mott Street. Four we send people to: Nom Wah Tea Parlor at 13 Doyers Street for dim sum in the oldest tea parlor in the neighborhood, Wo Hop in the basement at 17 Mott Street for old-school Cantonese until 10 PM most nights, Mei Lai Wah Bakery on Mott Street for a roast pork bun eaten standing up, and Great NY Noodletown at 28 Bowery for roast meats when it's late. If you'd rather not walk it, the J or Z from Fulton Street gets you to Canal Street.

A street in Manhattan's Chinatown with shopfront signs and traffic — Chinatown, about fifteen minutes north of us on foot. · Photo by Diego Marín on Unsplash

Chinatown is the closest genuinely great eating to us, and it's a walk, not a trip. From our door on John Street you go north on Nassau, jog up through Chatham Square, and you're on Mott Street in roughly fifteen minutes. That's less time than you'd spend waiting for a car on a Friday.

We get asked for this list constantly, usually around 6 PM by someone who has already done the Brooklyn Bridge and is hungry. So here are four places, not fourteen. They're all within about three blocks of each other, they've all been there a long time, and between them they cover dim sum, a sit-down dinner, a bun eaten on the sidewalk, and the late one.

Two practical notes before you go. Cash still moves faster than cards at some of the older counters, so carry some. And Chinatown eats early and eats late, but the middle of a weekday afternoon can be quiet, which is actually the best time to walk it if you want photographs rather than a table.

Nom Wah Tea Parlor

· About a 15-minute walk from us, at 13 Doyers Street · $$

The dim sum parlor everyone means when they say they want dim sum in Chinatown, and it sits on Doyers Street, the little bent alley off Pell that's worth seeing on its own. It works off a paper order sheet rather than rolling carts, so you tick what you want and it comes out as it's ready. Go at an odd hour if you can: mid-afternoon on a weekday you'll walk in, and at Sunday lunch you won't. Order the egg roll, which is nothing like the frozen thing that shares the name, and the shrimp dumplings.
Wo Hop

· About a 15-minute walk, at 17 Mott Street, down the stairs · $

A basement Cantonese room with fluorescent light, laminated menus and no interest in being fashionable, which is exactly the point. It's the place to bring people who want a plate of chow fun and a pot of tea after a long day of walking, not a tasting menu. Open 10:30 AM to 10:00 PM Monday through Saturday and 10:30 AM to 9:00 PM on Sunday, so it covers an early dinner and a late one. Bring cash and don't expect to linger; the turnover is part of the machine.
Mei Lai Wah Bakery

· About a 15-minute walk, on Mott Street at 41 · $

A bakery counter, not a restaurant, and the reason to stop is the roast pork bun. Get one baked and one steamed, eat them on the street, and understand that this is a $3 snack and not dinner. We send people here on the way up to somewhere else, or on the way back when dinner was smaller than expected. It's a daytime and early-evening operation, so it's a lunch plan rather than a late one.
Great NY Noodletown

· About an 18-minute walk, at 28 Bowery · $

Cantonese roast meats, hanging in the window, and the one on this list to aim for when it's late and everything in the Financial District has shut. Order the salt-baked squid and something off the roast meat side, over rice or noodles. It keeps famously long hours, but hours at old Chinatown places move around, so call ahead if you're making a midnight run of it rather than betting the evening on it.

Book your stay at 17John Hotel