Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

November 10, 2026

How America’s Greatest Jewish Literary Salon Became Wu’s Wonton King

From the even humbler Garden Cafeteria.

Thanks to New York City’s ever-changing demographics and patterns of commerce, the old Jewish Lower East Side is largely gone—parts of it taken over by young people and trendy bars, other parts absorbed into Chinatown. Yet physical structures remain. Julia Kornberg recently discovered that the building that is now Wu’s Wonton King was once a storied center of American Jewish literary life:

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