Restaurants in Chinatown, Manhattan: House of Joy. Like 'Big Trouble in Little China'—but with dim sum instead of demons.
- The Introvert Traveler
- May 1
- 6 min read

Last visit: December 2024
My rating: 10/10
Price: €€/€€€€€
Website: https://houseofjoynyc.com/
Walking into House of Joy, in the throbbing heart of Chinatown, feels like traveling to Guangdong—without burning your frequent flyer miles. The first thing that strikes you is that, despite the considerable number of tourists and New Yorkers, the overwhelming majority of patrons—and, naturally, the staff—are Chinese; the language is Chinese, the mannerisms, the clothing, the furnishings. This isn’t your usual stereotype dressed up to give sweet-and-sour seekers a taste of faux-China. No, here we’re dealing with a cultural enclave so rooted and vast it feels like a sovereign state.
The second thing that hits you—after this gust of ethnic authenticity—is the sheer scale of the operation. At a glance, you’re looking at 500 seats, served by dozens upon dozens of waiters swirling around the tables, walking at a frantic pace above a meter-thick stratum of dense, palpable, deafening noise. It’s so overwhelming it becomes part of the synesthetic experience, along with the kitschy colors, the smells, the tastes, and yes—the glorious racket.
And then there’s him—the conductor, the table auctioneer. His voice precedes your arrival by several yards, long before you see the line stretching outside. House of Joy is a mind-blowing and perfectly tuned real-time economy engine: the 500 seats are constantly filled by an unbroken flow of diners waiting patiently—sometimes for an hour—at the entrance for their number to be called. That number is assigned by the maestro himself, armed with a paper notebook and a headset mic, calling, assigning, and dispatching patrons with no breaks or mercy. Every single chair is instantly filled. Different parties are grouped at the same table—efficiency is king in this far-eastern version of Tetris.
And so the crowd waits, faithfully, outside the entrance, like parishioners at a culinary Angelus, while the loudspeakers blast the staccato calls of the host into the street. Beware of wandering off to stretch your legs—numbers aren’t called in natural order, but based on availability. Your number will, without fail, be called the exact moment you step away. That’s Chinatown karma. That’s the Lopan of food service.

The Business Plan (Apocryphal but Plausible)
It’s dizzying to even think about the numbers behind this infernal machine, open non-stop from 9 AM to 11 PM, with its 500 seats and relentless turnover. What percentage of the Chinese population secretly works in that kitchen? What kind of EBITDA is being racked up by that cash register, which swipes credit cards like a Wall Street algorithm? How many terracotta armies could be stored in the warehouse that endlessly supplies the line with mountains of shrimp, pork, chicken feet, tofu, black mushrooms, and crab meat—fuel for thousands of diners a day? To what extent does this single restaurant contribute to New York’s traffic congestion with articulated lorries hauling in fresh goods from the city’s markets?
Imagine this:
500 active seats
A turnover of 10 customers per minute—about 60,000 souls per week, half of whom have no idea what they just ate
50 waiters, more nimble than an elevator on the Nasdaq trading floor
A kitchen full of invisible chefs, probably cloned in a bunker under the Manhattan Bridge
Every single day, House of Joy consumes:
One metric ton of rice flour
12% of the Atlantic shrimp population
One-third of Chinatown’s logistical capacity. Rumor has it that one-tenth of China’s GDP is diverted into baozi just for this place. This isn’t a restaurant—it’s an independent republic with veto power at the UN Security Council.
The moment you cross the threshold of the dining hall (larger than JFK’s Terminal 2), you enter a hellish choreography of carts pushed by servers who look like they’ve emerged from a Chinese simulation of The Matrix. There are at least fifty of them, all strictly trilingual: Cantonese, Mandarin, and Body Language. If you dare ask in English what that green, gelatinous blob is, staring at you from the steamer basket, you’ll get a flurry of nasal-toned vowels and an expectant look that prompts you to answer the question instead.
Because here, the business model is—as already noted—real-time service. The moment you sit down, every item on the menu has already been cooked and is actively circulating through the dining room on dozens of carts. You barely touch your seat before the first server appears offering four or five dishes from the vast menu, and all you have to do is pick the one that teases your curiosity the most.
When the couple sharing our table finished their meal and left, the staff changed the tablecloth and reset the table—while we were still eating. Without missing a beat.

But this is where the game begins. The challenge. Dim Sum Royale. Each dish is an act of faith: you choose based on color, sheen, steam, and vague visual cues. It’s like Tinder—but with rice dumplings. You order something thinking it’s vegetable soup, and it turns out to be pureed garlic. Sometimes a compassionate waiter might point to the item on the menu corresponding to what’s on the cart, but the response time must not exceed a few seconds. Take it or leave it. The show must go on.
But the amazing thing is that whatever you order in this profession of faith is absolutely delicious. Forget the Chinese joints near Rome’s Termini Station, where even the health inspectors hesitate to enter for fear of vanishing forever and being served roasted at some unlucky Sunday lunch. Here, the raw materials are of exquisite quality—the vegetables, the fish, the pork all have one thing in common: you bring them to your mouth and are invariably stunned by the intensity, the quality, and the freshness of the flavors.
And just as the ingredients are excellent, the preparations are sublime: the dim sum melts in your mouth; the baozi are the softest, most seductive delicacies you’ve ever tasted; and the mochi could rival (despite stylistic differences) the miracles of Nakatanidou.
One small caveat, because even the most enthusiastic review must be tempered by a touch of objectivity: the mochi come in only one flavor—durian.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever come face to face with this abominable fruit, and I’m certainly not the one to strip Chinese culture of its traditions, nor am I in a position to explain to over a billion people that the world also contains mangoes, papayas, bananas, apples… But when you bite into a durian mochi—and let me stress again, House of Joy’s mochi are extraordinary—the moment you bite into one, your mouth is assaulted by aromas reminiscent of poorly maintained public restrooms colliding with wafts of decaying herring. And you can’t help but wonder why a culinary culture capable of creating such exquisite delights insists on using such a repugnant ingredient.
But I am a staunch advocate of the ecumenical approach to world cuisines—even when it requires me to overcome deeply ingrained Western biases. So yes, I tried the durian mochi. Just like I force myself to eat cilantro, even though it tastes like a stew of crushed stink bugs. And I’ll keep trying durian mochi until that little voice in my head stops whispering:“Would it really be so hard to make these with sweet red bean paste, like they do in Japan?”

And the price? You leave the table as full as after a Calabrian christening, having eaten enough for three people—and you’ve paid less than what a sad airport toast would cost you. A digestive and economic miracle.
In a city where a cappuccino and a muffin go for $25, here a medium dim sum is $4.50. In Brooklyn, that won’t even get you half a drip coffee—and they'll guilt-trip you for your carbon footprint. And here we are, smack in the middle of Manhattan!
House of Joy. One of the best restaurants in Chinatown, Manhattan.
In conclusion, House of Joy isn’t just one of the best restaurants in Chinatown, Manhattan. It’s a John Carpenter film rewritten by Wong Kar-wai and produced by Gordon Ramsay mid-nervous breakdown. It’s proof that chaos can be delicious—if served from sizzling carts and without a single word of English.
If you’re looking for a place to eat in New York, House of Joy needs to be on your list.
Rating: 10 dumplings out of 10.
Comments