Mott Street is Chinatown's most obvious tourist restaurant row, although the streets around - Canal, Pell, Bayard, Doyers and Bowery - host a glut of restaurants, tea and rice shops and grocers. Cantonese cuisine predominates, but there are also many restaurants that specialize in the spicier Szechuan and Hunan cuisines, along with Fukien, Soochow and the spicy Chowchou dishes. Just remember that most Chinese restaurants start closing up around 9.30pm - best to go early if you want friendly service and atmosphere. If you're looking for specific recommendations (especially for BYOB lunchtime dim sum).

Besides scoffing down Asian delights, the lure of Chinatown lies in wandering amid the exotica of the shops and absorbing the neighborhood's vigorous street life. Meandering comes highly recommended, though, and there are several interesting, vaguely structured routes to take. Mott Street, again, is the obvious starting point: follow it from Worth Street and there's Chinatown Fair at the southern end, on the site of the district's first Chinese shop. Once a bona fide museum, this is now little more than a bizarre and very popular video arcade, where a predominantly male crowd gathers to smoke, prowl and play anything from pinball to 1950s Test Your Own Strength machines and the most modern interactive video phenomena.

Further north along Mott Street, a rare edifice predating the Chinese arrival dominates the corner of Mott and Mosco streets. It's the early nineteenth-century green-domed Catholic school and Church of the Transfiguration , an elegant building that has been undergoing massive renovations since 1999. Masses are held here daily in Cantonese and English, with additional services in Mandarin on Sunday. Just across from the church is picturesquely crooked Doyers Street , once known as "Bloody Angle" for its reputation as a dumping ground for dead bodies.

Mott Street

• Mott Street

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