{"id":102468,"date":"2026-01-16T18:29:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T18:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/102468\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T18:29:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T18:29:24","slug":"restaurant-review-lei-in-manhattan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/102468\/","title":{"rendered":"Restaurant Review: Lei in Manhattan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p aria-live=\"assertive\" class=\"css-1dv1kvn\">new video loaded: Restaurant Review: Lei in Manhattan<\/p>\n<p>transcript<\/p>\n<p>Back<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1nng8z9\">transcript<\/p>\n<p>Restaurant Review: Lei in ManhattanLigaya Mishan, a New York Times chief restaurant critic visits Lei, a warmly and welcoming wine bar in Manhattan, that manages to both honor tradition and bend it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">Chinatown has always belonged to multiple generations. Young and old share the streets, and it\u2019s the same on Doyers, where you\u2019ll find a dim sum spot in residence since 1920 right next door to a modern wine bar, Lei. Annie Shi opened Lei in June. Ms. Shi hopes that guests will think Lei as part of a longer visit to Chinatown. You can see the traces of a Chinese American childhood: mahogany walls with this red blush, and red is for luck. Annie Shi and her wine director, Matt Turner, have put together a cellar with around 750 wines. It\u2019s abundant and generous. For the food, Ms. Shi had a vision of Chinese homestyle cooking. You might start with celtuce, a traditional ingredient here presented raw. Cool green tiles bookending slippery kombu jelly topped with crispy shallots, surrounded by this glossy pool of yongchun red vinegar \u2014 fruity and mild. Crown daisy, also known as chrysanthemum greens, are another traditional ingredient, but rarely seen like this in a salad topped with ribbons of burdock fried to a crisp and reaching for the ceiling. Shao bing is ostensibly a flatbread. It\u2019s really an architecture of layers of laminated dough. It\u2019s all puff and shatter, and served right out of the oven with a slab of cold butter tucked in. Cat\u2019s ear noodles are little thumbprints of dough that cup and catch the source of this cumin-laced ragu, inspired by the Uyghur lagman at Kashkar Cafe. Beef short rib is made in the Shanghai sweet-and-sour style, cured for a day, braised for another day. It\u2019s made not with sugar, but strawberry jam for a more mellow sweetness. You can read the full review at nytimes.com.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A variety of dishes sit on a table at the restaurant Lei.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/WTE-BEST-BITES-Lei-2-qblm-jumbo.jpg\" data-testid=\"betamax-poster\"   fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"_poster_13tnt_20\"\/>Ligaya Mishan, a New York Times chief restaurant critic visits Lei, a warmly and welcoming wine bar in Manhattan, that manages to both honor tradition and bend it.<\/p>\n<p>January 16, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"new video loaded: Restaurant Review: Lei in Manhattan transcript Back transcript Restaurant Review: Lei in ManhattanLigaya Mishan, a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[30624,11625,75,84,83,9,24,63,8497],"class_list":["post-102468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-chinatown-manhattan","tag-chinese-food","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-wine-bar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}