Dollar Grub: Chinatown

Chicken gizzards and cuttlefish skewers are recession-proof. If you can stomach them.

For cheap eats, Manhattan’s Chinatown is the Holy Grail. This bustling, ever-mutating neighborhood of tourists and twisty streets, of ducks dangling in windows and roast pigs served by the pound, is salvation for the broke and paradise for penny-pinching cheapskates.

And as the city’s downward economic spiral worsens, Chinatown’s low-cost restaurants, stalls and street vendors become increasingly vital. But as much as I’d like to believe, man can’t live on dumplings alone. So on a temperate, overcast Tuesday, I take to the helter-skelter streets to suss out Chinatown’s one-dollar eats—spicy cuttlefish skewers and chicken gizzards included. —Joshua M. Bernstein

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