‘Made Here’ celebrates the food, restaurants and stories behind Asian cuisine in NYC

A volunteer group of young Asian professionals is self-publishing a book that includes recipes and stories from New York City’s sprawling and diverse Asian food scene.

“Made Here,” out Monday, is part cookbook, part history lesson and part love letter to the city’s Asian communities. The group Send Chinatown Love says proceeds will go towards its efforts to help small businesses as well as its Gift-a-Meal program for low-income residents.

A turnip cake recipe from a decades-old dim sum banquet hall in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown is included alongside other selections from an upstart rice wine brewery in Greenpoint and a no-frills Korean-Chinese spot in East Flushing.

The book, subtitled “Recipes & Reflections From NYC’s Asian Communities,” features recipes and stories from 43 culinary establishments from over 24 neighborhoods, chosen by its editors to reflect the diversity of the city’s Asian restaurants across cuisines, cultures, ages, and boroughs.

“We are trying to celebrate New York City’s culinary buku melting pot,” said editor Christoph Tsang-Grosse. ”That immigrant pathways can create in terms of cuisine–and how that’s disseminated, across a city, across the country.”

Send Chinatown Love launched during the height of the pandemic to funnel donations to hard-hit restaurants in Manhattan’s Chinatown. It’s picked up steam since.

The fledgling group—which includes about 40 to 50 active members—is a part of a new generation of community organizations, some emerging during the height of the pandemic, that aim to preserve the history, culture, and affordability in the gentrifying Manhattan community.

Even as the city’s Asian population rapidly grows—accounting for more than half the city’s net growth of 629,415 residents over the last decade—the number of Asian residents in the…