"When I heard the Golden Mall had been reborn following a $2 million renovation, I dutifully rode the 7 train to its terminus, having worried the basement food court at 41-28 Main Street (near 41st Road) would be a pale, franchise-ridden shadow of its former self; instead the layout felt eerily the same as I zigzagged past 11 stalls, and the reborn space retained the basement's legacy as the spot that, since its 1990 opening and heyday in the early aughts (when Chowhound and food celebrities like Jonathan Gold, Jamie Oliver, Anthony Bourdain, and Eric Ripert raved about it), introduced New Yorkers to a wide array of regional Chinese cuisines — from Sichuan offal counters to Tianjin sausages and soy-braised trotters, Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles, Hunan hot pots, and even the original Xi’an Famous Foods location; most stalls have small dining areas and deliver to them (there is no common dining room), some accept cards while others are cash-only, and a Manhattan sibling is reportedly in the works." - Robert Sietsema