CHINATOWN BAKERIES

Where to Go

Easily overlooked, Wing Wah Bakery Inc. (244 Grand Street) offers fresh, authentic goods. For a mere 100 pennies - pair a legendary pineapple bun with milk tea for a delicious snack. Bite into another bargain: loaves of fresh, white bread baked daily, sell for only a dollar.

Maria’s Bakery (42 Mott Street) specializes in wedding cakes, birthday cakes, and gourmet buns, but “Chinatowners” know this tiny, hole-in-the–wall bakery is the place to go for winter melon cakes, known as “wife cakes” in Chinese. It is believed that women who bake or purchase these flaky pastries on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month will be blessed with children.

With a stylish interior and beautifully arranged pastries and cakes, the Hong Kong-style Fay Da Bakery Corp. (83 Mott Street, 191 Center Street, and 214-216 Grand Street) offers everything from tapioca bubble tea to curry puffs. The tiramisu, fruit, chocolate, and almond crème cakes are especially reasonable in comparison to other New York bakeries. Similar in style is the Manna House Bakery Inc. (217 Grand Street, 125 Mott Street, and 87 East Broadway). Here visitors should try the delicious egg tarts and cock’s tail buns. Other bakeries to try are: Tai Pan Bakery (194 Canal Street), King’s Bakery (49 Bayard Street), and K and D Bakery (143A Mott Street).