A new era for the Golden Mall

When the Golden Mall opened in Flushing, Queens, in 1990, customers didn’t mind getting lost in the maze of vendors looking for oil-slicked chili noodles, plump sea bass dumplings or cumin-scented lamb burgers.

For almost twenty years it pioneered the food hall business model in Vlissingen, providing a launching pad for chains such as Famous foods of Xi’an, KungFu cuisine, Laoma Malatang and Lanzhou handmade noodles. The Dashan Restaurant Group started with Yozi Shanghai in the Golden Mall and eventually opened places like Szechuan mountain house and CheLi.

“Everyone started from nothing,” said Robert Cheng, whose family has owned the Golden Mall since 2000.

Now there are big plans to open a second location of the mall in Manhattan this summer, about a year after the original space in Flushing reopened following a major renovation.

The mall’s influence and direct role in the local immigrant food economy has been felt far and wide—from customers to budding entrepreneurs—and has had a domino effect on restaurateurs’ successes. It has also helped shape the way New Yorkers eat Chinese food.

It was a food court in a shopping center with such a good selection that it attracted high-profile visitors such as Anthony Bourdain and chef Eric Ripert. For the local community, the Golden Mall provided entrepreneurial opportunities and home-style food at affordable prices for Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants – both vendors and customers.

“People flood that place on weekends,” says Dian Yu, who has lived in Vlissingen most of his life. He noted that the arrival of non-Asian customers helped cement downtown Flushing’s status as a top food destination in the city.

And customers kept coming back because “the food was really good, homestyle Chinese food, and it was cheap,” Mr. Yu said. Eight dumplings were sold for two dollars at the time, and you could watch the dishes being prepared in the open kitchens. Especially for those unfamiliar with the regional cuisines of China, it was easy and fun to mix and match from all the different booths there.

But as the neighborhood became a popular destination in the 2010s, local and urban developments contributed to the mall’s subsequent decline in sales. Food courts such as New World Mall and New York Food Court competed for their customer base. The local demographics gentrified with the influx of wealthier Asian immigrants displaced older, low-income immigrants. To meet the new demand, landlords have converted rent-stabilized apartments into condos and co-ops.

Real estate developers, most notably F&T Group, launched glossy, sprawling projects like Queens Crossing and One Fulton Square with built-in restaurants that changed course of dining in the area. Restaurants like Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, Szechuan Mountain House and Jiang Nan raised the bar with stunning presentations, spacious interiors and higher prices.

The competition in Flushing “just got out of hand,” Mr. Cheng said. Furthermore, the business model based on good, cheap food was displaced in favor of one that prioritized an eye-catching aesthetic that could be posted and promoted on social media. “And if the market changes, we have to change too.”

In 2019, Mr. Cheng and his family decided to close and renovate the Golden Mall to keep up with the competition, but what was supposed to be a cosmetic makeover turned into a $2 million overhaul, and during the renovation… more competition. In 2022, F&T Group opened its gleaming, almost cavernous, mixed-use building Tangram project, for which a two-bedroom apartment is sold $1.13 million. Customers can pick up takeout from a cool new food court or dine at popular, spacious restaurants such as Shoo Loong Kan and Juqi.

The Golden Mall finally reopened its doors in July 2023 to a changed landscape. But the neighborhood had also retained features essential to the mall’s survival. Downtown Flushing was still a culinary destination for New Yorkers in general, and the neighborhood’s Asian residents, the main customer group, remained in the majority. 67 percent.

The new food court now houses mainstays that once put the mall on the map, along with trendy imports such as Original cake, a Taiwanese bakery that focuses on flavored Castella cakes. Each vendor has their own seating area against sleek, neon-lit interiors that are unrecognizable from the previous iteration of the mall. Laoma Malatang, a mala dry pot pioneer among Queens food courts, is now run by Tuo Liu, the owner’s son, who innovates with new dishes. A Sichuan skewer stand meets the recent demand for tongue-numbing flavors. On the ground floor, an experienced tenant sells vegetable rolls for $1.50 to his regular customers from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. And a Chinese dessert chain is building out a station to sell coconut eggs, balls of white coconut meat cut from the hard shell.

In addition, the Cheng family is betting big on the rising demand for modern Asian food across the city, with a massive new take on the Golden Mall on Broadway in the Financial District this summer. From a seven-story, 32,000-square-foot space, a mix of full-service restaurants and food court stands will offer pan-Asian cuisine.

“We are one of the oldest food courts in New York,” Mr. Cheng said. “We have a special history and a lot of experience.” Especially as the popularity of Asian restaurants has skyrocketed across the city, “we want to grow our business, expand our brand and share our goods,” he said.

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