After researching Chinatown, I realized that there was one common theme; Mott Street. Mott Street, for me, is a shopping street. Large stands with designer knockoff bags, electronics, scarves, gloves, and other souvenirs.  In my first trip to Chinatown, I mostly saw fruit sellers, fishmongers and butchers. This area is where you allow your culinary imagination to run wild.  On certain blocks, open fish markets are extremely lively. Auctioning off the freshest catches create lots of discussions over pricing. An elderly woman who ran a certain fruit stand on Mott Street gave me a dragon fruit to  try. It has a pretty sweet flavor and lots of health benefits. They also had red dragon or pink dragon; with the pink being more tangy as opposed to the sweeter red dragon fruit.

South of Canal Street are more restaurants and small specialty shops with antiques, dresses, housewares, and items for cooking. A few of the dim sum restaurants , I’ve been told by friends, are on par with any in Hong Kong. Most stick with the shrimp and beef dumplings, but others will start off with marinated chicken feet and chicken tripe.

Mott Street also contains the Original Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.  With over forty exotic flavors, you can always find something new to try. Its extremely experimental with new flavors appearing every few months. The shop is usually packed but certain days you can go straight from the line they also have flavors that are favored by Americans, such as chocolate, vanilla, Oreos, cookies and cream etc. It is pricey, mostly because of its type in the media. But it never disappoints.  For over 30 years, this family ice cream shop has been serving their homemade ice cream from Chinatown.

Mott St  is Chinatown’s unofficial Main Street. It runs from Chatham in the south to Bleecker Street in the north. Mott Street has existed in this way  since the mid 18th century. Mott Street feels like it was built around natural landscapes rather than running through or over them.  One interesting featuring of Chinatown and ethnic enclaves in general, are their proximity to each other.  Mott Street north of Canal Street was historically part of Little Italy. It is now predominately Chinese. This section of Mott Street between roughly Canal and Broome Streets has a number of Chinese- owned fish and vegetable markets, as well as some remaining Italian businesses. Regardless, Mott street is an important fixture in how Chinatown functions.