c/o Wu’s Dynasty
Wu’s Dynasty, the Cantonese restaurant that’s been in the works on the Upper West Side for the better part of a year, has its soft opening tomorrow.
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The restaurant is located at 208 West 70th Street, between West End and Amsterdam avenues. A Wu’s Family and Friends party takes over the dining room at noon on Thursday, September 3, and dinner service opens to the public at 5 p.m. Opening night is by reservation only, something the restaurant apologized for in advance on its announcement flyer.
Regular hours start the next day. From Friday, September 4, Wu’s Dynasty says it’ll be open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, and walk-ins are welcome.
The restaurant comes from Derek Wu, who spent roughly a decade as a partner at Wu’s Wonton King on East Broadway, where he ran the floor and became the restaurant’s most visible face. His move uptown caused enough confusion downtown that The Lo-Down published a clarification in June. Wu sold his interest in Wu’s Wonton King, but the restaurant itself wasn’t sold, and its longtime owner, Michael Wu (no relation), remains in place.
What Wu is bringing to West 70th Street is push-cart dim sum, the old-school setup where servers wheel carts of dumplings and small plates through the dining room instead of taking orders off a menu. The carts will run daily from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., according to the restaurant’s Instagram, which also lists live seafood and Peking duck. There’s a bar, too, with cocktails, whiskey, and wine, which isn’t a given at a Cantonese banquet house.
c/o Wu’s Dynasty
c/o Wu’s Dynasty
The rest of the kitchen leans traditional. Wu’s Dynasty is promising Cantonese roast meats and larger banquet dishes, describes what it’s doing as bringing Chinatown uptown, and says its team has more than 20 years of experience with the cuisine.
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The address, of course, carries baggage. At least eight restaurants have come and gone from 208 West 70th Street over the past few decades, none of them lasting more than ten years, despite a footprint of roughly 9,000 square feet. The most recent tenant was Tavola Della Nonna, which opened in February 2020 and closed almost immediately, and before that came Lincoln Square Steak. Go back further and you’ll find Loi, Marika, Compass, Mendy’s West, and a supper club decorated with Anthony Quinn paintings.When an attorney for the restaurant appeared before Community Board 7 last December, the plan was to open in June with 38 tables and 228 seats. That timeline slipped through the summer before landing on tomorrow.
Whether push-cart dim sum can do what a steakhouse, a Greek fine-dining room, and a 350-seat sports cafe couldn’t is a question the neighborhood gets to start answering at 5 p.m.
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