Hwa Yuan Szechuan, one of Manhattan’s most critically acclaimed Chinese restaurants, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, a sign of the pressures that restaurants around the country are facing as they fight to keep their slice of consumers’ stretched food budgets, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Started by Taiwanese immigrant Yu Fa Tang in the late 1960s, Hwa Yuan has operated in its current location in New York’s Chinatown since 2018. Famed for popularizing cold sesame noodles in the U.S. and frequented by A-list celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow, the restaurant hasn’t recovered from the impact of COVID-19-related lockdowns on its finances, according to court papers. Even though it received a publicity boost when former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the restaurant in February 2021 to promote the resumption of indoor dining in New York City, Hwa Yuan defaulted on its mortgage because of its pandemic-related loss of revenue and now faces an imminent foreclosure from its mortgage lender, according to court papers. The restaurant’s bankruptcy filing in New York’s Southern District will stave off the foreclosure and give the Tang family time to find a new loan that could repay the defaulted mortgage, court papers said.
