"COMMUNITY BUILDS IMMUNITY"
A CONVERSATION WITH CORY NG, CO-FOUNDER OF POTLUCK CLUB AND PHOENIX PALACE
We had the opportunity to sit down with Cory Ng ahead of the highly anticipated capsule collaboration between Billionaire Boys Club and Potluck Club. During our conversation we discussed his roots and how the neighborhood shaped both his worldview and identity.
Cory reflects on how Chinatown has evolved over the years and his work in restaurants and how those experiences continue to inform his work in hospitality and his commitment to giving back to the community that gave so much to him.
The Billionaire Boys Club x Potluck Club capsule will be available June 4th at 9AM ET online, at our U.S. flagship stores, as well as at Potluck Club and Phoenix Palace in Manhattan.
SECTION I: ROOTS & PLACE
CHINATOWN, MEMORIES, AND WHAT A NEIGHBORHOOD MEANS TO AN IDENTITY
You’ve spent nearly your whole life in Chinatown — not just working here, but living here. Most people who grow up in a neighborhood like this spend their adult life trying to leave it, or at least proving they can. What kept you here? And what did you have to unlearn about ambition to understand that staying was its own kind of success?
My team and I have always just been proud of our heritage and our culture. This neighborhood has taught us so much and watching it change so much over time due to gentrification and development really made us want to stay. We want to take a stand and preserve/evolve our culture. Show the people and the next generation that this is what the future of Chinatown can be. Our thoughts are if these big hotels and condos want to be here and these developers are spending 10s of millions to be here, why are we running away from it. The land we build on is rich.
You’ve spoken before about Chinatown being intertwined with your daily life and identity. How has growing up in Chinatown shaped your perspective creatively, culturally, and personally?
Growing up in Chinatown has shaped everything about me. Not only is it a representation of old New York. But it's a part of the Lower East side, next to Soho, Noho and the East Village. It’s a part of the fabric of downtown New York energy and culture. So my perspective is deeply rooted in my Chinese culture but it's influenced by so much just from growing up downtown. There were so many different cultures and booms that happened all while I was growing up just one touch away.
There’s a specific kind of light in the produce markets in the morning. A specific smell. A specific energy to Canal Street before the tourists arrive. What’s the first sensory memory you have of this neighborhood — and do you still feel that same thing when you walk out your door?
So my biggest sensory memories are going to be the busy bustling streets. Here in Chinatown we have our own ecosystem from the produce markets, the fruit stand, the fish markets etc. All our resources come from our own neighborhood. So within out 2 square miles we have so many different things going on. This has inspired my hustle.
When you walk through Chinatown now, what do you actually see — and what do you feel is disappearing that most people walking through don’t even notice?
While we still have abundant resources, we are also losing a significant portion of our population. We are losing the youth, including young entrepreneurs who are eager to establish businesses here. A large portion of the Chinatown population consists of elderly individuals and business owners. Without a younger generation stepping up and taking the lead, we face a high risk of further deterioration and potential disappearance of the neighborhood.
SECTION II: FAMILY, FOOD + THE TABLE
INTERGENERATIONAL INHERITANCE, CANTONESE IDENTITY, AND FOOD AS AN EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE
The phrase “everyone brings something to the table” is such a core part of Potluck Club’s identity. How does that philosophy extend beyond food and into community, collaboration, and culture?
Growing up, we always ate dinner “Family Style,” which meant we all gathered around the table and it was all about togetherness, not focusing on ourselves. We’ve carried that idea with us in many aspects of our lives. We believe that everyone can contribute something valuable and come together to achieve great things and build something strong. “Community builds immunity.”
Cantonese food has always communicated things that words couldn't — love, effort, apology, celebration. What's the dish from your childhood that you can still taste as an emotion rather than a flavor?
The dish that really captures this feeling is a simple bowl of white rice with soy sauce and a runny egg. It was a dish my grandma used to make for me when I was a kid, and it always felt like home. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it always warmed my soul.
The name Potluck Club implies something fundamentally communal — everyone brings something, no one eats alone. Where did that philosophy come from for you? Was it a family thing, a neighborhood thing, or did you arrive at it by living through its opposite?
So it was definitely a family and cultural thing. In Chinese culture family and togetherness is always the center ideology for many things. So it was a big part of our upbringing.
"WE DON'T CREATE CHINATOWN FOR JUST OURSELVES; IT'S OPEN TO EVERYONE."
What's the meal that most represents your family to you — not the most impressive one, not the most elaborate — the one that tells the truest story about who you come from?
So my grandma still til this day at 89 cooks a Sunday dinner for the whole family & on those days she's cooking for over 20 ppl. This is my longest family tradition i dont remember a Sunday that I have not spent at her house with everyone over having her cooking and she cooks everything!!! A full well rounded meal with chicken, beef, veggies, fish. She has it all and that represents home and my family to me.
A lot of Chinese-American kids grew up embarrassed by the food their parents cooked — the smell, the textures, the way it looked to other people. Did you ever feel that? And if so, when did that shame turn into pride?
Growing up in Chinatown and attending school there, I never felt embarrassed about the food, smells, or anything else. Everyone knew what it was, and it was just part of our culture and everything we knew. I truly believe that being surrounded by it and not feeling embarrassed or ostracized at school helped me develop my pride in my culture as a young kid.
What do you think people today are missing most when it comes to community?
It seems like today, with everything we see and hear about in the world, there’s a strong focus on having lots of things. People often want to be the best, with the most money, clothes, and cars. And while I appreciate nice things too, it’s also important to remember that if we all took a moment to care for each other, the world would be a better place.
That’s why we do what we do at Potluck Club, with all the community work we’re involved in. We work hard every day to earn money, support our families, and enjoy a comfortable life, including vacations. But we also dedicate a lot of time to helping the elderly and young people in our neighborhood. We started this work with a simple goal, and it’s grown so much more than we ever imagined when we first began. Now, our aim is to keep going, day by day, and see where this journey takes us.
SECTION III: PERSERVATION + TENSION
GENTRIFICATION, DISPLACEMENT, AND WHAT IT COSTS TO STAY
There's a real tension in building something that gets recognized — getting a Bib Gourmand, getting press, having people come from across the city — because visibility can accelerate exactly the kind of change you're trying to resist. How do you hold both of those things at once?
Even though we have visitors from all over coming to our restaurants, we don’t mind at all. It shows that people from different places are making an effort to support Chinatown’s businesses. When you look around Chinatown, you’ll see that most of the restaurants are filled with tourists or people from various backgrounds. We don’t create Chinatown just for ourselves; it’s open to everyone. What we’d really like to see is our own community taking charge and developing the neighborhood. This could mean starting new businesses or passing the torch from the original businesses to keep them thriving. Another way we resist is that almost all the ingredients and supplies we use for our restaurants come from local vendors in our neighborhood. We all help each other stay in business.
What's the most dangerous thing about Chinatown becoming cool?
The dangerous thing about Chinatown becoming cool is when people think it's just a trend and they come and leech of the culture. For the people of Chinatown it's our life. It's not something you see online that's funny or hot right now. A good example of this is China Maxxing. I think it's great and funny how people are making it a thing online cuz it's now! But there wasn't that energy during that Pandemic, when elderly asian women were getting beaten to death in the street and people were saying we were eating bats!
You've talked about younger generations leaving Chinatown and the neighborhood losing its soul. What do you think the real reason is — is it economics, is it aspiration, is it something cultural that we're not naming honestly?
I think the real answer is that Chinatown has always been a place where immigrants could start out with nothing, living in small, cramped apartments. Our parents came here with nothing and gave us everything we needed. For many of us millennials, we were the first in our families to get a college education, and when that happens, most people naturally pursue a degree and a good job with a good salary. As a result, the next generation moves out of those small apartments, and while it’s great that everyone is doing better and building better, there aren’t any young people left to keep the traditions and businesses alive.
Originally, Chinatown was a fantastic place for immigrants to begin their journey in America, working hard to build a better life. However, with gentrification, real estate development, and economic changes, Chinatown is no longer welcoming new immigrants who can’t afford to rent a studio for $3000, which was much more affordable for a starting immigrant with a restaurant job.
What’s something about Chinatown that outsiders often misunderstand or fail to appreciate?
I believe the op answer to that is that everything in Chinatown is cheap. Things were made affordable, which were designed to benefit our community. However, this has led to the stereotype that Chinatown is just for cheap food. Many of our products, whether food or goods, are crafted with such skill and technique that they often don’t get the recognition they deserve.
Who in Chinatown do you think about most when you make decisions about the restaurant — whose approval, whose memory, whose presence matters most to what you're building?
Honestly we think about ourselves. We just put out and speak from our own voice. We are doing something different so we know we won't always please the older generations but we do try to uphold traditions and the pillars of our upbringing all while bringing it into the future and evolving it with our own lens to something that people haven't seen before.
SECTION IV: CULTURE, STYLE + THE UNIFORM
FASHION, SOCCER JERSEYS, IDENTITY, AND WHAT WE WEAR AS BELONGING
The jerseys almost feel like neighborhood uniforms — equal parts sport, culture, and memory. What was the inspiration behind the graphics, names, and numbers throughout the collection?
So with the Potluck Jersey we wanted it to be more loud and vibrant just like the restaurant. The pattern is made of a flame of a dragon. Which is the mascot of the brand. The back has the lucky number 88 which symbolizes luck and prosperity with the Chinese characters for Chinatown at the top.
The Phoenix palace is a little more calm and sleek, a little more of a mature vibe, but we still wanted to keep the BBC dna in it which is why we have the starfield pattern but we kept its tonal so it would be more subtle.
Chinatown has always had its own visual language — hand-painted signs, market colors, the fluorescent light of a restaurant interior at 7pm. Were there specific visual references from your childhood that shaped how you thought about the imagery in this campaign?
For sure. We wanted to be very intentional with the campaign. We understand everyone loves to be on Mott Street with the signs and the neon lights of Canal street. What we wanted to show with this campaign was the more engrained but beautiful environment of Chinatown. Things and places that make the clock tick in our neighborhood. Showing the kitchens, the produce and fish markets. These are things that are very hyper specific to our neighborhood and it all goes back to Chinatown having its own ecosystem.
A lot of the imagery here captures ordinary moments — fruit markets, alleyways, produce boxes, fluorescent lighting. Things some people might walk past without looking twice. Why was it important to you to treat those things as worth looking at?
We wanted to highlight these spots because they often go unnoticed. Each of these places is vital to its community, and the people who work there are the true heart of New York. They bring food to our tables and support their families, but they’re sometimes overlooked because they don’t fit the trendy, glamorous image. We don’t need more TikTok stars or finance bros; we need more farmers and skilled tradespeople—people who are honest, hardworking, and provide
The campaign feels very human and lived-in rather than overly polished. Why was it important to preserve that rawness in the imagery rather than clean it up?
Anything we do we always want to speak with that voice. We’ve lived for 2 decades with everyone on the internet trying to look too polished and perfect and that's not what the world is. Anyone can be anything they want without having to fit a mold.
The campaign highlights everyday beauty rather than spectacle. Do you think people consistently underestimate how visually rich Chinatown actually is?
Absolutely, just echoing what I mentioned earlier. We’re more than just a place to grab cheap bags and dumplings. This is who we are every day, and it’s what our elders fought and survived for, so we’ll never undervalue or disrespect our culture.
“Many of our products, whether food or goods, are crafted with such skill and technique that they often don’t get the recognition they deserve.”
SECTION V: LEGACY + REFLECTION
LEGACY, COMMUNITY, AND WHAT YOU'RE REALLY MAKING
When someone walks into Potluck Club for the first time and has never set foot in Chinatown before, what do you want them to feel — and what do you hope they carry out with them?
We want them to see that this is Chinatown now! We can carry on tradition but be cool, young and hip. We can serve dumplings and also play DIP SET! I want them to have a new rejuvenated perspective of our neighborhood.
If the version of you that grew up on these streets walked into Potluck Club today, what would surprise him most? And what would feel exactly right?
I think he would feel right at home. It's a little bit of everything that is the story of growing up in Chinatown New York. Deeply rooted in Chinese culture but also influenced heavily by the millennium and New York. What would feel exactly right is the decor and the music—the ambience.
In many ways, this campaign feels less like a fashion shoot and more like a love letter to a neighborhood. Did it feel personal making it?
Everything we do for the brand in this neighborhood is personal. We always try to treat it with the utmost respect. I had to personally talk to alot of OG’s and scout locations and ask for their blessing for us to be welcomes to do this campaign in their spaces, and you know the elders are not the most welcoming to stuff like this. So it was so awesome to be able to highlight spaces and people like this & once again always Thank you to the BBC team for always trusting me and allowing me to run the creative on the campaigns to truly be genuine about things.
Both Potluck Club and Billionaire Boys Club are built on strong storytelling rooted in community and identity. What made this collaboration feel like a natural fit rather than just an interesting pairing?
So this is our second collaboration and each time working with the BBC team and brand they really listen and allow for it to mean much more than a product. From the design and the campaign the BBC team allows us to collaborate to tell a true genuine story. It never feels like oh we're just trying to make something to check off a box for the asian community. I mean last years collab was a big success and we both donated every dollar of it to Apex for Youth a non profit that helps low income immigrant families.
What's the thing you bring to the table — and what are you still waiting for someone to bring?
Now what we feel as a team we bring to the table is inspiration. I’m not trying to get all righteous here. But these BBC collabs make us realize that “its fucking possible” we used to be the kids that thought this was just a pipe dream, and now were doing it and were not only doing it for the glitz & glam. We're doing it by unapologetically putting our culture forward.
And what we want out of this is for there to be more of it coming from our community. I don't care where you're from, what ethnicity you are. Build within your community, be proud of where your from and do things that you never thought were possible for the next kid who looks like you to see and be proud of.