Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain hopes that his New York hawker centre will attract Asian-born locals and American-born Asians.
Bourdain’s $60 million street food market, Bourdain Market, will be found at Pier 57. Styled after Singapore’s iconic hawker centres, Bourdain Market will offer some of the chefs favourite hawker dishes such as Tian Tian Hainanese chicken rice, over to New York.
“If the younger Korean hipsters and their grandparents like us, we’re gonna be O.K,” he told The New Yorker magazine.
The Straits Times reports that there will be over 100 hawkers, which the paper suggests may be a problem since US President Donald Trump has tightened work visa applications.
“I’m an optimist,” Bourdain said. “I grew up watching Barney Miller, and it was Asian jokes all day long. They made fun of Asian food. It smelled like garbage. That’s not funny anymore.”
Bourdain described the style of the market to be “high-end retail as grungy, polyglot dystopia,” or “a post-apocalyptic Grand Central Terminal, if it had been invaded by China”.
Bourdain Market is expected to open later this year.
