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Now that Chinese restaurants are ubiquitous, old-fashioned Cantonese joints like Wo Hop are on the decline. Chinatown is now populated with regional Fijian, Dim Sum, Szechuan, and Shanghaiese eateries, plus Vietnamese, Malaysian, Thai, and even Korean restaurants. But at Wop Hop, established in 1938, time stands still. Popular with the bridge-and-tunnel crowd and glassy eyed civil servants, this tiny subterranean dinosaur serves all the classics you loved in your youth: egg drop soup, chow mein, egg foo young, subgum vegetables. Much of the food is simply prepared and heavily battered. And corn starch-thickened oyster and black bean sauces rule. But there's something comforting about it. Maybe it's because day or night, Wo Hop is there for you with a bowl of wonton soup, brimming with wontons freshly rolled by the kitchen staff, or soy sauce-soaked chunks of brown roast pork—and not the food-dyed red pork you'll get at other joints. Whatever you order, you will not leave hungry: Portions are elephantine and the food dense. And if you charge in here, post-clubbing, you may just exit up the stairs when the sun is breaking in the east. — Brian Silverman

Wonton soup, $2.20; roast pork, $5.25; chicken kow with black bean sauce, $8.50