A fixture of Chinatown's diner's scene for more than a decade is getting a new name and a new owner, but not, its incoming chef insists, a new personality. Lucas Sin, the James Beard Award-winning chef behind Junzi Kitchen, is turning M Star Cafe at 19 Division Street into Lok Kee, the cha chaan teng he plans to run.
Sin plans to change very little of M Star Cafe's decor, according to Grub Street, which first reported the transition. The diner's cerulean tiles, a mural depicting Jackie Chan, Yao Ming, Chow Yun-fat, Stephen Chow, and Andy Lau, and a pixelated Google Maps-style rendering of Hong Kong Island are all expected to remain, per the outlet's reporting. Lok Kee will also maintain a version of M Star Cafe's current menu, the report notes, preserving the no-frills character that has made the diner a neighborhood staple.
Sin, who grew up in Hong Kong, has been a regular at M Star Cafe for years, and he says he asked around about restaurant spaces before landing this one. “Not many places will let you spend time in the restaurant before signing the lease,” Sin said, according to the same account. He has also hosted pop-ups at M Star Cafe in the past, giving him an unusually intimate familiarity with the space before taking it over.
From Yale Dorm Rooms to a Chinatown Diner
Sin's path to Lok Kee runs through pop-up dinners across New York City, where his menus have included black-pepper brisket with potatoes in a clay pot, mochi French toast with condensed milk, dual-sauced yin-yang fried rice, and tofu-skin shrimp rolls, per Grub Street's reporting. He appeared on New York City's culinary scene in 2017 and started developing Junzi Kitchen, his fast-casual Chinese chain known for homestyle noodles, during his senior year at Yale.
That early hustle traces back further still. Sin began his cooking career at age 16 running a pop-up in an abandoned Hong Kong newspaper factory, then hosted weekend dorm-room pop-ups while studying cognitive science and English at Yale, according to Heritage Radio Network. Junzi Kitchen eventually raised $5 million in pre-Series A funding in 2019, as reported by Forbes. Sin was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in 2020 and a Food & Wine Best New Chef in 2021, and in 2024 he won a James Beard Foundation Broadcast Media Award for hosting Street Eats, a Bon Appétit YouTube series on global street food, according to his Wikipedia entry.
What's Staying on the Menu
M Star Cafe currently runs a menu of more than 150 items, and Sin feels the pressure of that scale as he plans Lok Kee's future, Grub Street reports. Longtime offerings expected to carry over include baked pork chops with rice, breakfast congee, macaroni-and-ham soup, cheung fun rice rolls, soy-braised chicken wings, and yuenyeung, the milk-tea-and-coffee mixture beloved in Hong Kong diners. Sin does want to upgrade certain sauces and spice blends, per the same reporting, even as he keeps the broader lineup intact.
The cooking style itself, built on evaporated milk, ketchup, cream-of-chicken soup, and Spam, defines cha chaan tengs as Hong Kong diners known for speed as much as flavor. Cha chaan tengs typically turn out average orders in one or two minutes, and customers can be in and out of a full meal in about 15 minutes, according to Grub Street's account. That fast, affordable rhythm is central to what Sin says he wants Lok Kee to preserve.
A Cultural Legacy Under Pressure
Sin's approach echoes a broader preservation push that has been building in Hong Kong for nearly two decades. In 2007, a Hong Kong lawmaker suggested adding cha chaan tengs to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list after a poll found 70 percent of local respondents supported the idea, according to Whetstone Magazine. By 2014, the Hong Kong government had formally added signature cha chaan teng items, including Hong Kong-style milk tea, yuenyeung, pineapple buns, and egg tarts, to the territory's first Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory, per Wikipedia's entry on cha chaan teng.
Chinatown restaurants are often passed down familially from generation to generation, which makes Sin's outside takeover of M Star Cafe somewhat unusual, Grub Street notes. Sin has framed the move as a kind of exchange rather than a disruption. “If you take a cha chaan teng away from Chinatown, you have to give one back,” Sin said, according to the outlet's reporting.
According to the Office of the New York State Comptroller, Womply estimated that one-quarter of retail and wholesale establishments in New York City had closed since March 1, 2020. According to the New York City Council, almost half of New York City's small businesses are immigrant-owned, a total of over 100,000 local businesses.
No Firm Date, but a Cookbook on the Way
The M Star Cafe handover has no set date, though Sin hopes it will happen before the end of the year, per Grub Street. The timing lines up with the release of his debut cookbook, Cha Chaan Teng: Comfort Food From Hong Kong's Iconic Diners, which Hachette Book Group describes as containing 128 recipes gathered from longtime Hong Kong diner chefs, according to Hachette Book Group. Sin spent time abroad researching the book, and Grub Street's report frames Lok Kee as something of a real-world extension of that research.
Sin's projects have shown up on Hoodline's radar before: Junzi's Theater District debut and its growing footprint were both covered as the chain expanded across New York City in 2019. Lok Kee, though, will be a full-time expression of Sin's interest in cha chaan tengs at M Star Cafe. For now, the cerulean tiles and the mural of Hong Kong film stars remain exactly where they've always been, waiting for the name on the door to change.
