Some go to Wo Hop, a basement-level Chinese restaurant on Mott Street in Lower Manhattan, for spare ribs and duck lo mein. Others go for spare ribs and a T-shirt.
To mark the Lunar New Year, the restaurant has made an annual tradition of adding clothing to its menu of American Chinese classics. Specifically, T-shirts with cheeky hand-drawn designs inspired by the Chinese zodiac — and, often, noodles. They are available only for a few months (roughly from mid January through mid April).
This year’s style, for the Year of the Horse, features a panda sitting astride a horse and lassoing it with a noodle. Last year’s motif, for the Year of the Snake, was a serpent coiled around a takeout box of noodles.
The shirts were introduced in 2012, but Wo Hop, which was opened in 1938, has been part of the city’s fabric for far longer. Its merchandise has earned devoted fans among nightlife enthusiasts, service-industry workers and regular customers who have been going — and collecting — for years.
That fan base is small but growing: About 2,700 shirts were sold in 2025, up from about 2,300 in 2024, said David Leung, a third generation owner of the restaurant. This year, he ordered an initial run of 2,400 shirts and is expecting to order 500 more to keep up with demand.
They can be purchased at Wo Hop for $15 and online for $25. The shirts can also be found for resale at slightly higher prices. “Everybody’s telling me, ‘Oh, you should raise the prices,” Mr. Leung, 60, said. “It’s not really a profit opportunity — it’s more for promotion. And it seems to be working.”
Damian Laezza, who works in nightlife in Bushwick, Brooklyn, said that he has been a “hardcore” collector of the Lunar New Year shirts since buying his first in 2014. “I’m one of those people who, if I have one, I have to have all of them,” he added.
Mr. Laezza, 43, has been going to Wo Hop since 2000, when he walked in at 5 in the morning after a night out. (Back then, the restaurant had 24-hour service. After Sept. 11, closing time became 5 a.m. Now Wo Hop closes at 10 p.m., a change put in place during the pandemic.)
The idea for seasonal T-shirts was partly in response to the demand for other merchandise sold at Wo Hop: Specifically, a red tee featuring a dragon, which was introduced in the early ’90s and available year-round until 2017, when it was discontinued. That style also became a collector’s item for some, including Mr. Laezza, who would buy 10 at a time. “I used to call them my uniform,” he said.
Since 2018, the whimsical designs on the Lunar New Year shirts have been drawn by a fourth-generation member of Wo Hop’s founding family: Mr. Leung’s daughter, Chelsea Leung. She was 13 when she created her first Lunar New Year motif: a smiling pig surrounded by fortune cookies, to commemorate the Year of the Pig.
Ms. Leung, now 21 and a senior at Stony Brook University, tries to infuse humor into each design, she said. “I really want to make sure that no one would ever think of putting these animals in these situations.”
Until 2024, she sketched with pencil and paper. She still freehand draws her T-shirt illustrations, but now does so on a touch-screen laptop. The process is collaborative. Ms. Leung and her father bounce around ideas together. Sometimes, Ms. Leung’s brother taps in.
“My dad does sometimes prefer that we have more fierce-looking animals than what I usually create,” she said. “But it’s kind of hard to make it look fierce if the animals are doing something that is not typical, because it’s kind of hard to take the animal seriously.”
Ms. Leung said that seeing strangers wearing a Wo Hop shirt was “a reminder of how much my family has accomplished.” For fans, wearing the T-shirts is a way to telegraph not only a love for the restaurant, but also of the city.
“It’s very much, like, a New York pride kind of thing,” said Emily Karcher, 43, the owner of a half-dozen Lunar New Year tees. Ms. Karcher, who works in hospitality, added that she had inspired several friends to get T-shirts of their own.
“Once they find out, everybody wants one,” she said.
David Locascio, a bartender and radio personality in Sag Harbor, N.Y., has 15 to 20 Wo Hop shirts. He likes to wear them while tending bar. “A good conversation starter,” he said.
“Back when New York was old New York, when it was the city that never slept, that was where you go after the club or after the bar,” Mr. Locascio, 36, added of Wo Hop. “You learn to love places like that.”
Mr. Locascio has made regular trips to Lower Manhattan from Long Island for the Lunar New Year T-shirt drops. He prefers to bring a group, but goes solo if he has to.
“I just make sure that I go,” he said.
Rachel Sherman reports on culture and the arts for The Times.
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