Eng’s Chinese Restaurant Earns James Beard America’s Classics Award

Eng’s Chinese Restaurant in Kingston has long been the kind of place people talk about in shorthand: the egg rolls, the pu pu platter, the dining room that feels like it has absorbed decades of birthdays, graduations, and post-game dinners. This week, that local shorthand was given national validation when Eng’s was named a 2026 America’s Classics Award winner by the James Beard Foundation, placing the Broadway mainstay among a small group of independent restaurants recognized for their lasting cultural and community impact.

The America’s Classics Award honors locally owned restaurants with “timeless appeal” that are deeply woven into the fabric of their communities. Since the category was established in 1998, just over 100 restaurants nationwide have received the designation. Eng’s joins that lineage as the New York State honoree for 2026, and will be formally celebrated at the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards ceremony on June 15 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Founded in 1927 by Jimmi Eng and his son Paul, Eng’s was Kingston’s first Chinese restaurant. The business has occupied its current location since 1966, surviving shifting food trends, downtown fortunes, and generational change. For much of that history, the constant has been Tom Sit, who has run Eng’s for more than five decades alongside his wife, Faye Sit.

Sit’s path to Kingston is itself a story of upheaval and resilience. Born in Guangzhou in 1943, he fled China during the Cultural Revolution, swimming to Hong Kong as one of the so-called “freedom swimmers.” He arrived in the United States in 1974 and soon found work at Eng’s as a cook, despite having no prior professional cooking experience. When Jimmi Eng retired a few years later, Sit took over the restaurant—an improbable inheritance that would become a lifelong vocation.

Under Sit’s stewardship, Eng’s has remained firmly rooted in Chinese-American classics: in-house egg rolls packed with fresh vegetables, Singapore chow mei fun, and the familiar pleasures of the pu pu platter. Those dishes have anchored generations of Kingston diners, many of whom first encountered Chinese food within Eng’s walls.

The restaurant’s endurance was tested again during the pandemic, when Eng’s shifted to takeout-only service for five years. Its eventual reopening brought more than a return to indoor dining. The Sits restored the retro dining room, revived buffet nights, and introduced live music, reaffirming Eng’s role as a social space as much as a place to eat.

In announcing this year’s America’s Classics winners, James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach described the honorees as “pillars of their communities” whose longevity is built on both food and commitment to the people they serve. That framing fits Eng’s easily. Even now, in his 80s, Sit continues to work daily—often on days he insists are his days off—an ongoing expression of personal investment rather than obligation. The James Beard Foundation has put a national spotlight cast on a restaurant that has been quietly doing what it does best for nearly a century, one egg roll at a time.

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