The best Chinese restaurants in America

As one of only two Michelin-starred restaurants categorized as Chinese, the impact Mister Jiu's has had on the country's fine dining scene since it opened in 2016 can't be overstated. Chef/owner Brandon Jew opened the groundbreaking restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown that previously housed a legendary Chinese banquet hall and restaurant, Four Seas, and began pushing the boundaries of Chinese American cuisine. Ever since, the restaurant has received well-earned praise, including receiving one Michelin star. Last year, Jew changed the menu from a la carte item to a set, five-course tasting menu. Diners can also add a banquet-style entree (including his signature Liberty Farms Peking-style roast duck.) If you're looking for a more casual option, head upstairs to Moongate Lounge, a cocktail lounge offering a curated food menu.

There is a go-to restaurant for every kind of Chinese dish in Los Angeles—Beijing’s xiangbing (meat pies), Peking duck, cold noodles—but for xiao long bao (soup dumplings), we go to Din Tai Fung. Now, with locations in L.A., San Diego, the Bay Area, Seattle, Portland, New York, and Vegas, the Taiwanese dumpling house is a favorite among both tourists and locals for slurping down pork dumplings (pork and shrimp is another popular option) for lunch or dinner. While xiao long bao are a must-order item, don't skimp on the many other fan favorites, from wok-fried noodles to wontons to desserts like the Sesame & Mochi xiao long bao. 

Vegans who book their entire vacations around which restaurants they want to try know Spicy Moon. The all-vegan Szechuan joint has four restaurants that rank on the New York bucket list between scaling the Empire State Building and hailing a taxi from Central Park. Their dairy-free, meat-free Spicy Moon is known for its top-tier Dan Dan noodles, scallion pancakes, wonton in chili oil, and crispy eggplant. Each dish—like the peppercorn Brussels sprouts—is a new favorite you never knew you had. Inspired to take that impromptu NYC trip just for the noods? Do it!

Once you bite into the iconic Noodlebird egg tart, you’ll know why the Chicago restaurant has drawn followers of pastry lovers. With a creamy yellow inside and a fluffy crust, the egg tart does justice to the Chinese bakery classic. Other fantastic baked goods include mango morning buns, puffy masaladas, char siu buns for barbecue sandwiches, and a rotating cast of innovative treats. Egg tarts aren’t the only signature at Noodlebird; check out the hand-pinched dumplings, delicious cocktails, and, during football season, the crispy fried chili chicken thigh sandwich with spicy slaw and sesame ginger pickles on a house milk bread bun. Oh, and the namesake noodles are handmade on-premises.

Philadelphia’s home to a number of superb contenders, but it’s hard to top one with a backstory like this Chinatown magnet has: the owners can trace their ancestry back to one of the chefs who invented the universal objects of foodie worship that are xiao long bao—and they’ve got the recipe to prove it. What’s more, says Sally Da, her mother-partner Shizhou has been cooking "the entire line of Shanghai-style dim sum" for over 30 years. So it’s not just those intricate, elastic little dough pouches, bursting with soup at the touch of a tooth, that earned Dim Sum Garden intense loyalty. It's also dumplings and cakes of all kinds—flat, fat, steamed, fried, savory, sweet—that play substantial roles and myriad variations on the snappy house noodles.

If Peking Gourmet Inn looks like your grandfather’s Chinese restaurant—painted lanterns, red vinyl booths, jacketed waiters and all—that’s because it could have been: after all, it’s been around since the late 1970s, when Deborah Lee and Bobby Tsui’s own Shandong-born grandfather opened it with only eight tables. It's significantly expanded over the decades, but Peking duck remains at the center of it all, ceremoniously dismantled tableside for a feast of dark, rich meat and crackling, glistening golden skin accompanied by unusually delicate pancakes, housemade hoisin sauce, and green onions grown on the family farm—which also supplies the beloved garlic sprouts. Beyond that, look to the lamb dishes and the lightly batter-fried but heavily garlicky jeo-yen shrimp.

Chinese food fanatics have rejoiced in recent years as Xi'an Famous Foods, a Flushing chainlet, rapidly expanded, opening seven shops in Manhattan and three in Brooklyn. (Queens is now home to five, and the brand released a much-lauded cookbook in 2020.) On offer here is the cuisine of Xi’an, an ancient city in North Central China that was once a vital part of the Silk Road trade routes. The cumin-spiked "lamb burgers," tangy liang pi cold noodles and warm tofu submerged in crimson chili oil are all must-haves.

Gene Wu calls the food of Shaanxi province "very simple, not fancy at all. It’s all based on freshness." Of course, nothing requires consummate skill and an unwavering work ethic quite like simple dishes dependent on fresh ingredients. And Wu’s actions speak louder than his words as he shuttles between the pair of modest shops he, his wife, and his cousin run in Boston’s Downtown Crossing and the northern suburbs to make the buns for textbook, sloppy joe-like rou jia mo; the dough for the wide, springy, clingy noodles they’ll pull to order the way the third-generation restaurateur’s family did back home; and, well, not much else. Unlike most of its peers, Gene’s Chinese Flatbread Café serves just a few dishes. Perhaps the best-loved is the noodles with lamb (in soup or not), redolent of garlic, cumin and herbs, but the spicy chilled versions with wheat gluten or tea eggs enjoy near-equal acclaim. (Granted, there will always be a place in our hearts for Cantonese seafood institution Peach Farm, just a few blocks away.)

At $150 per person, Ling Kitchen is one of the more expensive restaurants on this list, but it’s also one of the most unique. Those lucky enough to snag one of the chef table’s 10 seats can witness chef Ling Qi Wu’s creations. Chef Ling learned to cook from her grandmother—and we all know grandma’s cooking is the BEST—and she took that family know-how from Fuzhou City to Austin, Texas. You’ll kind of feel like family in the intimate chef’s table setting, where you’ll get a full view of the chef at work, turning fresh, organic ingredients into elevated Chinese cuisine.

Yiquan Gu has always kept his eye on the prize. Whether wordlessly washing dishes for six months to convince a master chef in his native Chengdu that he was serious about his culinary education or closing his wildly popular namesake bistro in favor of a counter stall in Inman Park’s Krog Street Market, where he could focus on a streamlined repertoire rather than overhead distractions, his dedication to the art of Sichuan cuisine has been singular. And the proof is in the pudding—or rather the pork-stuffed, boiled jewels that give Gu’s Dumplings its name, tossed with tangy sauce from an ancient, secret recipe. It’s also in the mouth-tingling dry-fried eggplant and the savory-sweet, sesame-tinged cold noodles. Heck, it’s even in the po’ boy he makes with the chicken nuggets he stir-fries with broccoli and cilantro just for kicks. And what's risk without reward? Years after closing the initial bistro, Yiquan Gu's daughter and son-in-law opened Gu's Kitchen in 2019, just a short hop from the original spot. 

Launched in Seattle as a pioneering mom-and-pop hot-pot hut over 20 years ago, Sichuanese Cuisine now includes two locations managed by Hsiao Sung Kao and Yuen Ping Cheng’s cadre of relatives. Though they vary slightly, the menus are huge, so it’s up to you to focus on the regional specialties that give Sichuanese Cuisine Restaurant its blunt name: aside from the ma la huo guo, you’re here for water-boiled beef or fish, Chongqing-style chicken, dry-fried string beans and stir-fried pork kidney (or, to use the transliterated name, "fire-exploded kidney flowers"), all of which may leave you a bit beaten and bruised—but blissfully so.

The aromas coming from the steamed and fried dumplings at Yank Sing are so tantalizing that you’ll likely gobble them down before finding out what’s in them. Exceptionally fresh and flavorful dim sum keeps this longtime restaurant thriving in an unlikely corner of a massive office complex. Ordering is half the fun at this trolly-service dim sum institution: Just point at what looks good as the waiters roll their carts past your table. Favorites include Shanghai dumplings with pork, scallion, ginger and a shot of hot broth, stuffed crab claws, and goldfish dumplings filled with crunchy shrimp and bamboo shoot tips.

Stepping into the Hakkasan on Miami Beach is absolute luxury. The dimly lit house of Cantonese cuisine is loved by celebrities and frequented by those who love elegance-infused Chinese food. Hakkasan, with its 11 locations around the world, boasts the experience of ancient dishes with a modern twist, resulting in Sweet & sour prawn with pomegranate, Stir-Fry Chilean sea bass with sanpei sauce, and Sanpei chicken claypot. Unique to Hakkasan is its wine pairings: “If a wine does not work with one dish—even if it is great with the others—it does not make the list,” they say. Go for the wine, dinner, and the cognac and coconut caviar dessert creation to tie it all together.

After running a successful restaurant in China and working at the Panda Restaurant Group in Los Angeles, Tony Xu opened Chengdu Taste in 2013. The San Gabriel Valley—and the rest of Los Angeles—quickly took notice, and the lines haven’t let up since. Fiery Szechuan dishes fill tables with intoxicating smells and an overarching red hue that indicates an intimidating spice level. Start slowly, perhaps with cold mung bean noodles slathered in chili paste, then move to more grandiose items: boiled fish in green pepper sauce, stir-fried pig’s intestines, lamb on toothpicks with cumin. A green peppercorn here and there will sometimes numb your mouth, but the flavors at Chengdu Taste are all intense, wonderful, and worth the wait.

Tony Hu uses plenty of Szechuan pepper, dried chilies, garlic and ginger to create flavors that are incredibly addictive. Our favorites at Lao Sze Chuan are Chengdu dumplings, crispy Chinese eggplant with ground pork, twice-cooked pork, mapo tofu, Szechuan prawns and "chef’s special" dry chili chicken. There are venues throughout the city and suburbs (and with recent interstate expansion to Connecticut, Texas, Maryland, and Ohio)—and trust us, whichever you pick, you won’t be disappointed.

For Houston’s hotheads, spicy Sichuan cuisine all comes down to two restaurants: Mala Sichuan Bistro and this sizzling upstart. Yunan Yang and her sister Lily Luo derive their equally thoughtful and heartfelt brand of cooking from their mother—who "came from a very big family" in Chongqing, where she learned "a lot of secret recipes from the family cook"—as well as from Yang’s own background in cancer research, which reveals itself in her emphasis on wholesome ingredients, from organic meats and veggies to digestive aids like the dried plum powder she sprinkles on fried sweet potatoes and, of course, imported numbing peppercorns. The effects run from pure exhilaration, as with the fried beef cubes and hot-sauce boiled fish brimming with chilies, to soothing relief in the form of meltingly tender, sweet-salty "soft bacon" or scrambled, fried tomatoes and eggs, accompanied by a fresh green-bean smoothie.