The Best Real Chinese Food in America

Not a rec center in the Pyrenees, as its name might suggest, but a serious Chinese restaurant offering dishes both familiar and unusual. (It’s in the Andorra Shopping Center.) Among the latter are chicken kidney in chili pepper; mustard green and fish soup; sizzling stuffed bean curd; and spicy pork shank Chongqing style.

This serious Chinese standard in suburban Providence, named for a region of central Sichuan province, serves a wide-ranging menu that encompasses everything from spicy chicken feet and mustard pork noodle soup to crispy prawns with aromatic pepper salt and braised pork intestine with tofu pudding. More familiar items, like a selection of dim sum, lo mein, and fried rice dishes are also available, and General Tso puts in a few appearances.

This Taiwan-based chain has 13 locations in four Western states, as well as more in Taiwan and around Asia, plus the U.K., Australia, and the UAE. (The Daily Meal once named their original Taipei location the best restaurant in Asia.) Their specialty is xiao long bao, the broth-filled buns everybody calls “soup dumplings,” which the late L.A. Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold once called “small miracles.” One of their newest outposts, in L.A.’s Century City, is attractively upscale, with an ample menu of excellent choices beyond the impeccable dumplings.

One of David Chang’s favorites (he likes the ginger scallion noodles), this popular place offers an extensive menu that goes far beyond just the pasta promised by its name. Frog porridge, watercress and clam soup, Peking-style pork chops, and snails in black bean sauce are just a few examples.

The original Han Dynasty opened in the Philadelphia suburb of Exton in 2007. Today there are nine locations in Pennsylvania and New York. They’re all worth a visit, but this one seems particularly popular. Tasting menus are available, but there are also ample à la carte choices — for instance, spicy mung bean noodles in black bean sauce, pea leaves with garlic, and ginger shredded duck.

A classic Cantonese place helmed by a chef from Hong Kong, Joyful House serves live seafood from its tanks (Maine lobster, Santa Barbara spot prawns, Australian coral cod, and more) as well as a good choice of other dishes, from crispy fried salt and pepper calamari to Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce to steamed chicken with ginger and scallions.

Excellent Taiwanese and Chinese food is on the menu at this “authentic Asian bistro” in a community just outside Atlanta. Specialties include Hakka stir-fry pork belly with calamari, bean curd, and Chinese chive flowers; stewed Chinese okra with crab meat and roe; and lamb with leeks and cilantro in hot bean sauce.

Peking duck obviously isn’t a Sichuan (Szechuan) specialty, but it’s very good at this attractive place on Archer Street (one of three Chicago area locations of the restaurant). More fiery options include chef’s special dry chili chicken, sole fish fillet with sour pickle cabbage in spicy sauce, and lamb with pure cumin powder. There are milder options, too, including Szechuan smoked tea duck.

Billing itself as “Honolulu’s authentic Chinese restaurant,” this Chinatown establishment specializes in dim sum during the day, with almost 40 varieties available, and then focuses on seafood at night (though plenty of other dishes are also served). Sample fare: the Legend Platter (cold abalone, jellyfish, scallops, sea cucumber, and shrimp balls), baked live crab with spicy salt, and pan-fried noodles with seafood.

Chinese food expert Ed Schoenfeld of RedFarm (see below) counts this modest place as among his favorite restaurants. Forthright soups (pickled radish, shredded pork, and vermicelli; clam with melon), abundant rice and noodle dishes, and such specialties as crispy duck Chiu Chow style, veal short rib with honey sauce, and sautéed frogs’ legs with preserved dried olives are among the dishes on offer.

MCCB stands for “Modern Chinese Cook Book.” In addition to such familiar dishes as kung pao chicken and mapo tofu, the restaurant offers such less common fare as Cheng Du spicy dumplings, Mama’s pork elbow soup, and applewood-grilled whole fish.

The hamlet of Bear, just south of Wilmington, is home to this casually attractive storefront where the specialties include beef and cilantro soup, salt-and-pepper fried chicken wings, spicy frogs’ legs, and cumin spareribs with garlic.

If any restaurant in America makes xiao long bao (i.e., soup dumplings) to equal those of the Din Tai Fung chain (see above), it’s this citadel of Shanghai-style food. Besides the classic variety, there are variations with chicken soup, scallop and pork, and other combinations of ingredients. Dim sum, noodle and noodle soup dishes, and some other specialties are also available.

For more than four decades, this capacious strip mall restaurant has served some of the country’s best Peking duck, carved tableside. Famed politicians and other celebrities flock here (their pictures are on the walls), primarily for the duck but also for such offerings as seafood asparagus soup, black pepper beef, and firecracker sea scallops.

Master chef Peter Chang is famed for his Sichuan cuisine, but also for his peripatetic employment history: He was famous for working at and then disappearing from restaurants throughout the Southeast, and his many fans constantly tried to keep up with him. Happily, he finally settled down some years ago and began opening places of his own, a number of them in Virginia. They’re all good, but this one, just outside Richmond, has been particularly consistent. Expect dishes like scallion bubble pancake, spicy dry-fried eggplant, and Shan City pigs’ feet.

This iconic Chinatown favorite has two levels — casual downstairs and more elegant upstairs. The specialty is Cantonese cuisine, with dishes like salt-and-pepper crab (made with live crabs right out of the tank), tender marinated R & G special beef, soy sauce chicken, and Three Treasures (bean curd, eggplant, and chiles stuffed with shrimp) with black bean sauce.

The original Greenwich Village location of this small, always bustling restaurant, opened by Chinese food expert Ed Schoenfeld and master dim sum chef Joe Ng, continues to be one of the absolute musts for Chinese-food-lovers in Manhattan. (There’s a Peking duck emporium called Decoy downstairs, as well as another RedFarm on the Upper West Side and an outpost in London.) Touting its greenmarket sensibility, the place serves a small menu of bright, well-focused dishes like spicy crispy beef, steamed sea bass with black bean sauce, and an array of dumplings.

Notwithstanding the name of this restaurant in the L.A.-adjacent San Gabriel Valley — a region that has become a mecca for great Chinese food — or the presence of seafood dishes on the menu, what the place is famous for is its immense catalogue of dim sum. This includes all the usual things but also such specialties as bean curd skin roll with seafood in abalone sauce, black fungus and celery dumplings, and eggplant stuffed with shrimp paste. The list goes on and on.

Don’t come here for Shanghai specialties: This is a Cantonese restaurant that used to be Shangaiese and never got a name change. Salt-roasted spareribs or chicken wings, dry stir-fried beef chow fun, shimmering soy sauce duck, snow pea leaves with garlic, and more are on the menu.

Fujian (sometimes called Hokkien) cuisine, the focal point here, is known for being somewhat lighter and more delicate than the fare from some other Chinese regions. The brief menu offers soups (fish ball, meat-stuffed rice ball, etc.), pork and chive dumplings, wheat noodles with peanut sauce, and a handful of other dishes, and there are daily specials.

“Premium Los Angeles-based Sichuanese cuisine,” promises this stylish restaurant (it’s actually northeast of L.A. in the San Gabriel Valley). That translates to such dishes as schoolyard hot pot noodles, steamed pork in rice flour with pumpkin and scallions, Hong Xing rabbit with peanuts and sesame, and stir-fried pigs’ feet with bell peppers and chiles.

“The closest thing to New York Chinatown Chinese Food that you could ever get in South Florida,” wrote a Yelp reviewer last year. Sample dishes: crab meat and winter melon soup, sliced abalone with Chinese vegetables, baked preserved squid with chili and spice salt, and Hong Kong squab.

Owned by a Taiwanese photographer/chef and featuring Taiwanese, Cantonese, and Sichuan dishes, this is one of New England’s best Chinese restaurants. The specialty is mock eel made with shiitakes (praised by TV food celebrity Alton Brown). Other dishes include chilled shredded Vermont chicken, salt-and-pepper tofu, red chili shrimp, and cashew pork.

This local treasure delights Chinese-food-lovers with choices like seafood okra soup, chopped pickled chili fish fillet, salted fish and chicken fried rice, and shredded pork with dried bean curd and Chinese celery, as well as more conventional offerings. The murals on the walls depict the cooking of dishes on the menu.

A casual upstairs restaurant, open late, Taiwan specializes in (not surprisingly) Taiwanese cuisine. Popular choices include scrambled eggs with beef and tomato, thick bacon-cut braised pork, and Taiwan-style duck and cold cut beef shank over rice.

“A nonstop stream of Szechwan, Cantonese and Chinese specialties, served in two bustling dining rooms” is heralded by this always-busy restaurant in Silicon Valley (home to one of the country’s largest Chinese populations). Dishes are standard but well-prepared — kung pao chicken, prawns with black bean sauce, mu shu pork, Mongolian beef, and the like.

A Seattle favorite since its origins back in 1935, Tai Tung serves mostly familiar old-school dishes like fried wontons, hot and sour soup, lo mein with oyster sauce, pineapple spareribs, chow fun with Chinese greens, and Peking duck.

Named for an ancient city in northwestern China, inland from Shanghai, Xi’an started in Queens and has grown into a mini-chain of eight restaurants in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Specialties on the short menu include Chinese-style pork or beef “burgers,” “spicy and tingly” hand-ripped beef noodles, sweet and sour lamb dumplings, and stir-fried “cold skin” noodles.

The Rincon Center location of this place (there’s another one nearby, on Stevenson Street) was a favorite of the late Cecilia Chiang, the doyenne of Chinese restaurateurs in California. It’s all about dim sum, with over 100 varieties on a rotating schedule, served in the traditional pushcart style. Seafood basil dumplings, steamed spareribs, pan-fried chicken buns, crab claws, turnip cakes, phoenix tail prawns, and much more are likely to come around. A few non-dim sum specialties (eggplant with Hunan sauce, salt and pepper pork, etc.) are also served.

Another superb San Gabriel Valley Chinese place, Yunnan Garden specializes in the foods of Yunnan province in China’s southwest. Sautéed mixed mushrooms (mushrooms figure prominently in Yunnan’s cooking), baked bean curd with Chinese celery, lamb with pickled pepper, and spicy king pork leg are among the featured dishes.