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Short rib dressed with greens on a blue plate.
The short rib at Potluck Club.

32 Glorious Chinese Restaurants to Try in NYC

Standout soup dumplings, tasty hand-pulled noodles, mouth-numbing Sichuan, and other regional fare

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The short rib at Potluck Club.

New York City is in the middle of a Chinese food renaissance that started over a decade ago: Never before have the city’s offerings been so diverse, with the debut of many regional restaurants, and a new guard of fast-casual dumpling and noodle shops that have recast many dishes in more accessible format. Some places, such as Potluck Club, Uncle Lou, and August Gatherings have given Chinese American food a fresh look. Even with these newcomers, New Yorkers haven’t forgotten the long history of Chinese food in the city, dating to the late-19th century, and this collection also includes old-timers.

Here are 32 of our current favorite Chinese restaurants.

For more New York dining recommendations, check out the new hot spots in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, and our guides to brunch spots, food halls, rooftop restaurants, and Michelin-starred restaurants offering outdoor dining.

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Happy Hot Hunan

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Near the northern verge of the Upper West Side, which has always been an under-the-radar location for excellent Chinese restaurants, lies the agreeably, accurately, and alliteratively-named Happy Hot Hunan. Few restaurants serve such a wide range of Hunan specialties (quite different than Sichuan ones, and often spicier). Foods preserved by pickling, drying, and smoking provide unique flavors in Hunan food, including one dish of smoked pork with smoked bamboo shoots that tastes like Texas barbecue. Too much smoking? Nah!

A white plastic bowl of greens dotted with red chiles.
Even the mustard greens come dotted with chiles.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

New Fu Run

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We thought we’d lost this Flushing mainstay when it closed a few years ago, but then discovered there was another branch across the Queens border in Great Neck. It also features the food of Dongbei — the three provinces in northernmost China once known as Manchuria. Try the pork with sour cabbage, sweet and sour fish, and green-bean sheet jelly (mung bean noodles, pressed tofu, and cloud ear fungus with tahini in a sort of toss-it-yourself salad).

Julienne vegetables with brown sauce on top fanned out on a platter.
Green bean sheet jelly at New Fu Run.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tri Dim West

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There’s no better prelude or conclusion to a Museum of Natural History visit or stroll in Central Park than this nominally Shanghai restaurant, where strong cocktails are part of the package. Though lion’s head meatballs, soup dumplings, West Lake beef soup, and other Shanghai regional delicacies are presented, the menu goes further afield with Sichuan, Cantonese (including lots of dim sum for convenient snacking), and even Teochew dishes.

Three meatballs in brown gravy.
Lion’s head meatballs at Tri Dim.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Xi'an Famous Foods

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The original location of this empire from restaurateur Jason Wang opened in downtown Flushing. As its reputation grew, branches opened all over the city with its spicy, fragrant style of cooking from northwestern China. Try any of the hand-pulled noodles and the spicy cumin lamb burger — the meat is rich, the bread has a crunchy sear on the outside, and the bun soaks up plenty of lamb juices.

A round aluminum carryout containers with noodles and meat inside.
Liang pi noodles at Xi’an Famous Foods.
Ryan Sutton/Eater NY

Shanghai You Garden

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This Shanghai restaurant in Bayside, Queens, serves the best soup dumplings in town. Smaller than usual, they’re thin skinned and bulging with a delicate gravy. With a fuller menu than its Flushing branch, it features a range of Shanghai specialties, including small plates, noodles, soups, and bigger feeds like braised pork shoulder, sweet and sour sea bass, and eel in hot oil.

Chive and chicken chowder set into a yin and yang shape with green and beige broths
Yin yang soup at Shanghai You Garden.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao

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When it moved to more luxurious premises down Prince Street in 2019, Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao opened its new dining room to much fanfare. But carryout and delivery are still available from this place, owned by Tai Ma, that helped popularize Shanghai soup dumplings. The restaurant now makes them in a rainbow of colors and also offers a menu rich in other Shanghai specialties, from chicken in wine sauce to rice cake with mustard greens. (And there’s now an express location in Forest Hills.)

Six multi-colored soup dumplings in a bamboo steamer at Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao.
Soup dumplings come in colors.
Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao

Deng Ji Yunnan Guoqiao Mixian

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For the last decade the food of Yunnan has been increasingly appreciated here, centering on a handful of dishes featuring floppy rice mixian noodles and lots of Southeast Asian flourishes, This newer branch of Deng Ji, occupying the old Fu Run space, has the largest collection of big-deal rice noodle soups that the city has yet seen, most involving dramatic tableside presentations and add-in ingredients numbering 15 or more. This place is for the real Yunnan aficionado.

A bowl of broth with 14 small dishes above it waiting to be dumped in.
The fabled crossing the bridge noodles.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Followsoshi

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Street food takes center stage here in the form of the popular jian bing, a crepe-like sandwich. The restaurant offers nearly a dozen different kinds jian bing with fillings like spicy ramen, peking duck, and spiced beef. But the menu extends well beyond jian bing, offering roasted cold noodles, crispy beef patties, and a variety of bao. The restaurant is a takeout-only operation.

Two folded pancakes with fillings, one on top of the other.
Jian biang is a staple of Chinese street food.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Café China

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The lunchtime Sichuan mainstay of office workers from Yiming Wang and Xian Zhang moved a couple of blocks west recently and became much grander, seating over 300 with three full floors of seating options in dining room with a 1930s theme. The food remains every bit as good, if a bit pricier. Recommended dishes include pork dumplings in hot oil, loofah and dried scallops, ma po tofu, and especially braised beef in red soup.

Four Chinese dishes in a circle seen from above.
A selection of dishes form Cafe China.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Hey Yuet

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As the city’s hulking Chinese banquet halls were emptying out under the strains of the pandemic and other economic challenges, making dim sum of a sophisticated sort harder to get, modern Hong Kong teahouse Hey Yuet stepped forward to fill the gap. It provides a wide range of pristine and modern dim sum, even offering backdrops for selfies that make it seem like you’re in one of the great banquet halls.

Two hands hold up a steamer with three round black steamed buns inside.
Black steamed bao filled with salted egg yolk.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Happy Stony Noodle

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This rollicking Elmhurst spot showcases the Taiwanese cuisine in its myriad variations, including beef stew and tendon with wide rice noodles, and pork and pickled cabbage rice cake. For the young ’uns are modern dishes such as salt-and-pepper fried chicken nuggets and fried calamari; for the old folks, there’s a menu of Taiwanese classics like oyster omelet and stinky tofu.

Oyster omelet at Happy Stony Noodle with red sauce pooled on top and oysters poking out.
Taiwanese oyster omelet.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tangy Noodle

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Named after Shorty Tang, the Taiwanese chef who introduced Sichuan food to Chinatown in the ‘60s, Tangy Noodle is a Chelsea storefront that sells some of his specialties and some newer concoctions, too. His cold sesame noodles, a simple dish with a mellow sauce supposedly invented or at least adapted by him, is still the thing to get, with noodles firmer than usual, but then the homemade wontons in chile sauce and spicy beef noodle soup are also well worth contemplating.

Noodles with brown sauce in a bowl.
Shorty Tang’s cold sesame noodles.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Auntie Guan's Kitchen

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The Dongbei cuisine of China’s northeastern province — and that of northern China, including Shandong and Tianjin — is presented in more complete form at Auntie Guan’s than Manhattan has seen before. Consider the “green bean sheet jelly,” a smorgasbord of salad ingredients surrounding a heap of clear mung bean noodles; and pork with pickled cabbage, a casserole that seems almost German with its sauerkraut-like fermented cabbage.

A wok of beige colored ingredients.
Pork with pickled cabbage at Auntie Guan’s.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Golden Woks

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West Villagers worried that this modest carryout Chinese spot was gone forever when it closed for a few months, but now it’s back and better than ever. All the classics are there in splendid form, including egg foo young, beef chow fun with or without gravy, and chow mein in all its lively guises. But over the years Sichuan, Hunan, Mandarin, and even Thai dishes have been added, and they’re quite good, too.

Egg foo young with plenty of brown gravy and white rice.
Shrimp egg foo young is a classic Chinese American dish.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Lin & Daughters

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This modest spot run by Becky Lin, as an ode to her daughters, features soup and dumplings and little else. A favorite is the unusual shrimp dumplings in a lime-chile sauce heaped with cilantro and scallions, giving the dumplings a Southeast Asian flavor. Taiwanese beef noodle soup is also a good bet.

Pale dumplings in a bright green sauce.
Shrimp dumplings at Lin & Daughters.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

With a tea service that treats the beverage like a sacrament, and a 100-item menu that offers seemingly endless permutations of familiar dishes, Uluh is every inch a modern Chinese restaurant. It caters to a crowd that’s very sophisticated about its Chinese food. A large proportion of the menu highlights Sichuan, but there’s also a good proportion of northern Chinese, along with dim sum and other Cantonese flourishes. Then there are pig trotters in chile oil, Nanjing salted duck, and a lobster version of ma po tofu.

Three Chinese dishes involving duck, noodles, and beef tripe on colorful plates and bowls.
A selection of dishes from Uluh.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Szechuan Mountain House

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NYC is a town of superb Sichuan restaurants. Envelope-pushing Szechuan Mountain House expanded from Flushing to the East Village with a second-story St. Mark’s Place location, managed by Leo Ge. There are stellar versions of classics like ma po tofu and twice-cooked pork, but also find less ubiquitous fare. Every table will likely have the sliced pork belly with chile-garlic sauce, where pork hangs like laundry on a line.

Sliced pork belly and cucumber hanging over a device to look like drying laundry, with chile garlic sauce underneath
Sliced pork belly with chile garlic sauce.
Jean Schwarzwalder/Eater NY

Chef Tan

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Chef Tan is a mini chain with two branches in the NYC area, of which this is my favorite. It offers a cosmopolitan mix of Chinese cuisines, with a little each of Sichuan, Hunan, and Chinese American dishes, the perfect mix to please its customers. Don’t miss the fish head with diced red peppers or the eggplant, century egg, and green chiles — to be smashed in a mortar — from the Hunan portion of the menu.

A split fish head swimming in red oil and covered with red chiles.
Fish head with diced red peppers.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Hunan Slurp

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The East Village has had a spate of stylish Chinese restaurants, and Hunan Slurp goes further than any other to create a sleek, artistic setting, covered in blonde wood planks, created by chef and owner Chao Wang. The Hunan rice noodles called mifen give the restaurant its theme, but the other options — like Hunan charcuterie including smoked pork and other meats — stand out just as prominently.

Offal and green pepper strips stir fried in a blue bowl.
Pig’s stomach and pepper at Hunan Slurp.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Green Garden Village

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The gloriously chewy rice noodle rolls are the foremost order at Yan Liang’s Green Garden Village, like the versions stuffed with youtiao (fried dough), dried scallops, and dried shrimp. But this Cantonese restaurant also specializes in fresh seafood and expert charcuterie carved in the front window, including roast pig, roast baby pig, Hainanese chicken, cuttlefish, tripe, and three kinds of roast duck.

Steamed rice rolls stuffed with fried dough, dried shrimp, and dried scallop on a white plate.
Rice noodle roll filled with youtiao (Chinese cruller).
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Spicy Village

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This tiny restaurant owned by Wendy Lian and her family serves some of the most heart-warming and delicious Henan food in Chinatown. Order the big tray of spicy chicken and ask for an extra order of noodles to toss in the chile-oil-spiked sauce. The noodles are wide and hand-pulled, with a hearty bite to them. Brisket mei fun is another don’t-miss dish, and don’t forget your greens or the garlicky cucumber appetizer.

A big metal bowl with stewed chicken and noodles, topped with a pile of cilantro
Big tray chicken.
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Uncle Lou

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Uncle Lou debuted late in 2021 and caused long lines along Mulberry Street during the Lunar New Year in 2022. The owner is Louis Chi Kwong Wong, who was born in Hong Kong, though his menu is quite different than Chinatown’s Hong Kong cafes. It showcases Cantonese village cuisine from the middle of the last century with refined ingredients, including such dishes as homestyle Chenpi roast duck and beef filets sauteed with garlic chives.

Pieces of beef nearly concealed beneath deep green garlic chives.
Beef filets with garlic chives at Uncle Lou.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Chiuchow (or Teochew) is a city in eastern Guangdong with its own dialect — and a population that has been dispersed throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. This results in the wonderful hybrid cuisine that you’ll find at Bo Ky, a restaurant serving the unique cuisine since 1986. Find Vietnamese and Cambodian soups, in addition to Cantonese, as well as a braised duck quite unlike the roast ducks found elsewhere in Chinatown.

The braised Teochew duck at Bo Ky with dipping sauce
Braised Teochew duck at Bo KY.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Kong Sihk Tong

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Chinatown’s most stylish Hong Kong cafe covers all the bases when it comes to noodle and rice dishes from China’s southeast coast. From the port city of Xiamen comes a delightful stir-fried rice vermicelli rife with ham and other goodies. From Hong Kong itself arrive the steamed rice dishes called bo zai fan, plus British and American adapted snacks that run from condensed milk toast to spaghetti and meatballs. Spam aplenty, and how about a mug of Horlicks to wash everything down?

A plate of stir fried rice vermicelli with ham
Amoy rice noodles.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Fried Dumpling

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An offshoot of the first dollar dumpling stall on Allen Street, Fried Dumpling is a closet located on Mosco Street. As the generic name suggests, the menu is as bare bones as can be, currently offering only fried pork dumplings. Takeout only, eat in the park at the bottom of the street. Cash only.

A woman in a red jacket with a white paper hat serves dumplings to a line of customers
One of the last old-fashioned dumpling stalls.
Gary He/Eater NY

Antidote

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This is mainly Sichuan restaurant with Hunanese and Shanghainese flourishes. In addition to great soup dumplings from the latter, it offers food from the first two localities heavy with chiles in every form (try preserved duck egg with pickled chiles). Don’t worry, a glug of beer neutralizes some of the heat. And don’t miss the epic green-peppercorn fish stew.

A compact bowl of soup laden with green peppercorns, red chiles, and massive hunks of fish.
The fiery green fish stew at Antidote.
Luke Fortney/Eater NY

Wo Hop Restaurant

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Founded in 1938 and still owned by the Huang family, this Chinatown mainstay has a strong local following. Classic Chinese American fare dominates the menu. Whether seated upstairs or downstairs, dishes like chop suey, chow mein, and egg foo young are really quite delicious, with plenty of vegetables incorporated, making many of the antique dishes seem modern.

A  red plate of Chinese food.
Chicken chow mein at Wo Hop.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Yun Nan Flavour Garden

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Yun Nan Flavour Garden is one of the city’s first Yunnan restaurants, an offshoot of a much smaller noodle shop farther north in Sunset Park specializing in mixian rice noodles. Crossing-the-bridge noodles (lamb or beef) are a provincial classic that shouldn’t be missed. Eat them and then Google the story behind the name.

A bowl of pale broth and plates with things to put in it.
Bowls of noodle soup come deconstructed at Yun Nan Flavour Garden.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Chuan Tian Xia

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New York’s rising appreciation for Sichuan food hit Sunset Park in 2018 in the form of Chuan Tian Xia, a restaurant bedecked with colorful masks owned by owners, Queenie Dong and Zee Zheng. It immediately became famous for stellar versions of the cuisine’s classics and a long menu that includes lesser-seen options like spicy frog. Its liangfen, a mung bean noodle, is popular; as is a smoky, spicy green-stemmed cauliflower dish ( a cross between broccoli and cauliflower) that arrives in a wok.

A dish of green stemmed cauliflower in a wok with ma po tofu brown and red in a background bowl.
Green stemmed cauliflower, Sichuan style.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Affable Eatery

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This spot is the most recent and far flung of the Sunset Park banquet halls, offering dim sum in the morning until mid-afternoon. Yes, dim sum still cruises around on carts, and afterwards a seafood heavy menu kicks in, with plenty of pork, too. When you leave, the owner is likely to approach you and affably thank you for coming.

Three steamers of chicken feet, riblets, and orange rolls cut in segments.
Affable dim sum.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Farmers Restaurant

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If you’re looking for Chinese restaurants in maritime Brooklyn, don’t neglect the massive number of them strung along 86th Street as it passes through Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, and Bath Beach. Among them is super-Cantonese Farmers Restaurant from owner Jinxue Cai in a modest space but with a penchant for fresh seafood of arcane varieties. Its signature dish is lobster steamed in sticky rice. And don’t miss the deconstructed version of wonton noodle soup.

A heap of red shelled lobsters dotted with grains of sticky rice.
Lobster steamed in sticky rice.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tack's Chinese Take Out

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This carryout restaurant has been delighting Staten Islanders for nearly five decades in its somewhat obscure location in Manor Heights, just west of Todt Hill. The charcuterie often comes with thick sauce (the roast pork is a fave), but perhaps the best dish on the menu is Singapore curried noodles, which packs quite a wallop of heat. A highly recommended spot; eat nearby in one of the borough’s Greenbelt parks. 

Thin yellowish noodles stir fried.
Singapore lo mein is a curried noodle dish.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Happy Hot Hunan

Near the northern verge of the Upper West Side, which has always been an under-the-radar location for excellent Chinese restaurants, lies the agreeably, accurately, and alliteratively-named Happy Hot Hunan. Few restaurants serve such a wide range of Hunan specialties (quite different than Sichuan ones, and often spicier). Foods preserved by pickling, drying, and smoking provide unique flavors in Hunan food, including one dish of smoked pork with smoked bamboo shoots that tastes like Texas barbecue. Too much smoking? Nah!

A white plastic bowl of greens dotted with red chiles.
Even the mustard greens come dotted with chiles.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

New Fu Run

We thought we’d lost this Flushing mainstay when it closed a few years ago, but then discovered there was another branch across the Queens border in Great Neck. It also features the food of Dongbei — the three provinces in northernmost China once known as Manchuria. Try the pork with sour cabbage, sweet and sour fish, and green-bean sheet jelly (mung bean noodles, pressed tofu, and cloud ear fungus with tahini in a sort of toss-it-yourself salad).

Julienne vegetables with brown sauce on top fanned out on a platter.
Green bean sheet jelly at New Fu Run.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Tri Dim West

There’s no better prelude or conclusion to a Museum of Natural History visit or stroll in Central Park than this nominally Shanghai restaurant, where strong cocktails are part of the package. Though lion’s head meatballs, soup dumplings, West Lake beef soup, and other Shanghai regional delicacies are presented, the menu goes further afield with Sichuan, Cantonese (including lots of dim sum for convenient snacking), and even Teochew dishes.

Three meatballs in brown gravy.
Lion’s head meatballs at Tri Dim.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Xi'an Famous Foods

The original location of this empire from restaurateur Jason Wang opened in downtown Flushing. As its reputation grew, branches opened all over the city with its spicy, fragrant style of cooking from northwestern China. Try any of the hand-pulled noodles and the spicy cumin lamb burger — the meat is rich, the bread has a crunchy sear on the outside, and the bun soaks up plenty of lamb juices.

A round aluminum carryout containers with noodles and meat inside.
Liang pi noodles at Xi’an Famous Foods.
Ryan Sutton/Eater NY

Shanghai You Garden

This Shanghai restaurant in Bayside, Queens, serves the best soup dumplings in town. Smaller than usual, they’re thin skinned and bulging with a delicate gravy. With a fuller menu than its Flushing branch, it features a range of Shanghai specialties, including small plates, noodles, soups, and bigger feeds like braised pork shoulder, sweet and sour sea bass, and eel in hot oil.

Chive and chicken chowder set into a yin and yang shape with green and beige broths
Yin yang soup at Shanghai You Garden.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao

When it moved to more luxurious premises down Prince Street in 2019, Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao opened its new dining room to much fanfare. But carryout and delivery are still available from this place, owned by Tai Ma, that helped popularize Shanghai soup dumplings. The restaurant now makes them in a rainbow of colors and also offers a menu rich in other Shanghai specialties, from chicken in wine sauce to rice cake with mustard greens. (And there’s now an express location in Forest Hills.)