Please recommend a good restaurant in Chinatown for dim sum. We are going to do the Wok Wiz tour where you can include a dim sum lunch, but we thought we would do that on our own--any suggestions for a good place? Thanks!

What city?

OOPS! San Francisco

Have you done dim sum before?

I usually recommend either Asia Garden or Miriwa, both on Pacific above Grant. There's also the Golden Palace on Broadway.

These are fairly large restaurants and quite popular. Arrival no later than 11:30am would be a good idea.

Why not find out from the Wok Wiz people where they will be having their dim sum? It might be more fun to do it with a group.

When we do it with a group, especially one with lots of young people, we don't call it "dim sum", we call it a "feeding frenzy".

City View Restaurant on Commercial Street was recommended to us by some locals. The dim sum there is excellent. I agree with easytraveler about arriving no later than 11:30am.

Imperial Palace or Four Seas are the two places you could go to on the tour for dim sum. Neither of you mentioned those--maybe because they are touristy? How bad will it be to go at noon on a Monday?

Thanks for your help.

Dim Sum is breakfast food (or more like elevenses, really). No matter what city you're in, it is fresher earlier. Noon may not be too bad, but it's nasty later in the day because they know that only more clueless tourists are eating it.

If this is your 1st time having dim sum, I'd go with the Wok Wiz tour to Four Seas or Imperial Palace, the guides give you the name of every item you taste and will answer all questions. See if you can get on a tour conducted by the owner Shirley, she is a true Wiz!

I understand that Koi Palace in Daly City is good.

Koi Palace is indeed excellent, but it's too far for a lunch break from a Chinatown walking tour.

Furthermore, unless you're among the lucky firsts to arrive, there's a long wait.

I apologize. The correct names of the three restaurants in Chinatown are:

New Asia
Meriwa
Gold Mountain

These are all passable and better than the two mentioned for the Wok Wiz. However, if you are not into dim sum and this is just an occasional thing, you probably won't notice the difference.

Gold Mountain on Broadway is probably the "cleanest" - and that's not saying much. Their choice is a bit limited.

Otherwise, you could try a bit of a further walk to Yank Sing. Expensive, but clean and very popular with the Financial District crowd.

For lunch but non-dim sum (which I would recommend) in Chinatown, try the R&G Lounge on Kearny.

Again, the question is: are you a Chinese foodie or did you just want to break away from the tour group?

We like Chinese food--I wouldn't call us chinese foodies. We just thought the tour group restaurant may be too touristy and better ones might be out there. Yank Sing is recommended in my travel book--thank you for taking the time to respond.

Yank Sing has great food, service and atmosphere, you just pay twice as much as the Chinatown places.