86 Best Restaurants in USA

Although the soups and the noodle options are consistently excellent at this no-frills restaurant, what you should really order here are dishes that involve the hanging lacquered ducks and other window "decorations." These are listed on a simple board and superbly served with pungent garlic-and-ginger sauce on the side. Seasonal specialties like duck with flowering chives and salt-baked soft-shell crabs are memorable.

Just before you reach the Chinatown Gate, this bakery offers you red bean buns, milk cake, fruit puffs, custard tarts, and fresh dessert cakes, among other sweet and savory baked goods. There's also a dim sum menu, rice soup, woks, and Hong Kong--style noodles, and a few places to sit. The prices are a bargain.

Tasting menus tend to come with sky-high prices, but that's not the case at this welcoming spot where $39 gets you four courses served in a sleek, comfortable dining room. The menu is eclectic, and skews toward Chinese dishes and flavors, though there are other global influences as well among the creative offerings.

Enjoying the barbecue pork buns and curry chicken at this Chinatown icon dating to 1920 is a bite into both culinary history and San Francisco's past. Located on an alley, it's one of the smaller, more homey, and less frenetic sit-down dim sum choices in the city, with a small dining room simply decorated with pieces of Chinese art and a few Bruce Lee movie posters.

Hilo's best Chinese restaurant specializes in seafood but also offers many other Cantonese treats, including salt-and-pepper pork, Mongolian lamb, and vegetarian specialties like garlic eggplant and crispy green beans. The food is good, portions are large, and the price is right, but don't come here expecting any ambience—this is a funky, no-frills Chinese restaurant, with random pieces of artwork tacked up here and there.

Lunches here are served fast and cheap (between $7 and $8) and include more than 30 different dishes, such as Mongolian beef and cashew chicken. They're popular with the business crowd, so you might want to avoid the noon lunch rush.

This is a longtime favorite for dim sum enthusiasts, who also come for fluffy barbecue pork buns, walnut shrimp, chive dumplings, congee, and sticky rice. The waits are long and the atmosphere is lacking, but when you're craving dim sum, this is the place to go. Avoid the mad rush at lunchtime and go to the Wing Luke Museum while everyone else is eating, then try for a table closer to 2 pm. They serve the full dim sum menu until 4, then switch to a partial one alongside the dinner menu.

Joe opened his first Shanghai restaurant in Queens in 1994, but buoyed by the accolades showered on his steamed soup dumplings—filled with a rich, fragrant broth and ground pork or a pork-crabmeat mixture—a Manhattan Chinatown location followed in 1995. After 25 years, it's moved to a new spot not far from the original and although the space is modern and updated, the food is just what fans have been raving about for years.

This simple spot serves the best Chinese barbecue in the I.D. Large cuts of meat hang in the window, enticing customers to try the famous BBQ pork. Plenty of Cantonese noodle, rice, and vegetable dishes round out the menu.

Literally translated as "good food for the mouth," this unprepossessing BYOB spot is now being run by a second generation of restaurateurs. They do an excellent job with the most straightforward fare, like General Tso's chicken, hot-and-sour soup, and steamed pork dumplings, but they are best known for their salt-baked seafood and their hot pots.

At this large Chinatown institution, the dim sum cart ladies stop at your table and show you their Hong Kong–style fare. If you come for breakfast dim sum, arrive before 9 am, especially on weekends, if you want to hear yourself think. There are also à la carte lunch and dinner menus.

The open-air Lotus Blossom Café offers authentic pot stickers and egg rolls, as well as entrées such as orange chicken with steamed rice, chicken fried rice, and a Mongolian combo. The Joy of Tea cart along the promenade serves hot and cold tea, plus trendy bubble milk tea, beer, and cocktails.

In contrast to the sprawling, noisy halls where dim sum is generally served, Mei Sum is compact, shiny, and bright—it's also favored by locals who work in the area. Be ready to guess and point at the color photos of dim sum favorites or the items on the carts as they come by, or ask fellow diners for suggestions. It's one of the few places that serve dim sum from 9 am all the way to 8 pm.

Brandon Jew's ambitious, graceful restaurant offers the chef's delicious contemporary, farm-to-table interpretation of Chinese cuisine that sometimes tweaks classic dishes with a California spin (hot-and-sour soup with nasturtiums) or enhances fresh produce with unique Chinese flavors (local asparagus with smoked tofu). The elegant dining room—accented with plants and a chrysanthemum chandelier—provides beautiful views of Chinatown, while the tasting menu breathes new life into it.

This longtime favorite with its high, peaked ceilings, palms, and a soothing color scheme is the dressiest Asian restaurant in the metro Detroit area. The menu includes staples such as moo shu pork, General Tso's chicken, and a variety of sushi. Other choices include the inventive Singapore noodles—chicken, shrimp, chiles, and curry on angel-hair pasta—or seared sea scallops with corn-chili sauce.

This lakeside location of a local dumpling specialist brings a wide assortment of Chinese cuisine to an area of town not normally known for big flavor. The sprawling menu has crowd-pleasing options like northern-style dumplings, dim sum, and American Chinese food, as well as in-depth dishes from Sichuan and Hunan for the spice-nerds out there. Extremely casual, with dark wood tables and a nice wraparound patio looking out toward the park, the restaurant is a pleasant place to sit—helpful since the kitchen is quite small, and thus sometimes requires patience from diners.

It was a long time coming, but the venerable celebrity magnet Mr Chow finally established a beachhead at Caesars Palace, and it's acquired a following of its own. On the second floor overlooking the Garden of the Gods pool complex, the predominantly white restaurant is centered on a circular suspended "kinetic sculpture" that periodically descends and opens itself to the room. All the favorites are here, including the famous green prawns, plus Mr. Chow noodles and drunken fish. Las Vegas being an Asian magnet, there's a Chinese menu as well. There also are three "semi"-prix-fixe options. Don't miss the champagne trolley as it makes its way around the room.

Dim sum is traditionally served in the morning but if you have a craving at another time, head to this old-school spot in the heart of Chinatown, where dumplings, turnip cakes, rice rolls, and a variety of other small plates are available from early until late in the evening. Nom Wah started out as a tea parlor and bakery in 1920, just a few doors down, and only later started specializing in dim sum, and there's still an impressive selection of specialty tea on the menu.

Nomad Asian Bistro draws an army of dedicated locals to feast on Chinese halal dishes featuring toothsome, hand-pulled noodles (at a nominal extra fee, but worth it in every way). Nomad offers a wide range of conventional and inventive options, with abundant vegetarian and gluten-free choices in addition to classics like short ribs and shrimp. Be warned: if you order the sesame flatbread and aren't paying close attention, you'll inhale it all and ruin your appetite. Wash down your meal with a glass of their housemade, fresh-pressed ginger beer. The restaurant's ample size makes it a great option for large parties, and free parking is abundant—a rarity in Long Beach. Patio dining is available.

It's largely locals eating at this smallish banquet space on the edge of Chinatown, and things can get a bit hectic, with big-screen TVs hanging from every corner, gaudy chandeliers overhead, and dim sum carts racing through the aisles. Snag a seat next to the kitchen to flag down the carts as they emerge—the dim sum is excellent and well priced.

Behind the plainly marked door, you will find a restaurant dressed in red and gold. You have more than 26 house specialties to choose from, including such favorites as the spicy and sweet orange beef and the Grand Marnier shrimp. Paintings of birds and a dramatic mirrored ceiling adorn the space.

Tucked away in a K-Mart–anchored shopping center, this reasonably priced, large Chinese restaurant with a Mongolian grill is a real treat. The daily buffet offers both stick-to-your-ribs Chinese and Mongolian dishes. At the grill, choose the ingredients you want in your entrée, and watch the cooks prepare it in front of you. If your children don't like Chinese food, there is a children's menu that includes pizza. Peking is a great value for money and a favorite with locals. The Greene shopping center location is just outside the historic district.

The weekend bustle of this dim sum house can feel overwhelming, but Phoenix softens you up with second-floor picture-window views that frame the Loop skyline and an excellent food menu. Dim sum is the draw all day long on weekends, but don’t overlook the regular menu, which features an array of live seafood cooked how you like it.

You'll want to check out the menu at this chic SoHo spot that's more than a "pinch" above the average Chinese joint thanks to its perfect dumplings and supertasty versions of mapo tofu, three-cup chicken, seafood fried rice, and many other classics. The wine and cocktail list are thoughtfully chosen to pair with the flavorful food.

Delicious regional (mostly Cantonese) fare includes marvelous dim sum made fresh daily often compels discerning diners—many of whom hail from Vegas's large Asian community—to brave the smoky, low-rollers casino floor of the Gold Coast, an otherwise unremarkable locals casino. The hours are a testament to its popularity: it's open from 10 am to 3 am every single night of the week. Named for three characters in Puccini's opera Turandot (Pong is head chef of the imperial kitchen), this well-regarded restaurant is kwown for authentic dishes such as chicken lettuce cups, seafood fish mah stew, preserved-egg porridge, or spicy Dungeness crab with peppercorn, along with a glass of chrysanthemum iced tea and sweet pineapple buns for dessert, soft and warm from the oven. Chefs will cater to customers' requests for small, unique offerings not on the menu, as long as the ingredients are on hand. 

Handmade dumplings are the specialty at this sleek, modern restaurant. Order them fried or steamed, packed with fillings like lamb and coriander, lobster, pork and cabbage, and many more.